La Niña.  If it seems like the current cold snap is unusual, you are right.  As of 5 a.m. EST this morning, Sunday, Dec. 18, the average temperature across the Lower 48 states of the U.S. is colder than any time all last winter.  As this plot of hourly temperatures shows, the average temperature is

Two of Idaho’s four Republican presidential electors will be replaced prior to Monday’s vote of the Electoral College because they are constitutionally barred as federal employees from serving as electors. The process for replacing them is set forth in state law and the substitutions will not change the outcome in favor of Donald Trump. Layne

Youth smoking continues to decline. Researchers now conclude that vaping is replacing the smoking culture among youth and not leading youth to smoke cigarettes.  This isn’t good news for the nanny state.  The latest survey results deal another blow to the hypothesis that vaping leads to smoking. New survey results deal yet another blow to the hypothesis

Uber began testing their self-driving cars in San Francisco. The California DMV sent Uber a letter telling them to stop testing and get a permit to test. It’s interesting, because California DMV require a permit for autonomous vehicles; and Uber says that their cars have a person behind the wheel (even though it’s self-driving) —

Georgia’s Secretary of State confirms that someone from DHS attempted to hack into their voter database ten separate times. Testing security? Or trying to exploit?  Last week we noted a letter from Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, to the Department of Homeland Security questioning why someone with a DHS IP address (216.81.81.80) had attempted

President Obama vows to retaliate against Russia for “meddling in the US election.” Just in time to start a war before Trump comes into office.  President Barack Obama on Thursday vowed retaliatory action against Russia for its meddling in the US presidential election. “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries

Facebook is partnering with Snopes and ABC to identify, mark, and demote fake news stories. But who is going to police the police? ABC hasn’t been 100% correct, either.  Facebook is going to start fact-checking, labeling, and burying fake news and hoaxes in its News Feed, the company said Thursday. The decision comes after Facebook

Trump nominates Montana Rep Ryan Zinke to head the Department of the Interior. Zinke is a strong supporter of coal. Donald Trump’s nomination of Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke to lead the Interior Department could signal the revival of a much-debated coal-export terminal in Northwest Washington state that’s pitted industry groups and unions against environmental and

“Now that the Republicans have won — not only the presidency but also the Congress, as well as most governorships and state legislatures across the country — do they have the guts to do what they were elected to do?” Our fundamental freedoms under the Constitution are at stake in the choice of the next

The Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund halts all withdrawals from the fund as too many people were trying to get their share of the pension before the pension was out of money. This announcement came after $500 million had been withdrawn from the fund since August. Dallas police report that many officers have resigned

The Supreme Court declines to hear a case about a Colorado law that requires out of state companies to give records of online purchases to the government. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law did not violate the Commerce Clause earlier this year, upholding the law.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday

Trump selects Rick Perry to be Energy Secretary. When Perry was a presidential candidate in 2012, he ran on a platform that said he will shut down the Department of Energy. Perry famously could not remember the name of this agency during a debate when he was asked what departments he planned to shut down.

See the updates below.  I wrote a letter to the editor that ran in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News.  As a political independent who didn’t vote for either Clinton or Trump, I’ve been amused as local partisan opinion writers for the Daily News attempt to justify their positions. In a Dec. 1 Her View column, Lenna

Dave Jolly asks the same questions that I raised in my Letter to the Editor.  Green Party candidate Jill Stein launched legal actions to require voter recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Although Stein only received about 1% of the popular vote and no chance of winning any state via a recount, she claimed her

New survey results deal yet another blow to the hypothesis that vaping leads to smoking, showing that conventional cigarettes are less popular than ever among teenagers despite the recent surge in adolescent experimentation with e-cigarettes. In the Monitoring the Future Study, the percentages of eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders who reported smoking cigarettes during the previous month fell again

Officials of the University of Pennsylvania want you to know that Shakespeare is “alive and well” at their institution. It’s just his portrait that may be less central. But moving a portrait of Shakespeare can set off a debate. And that’s what happened when some students removed a large Shakespeare portrait from a staircase that

When one student at Pennsylvania’s Plum Borough School District complained that another had worn a sweatshirt with the Confederate flag to school, the superintendent informed his family that the school could not forbid the other student from wearing the shirt to school unless it was disruptive. But when three students showed up with clothing with the Confederate

At a Senate hearing last April, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general, worried about the message that marijuana legalization sends to the youth of America. “I can’t tell you how concerning it is for me, emotionally and personally, to see the possibility that we will reverse the progress that we’ve made,” he said. “Colorado was one