A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
September 26, 2018
Wallowa County Chieftain
Preparing
for election
letter-writing
A
nother election season is upon us. That means you
may be inspired to write a letter in favor of one
candidate or another or express one side of an issue or
another on the Nov. 6 ballot.
Good for you. We will try to run all of the letters submit-
ted to us by Wallowa County residents. Those who live out-
side the county may write, but their contributions will take a
backseat to county residents. We reserve the right to publish
out-of-county letters on our website only.
Our stated let-
ter length is 300
words, but if
you can keep it
shorter than that,
Paul Wahl
we will be appre-
ciative. It’s good
to have letters of
all lengths when it comes time to putting them on a page. It’s
like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Here are other tips that may help guide your submission.
• If you’re going to write a personal endorsement letter, let
it be based on substance rather than hair style or how well a
candidate mows his lawn. Don’t laugh, I’ve received endorse-
ment letters that were based on both in previous elections.
• Address the issues. No name-calling, threats or anything
that would get us both into a heap a trouble. Try to avoid the
words stupid, insane, mentally handicapped, lame-brained
and pathetic. You get the drift.
• Be factual. There’s a difference between expressing an
“opinion” and getting the facts wrong. If we cannot inde-
pendently verify a statistic or allegation in your letter, it will
be set aside until we can contact you for clarification.
• Letters submitted by email go to the top of the heap. If
we have to key it into our system rather than cut and paste, it
will delay publication significantly. If you can’t submit elec-
tronically, provide a printed copy typed double-spaced.
• Don’t participate in letter-writing campaigns in which
someone sends you a form letter, you sign it and forward it
on to the newspaper. These are fairly easy to spot. We simply
delete them.
• There is a tab for submitting letters on our webside wal-
lowa.com. You may use it, or you may submit to editor@wal-
lowa.com. Either way, you will receive an email response
acknowledging receipt of your letter.
• All letters, whether submitted electronically, by mail
or in person, must be signed, include your mailing address
and a phone number. The address and phone number are for
the newspaper’s reference only and will not be published or
given out.
• You may put a suggested headline on the top of your let-
ter, but whether it is used depends on if the wording fits the
space allotted for the headline. See reference above to the
1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
• A word about guest columns. Over the next month, our
editorial space will be extremely tight, so the chances of get-
ting an election-related submission published are slim if you
haven’t already made contact.
I feel like I should add, “Shake hands and let’s have a
clean fight.”
WAHL TO WALL
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Getting it all in one location
Our goal for the new integrated health services building is
that it will become a community-wide resource center. A place
to access medical care, to take cooking classes –– all in one
location. It has already become a catalyst for new projects and
programming for families, veterans and youth living in Wal-
lowa County.
Building Healthy Families plans to house a parent resource
center at the new building. This center will provide access to
parent education classes, family resources and early childhood
and kindergarten readiness materials as well as parent-child
activities in the waiting rooms. Supporting families is one way
this building will become a resource.
Another resource this building will provide is supporting
our local Veterans. Wallowa County has a very large popula-
tion of veterans and they often have to travel great distances to
receive physical health and behavioral healthcare.
The new building will provide volunteers to help folks nav-
igate all of the different mental and behavioral health pro-
grams, which are currently located in seven different locations.
With services being in one location, folks will not have to
coordinate multiple places for multiple appointments or be
met with several different screenings. This will reduce trans-
portation needs and confusion and make services more read-
ily accessible.
An exciting new possibility in the new building is a Career
and Technical Education program in partnership with local
high schools. CTE will provide career exploration and cre-
ate training opportunities for students who are interested in the
health-care field.
CTE could include job-shadowing, certifications, intern-
ships and even early college credits. The new building will
allow us to have the classroom space to explore the opportu-
nity of offering this component with our schools.
We can’t wait to start construction on this new building.
Chantay Jett
Nic Powers
Enterprise
Jett is executive director, Wallowa Valley Center for Well-
ness and Powers is CEO of Winding Waters.
See LETTERS, Page A5
Source of Democrat’s desperation
over court replacement revealed
D
ear Democrats in Wallowa County:
This will be a short primer on
the design and proper function
of our Constitutional Republic. Please
pay attention. Our Democrat Senators are
about to go off the rails.
Our Constitution divides the gov-
ernment into three branches — Arti-
cle I is Congress, Article II is the Presi-
dent, Article III is the Courts. By design,
the branch with the shortest term of
office is the House of Representatives in
Congress.
Representatives are close to their
constituents, should represent the peo-
ples’ interests in the laws that they pass,
and can be voted out quickly if they fail.
The scope of the federal government
was restricted in Article II, Section 8.
This was to prevent it from taking power
away from the states and freedom from
the people.
Right now, the Senate is holding
hearings to confirm a Supreme Court
Justice to replace Anthony Kennedy
who is retiring. Instead of asking seri-
ous questions, Democrat Senators have
been interrupting, grandstanding and
encouraging protesters who are paid for
their antics.
It has been a circus! Now, when the
time for interviews is over, Democrat
Senators revealed an accusation that
they have withheld for months. This is
completely out of order and a national
disgrace.
Why are Democrats so desperate?
This is a serious question and the sub-
ject of today’s column.
