Mike Weland has been reporting local news in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, the heart of Trump Country, since 1991. Unfortunately, despite being a moderate Republican since he could vote, he never fell for Trump. Instead, almost since Trump came down the golden elevator, he's used his online news sites to sound warning, drawing considerable ire from the local populace who are so proudly MAGA. Having given his news site away to the next carrier of the torch and now semi-retired, he launched this site on the eve of Donald John Trump's second term as president both to share what he's written and in anticipation of much more news to come in the interesting times ahead. All commentary on this site is Creative Commons, so if you feel anything here worthy, feel free to share, and please share the site with your friends.
“Almost two years after that fateful day … Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.” Judge J. Michael Luttig, June 16, 2022, referring to the January 6, 2021, insurrection to stop the certification of the lawful election of Joe Biden to the office of President of…
I am asked on occasion, in the context of being a Trump “hating” liberal Democrat socialist RINO, why I’m not open to at least considering the truths espoused by today’s “conservative” Republicans, the MAGA clan of mostly white evangelical Christians, those dedicated to putting America first, who believe their election was stolen in 2020 based…
Everyone, not just never Trumpers, Democrats, liberals and RINOs, should be watching and paying close attention to the House Select Committee’s public hearings on its January 6 investigation findings. It’s an unprecedented moment in history, an assault on our very Constitution. Every U.S. citizen should be insistent on getting to the truth of what happened…
What a difference a few hundred years makes. When on December 15, 1791, the words “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” were ratified as the second amendment to this nation’s constitution, they who drafted…
A man, no matter his color, creed, race or religion, who thinks of himself so highly that he can lose sight of the fact that we all love our children equally is a man lost. The man who would betray an innocent’s trust and take from a child, his or another’s, their innocence, is a…
This country’s founders were consummate writers, who, with great deliberation and care, drafted for us a constitution establishing the basic form and principals of our government using very much that same language extant today. Like writers of any age, they strove to be concise and unambiguous, to make the words mean precisely what the writers…
“Critical race theory, an ugly ideology that divides people based on race, has crept into Idaho’s public school classrooms right under our noses. You’re ready to fight back, but you need the tools and knowledge to fight this left-wing indoctrination. The Idaho Freedom Foundation’s ‘Fighting Critical Race Theory in Idaho’ toolkit will equip you and…
If the statistics of late hold, by this time next week, the United States will have lost one-million people to COVID-19, a number far disproportionate to the rest of the world, where 6,250,452 have died to date, according to Johns Hopkins. Of those, 997,503 are from the U.S. With 4.25-percent of the world’s population, this…
I’m not the sharpest cookie in the knife drawer, but I simply do not understand the brouhaha over abortion “rights.” It just doesn’t seem to me a legitimate topic of national discourse requiring political intervention any more than a man’s right to get a vasectomy or a death bed patient’s right to choose between advanced…
On Thursday, Idaho House District 1 Representative Heather Scott held an event in a church in Kootenai, live streamed for those who couldn’t attend, announced in an email with the subject line, “Smut in Our Idaho Libraries and What You Can Do About It.” A game plan, she wrote, to remove inappropriate materials from our…
Those of the far right failed in insurrection yet have with great success subverted the grand old Republican Party to the point it is not recognizable anymore, and nigh bereft of the ideals for which it once stood so proudly. Give them fools credit. They have legitimized easily refuted lies and wrongly undermined, without proof,…
A definition of the word stupidity is “behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.” Too many who do possess good sense have tolerated abject stupidity in our politics and in our politicians for far too long, and we now find ourselves on a precipice as the stupid aggressively assert their supposed dominance…
We live in interesting times, times in which the word “liberty” means the exact opposite of the definition given in the dictionary, in which “patriots” are the very people our forefathers fought against and warned us about and where the proud flag of our nation has come to denote the antithesis of the principals upon…
Two lies writ large in the Trump era are causing horrific damage to the democratic process established by the U.S. Constitution, and those lies, perhaps the most egregious ever put forth and pandered by a sitting United States president and believed by so many of his stalwarts, place into dire question whether our system of…
Former president and now proclaimed 2024 presidential candidate Donald J. Trump continues to proclaim his strong advocacy for the rule of law, a stance long a cornerstone of the GOP ethos. But as only only Trump can, his advocacy is so twisted in application that his supposed support; believed, lauded and mimicked by far too…
Oh goodness … where to begin? In my view, MAGA is a cult of personality formed around a man who has no scruples and whose only concern is himself, one who, despite every advantage in life, has accomplished nothing of merit on his own. His only true talent, as proven throughout his four years as…
Many voters don’t see the election just ahead as important; they instead look to the midterms of 2022 or the presidential election of 2024. Those thinking that way are making a big … possibly huge … mistake. In nearly every race on ballots across the nation, candidates are running not so much to serve in…