Over the decades, the Congress has
allowed its primary function of passing
laws to be eroded by passing only gen-
eral guidelines and allowing an army of
LET’S ROLL
Anita VanGrunsven
bureaucrats to fill in the blanks with reg-
ulations. An excellent local example is
the 26 pound 5,600 page Blue Moun-
tains Forest Plan.
What chance do our local ranchers
have to protect their rights against the
U.S. Forest Service and their legions
stretching clear back to Washington,
D.C.? To change this BM Plan –– who
do you vote out? Congress shirked its
duty and voters have lost control.
Over the decades, the Supreme
Court has arrogated powers to govern
the nation that it should not have. It has
handed down decisions that nullified
laws properly passed by several states
on subjects where the court did not have
the authority to make a ruling.
This is exactly why the Senate Dem-
ocrats are so desperate. Here it is:
In 1973 the Supreme Court discov-
ered a novel “right to privacy” in the
Constitution that allowed them to strike
down every state law restricting abor-
tion. Five people in black robes in
Washington DC nullified laws passed by
thousands of voters across the nation.
But the Constitution does not give
any part of the federal government any
authority over abortion. Only issues spe-
cifically enumerated In Article II Section
8 are within federal purview.
Everything else was reserved to the
states –– to keep laws close to the peo-
ple so they can make changes easily.
The federal government cannot make
S
en. John McCain died about a month
ago, just a few days short of his 82nd
birthday. Especially considering what
his body and mind endured 1967-73, it is a
testament to his stamina and stubbornness
that he lived that long before brain cancer
finally overcame his indomitable spirit.
McCain was born in 1936 on a Navy
base in the Panama Canal zone, the son and
grandson of two four-star admirals. He fol-
lowed in the family tradition and attended
Annapolis, where he was known for his
leadership among his peers, his rebellious-
ness, and partying –– which probably con-
tributed to a ranking near the bottom of his
graduating class.
His career as a Navy aviator began shak-
ily with two crashes and a collision with
power lines during his training years. He
was known for “pushing the envelope.”
McCain served with heroism as a fighter
pilot in Vietnam and received numer-
ous awards. On his 23rd bombing mis-
sion in 1967, he was shot down and cap-
tured by the Vietcong. His wounds were left
untreated for months by his captors, and he
was subjected to regular beatings and tor-
ture at “the Hanoi Hilton,” the most notori-
ous Vietnamese POW camp.
The enemy’s efforts to extract a bogus
“confession” from McCain taught him, as
POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY
John McColgan
he later acknowledged, that everyone had a
breaking point. McCain refused to allow the
Vietnamese to win a propaganda victory by
releasing the son of an admiral. He insisted
that he remain imprisoned until all those
captured before him had been set free.
When he was finally released, McCain
had some difficulty adjusting to life back in
the United States. His first marriage even-
tually failed, due partly to his infidelity (a
subject that I wrote about in a Chieftain col-
umn in 2008), and probably partly to the
pressures that all war veterans endure after
their return to civilian life.
But in fairness to McCain’s decent char-
acter, it should be noted that he remained on
good terms with his first wife and the chil-
dren from his first marriage throughout his
life, and that his second marriage to Cindy
and his family life thereafter were a lifelong
success.
One of my favorite quotes from the
“straight-talking” McCain came in response
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Contents copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Anita VanGrunsven is a grandmother
who lives in rural Wallowa with time to
think.
Remembering McCain as a man of honor
Wallowa County’s Newspaper Since 1884
VOLUME 134
laws on abortion but individual states
may. The court took away our rights.
Over the decades, the Democrats
have come to rely on the clearly uncon-
stitutional arrogation of power to the
court system to advance their agenda.
This is much easier than putting a ques-
tion to the voters where they have to
engage in a debate they might lose!
Couple this with Congress giving
away its authority and you have the rea-
son Senators come unhinged at the pros-
pect of a jurist who will honor the clear
meaning of our founding documents.
Imagine if Enterprise sent its foot-
ball team to an away game where, unex-
pectedly, the football field was 20 yards
wide and 200 yards long. The goal posts
were 20 feet high.
When the opposing team took the
field, there were 18 players and no ref-
erees. Can the game of football survive
such chaos?
Similarly, can our nation survive if
laws become regulations enforced by
unaccountable bureaucrats and the basic
structure of our government becomes a
“living Constitution” to be modified at
the whim of the court?
To restore stability to our govern-
mental system, Senators need to approve
Supreme Court Justices who will accept
the limits of, and base their decisions on,
the actual words of the Constitution.
This why our Oregon Senators
should defy Democrat leadership
and approve Brett Kavanaugh for the
Supreme Court. Write them a letter.
Keep them on track.
Publisher
Editor
Reporter
Reporter
Newsroom assistant
Ad sales consultant
Office manager
Chris Rush, crush@eomediagroup.com
Paul Wahl, editor@wallowa.com
Stephen Tool, steve@wallowa.com
Kathleen Ellyn, kellyn@wallowa.com
editor@wallowa.com
Jennifer Cooney, jcooney@wallowa.com
Cheryl Jenkins, cjenkins@wallowa.com
to a voter in Arizona, who accused him of
being a “carpetbagger” when McCain first
ran for the U.S. House in 1982.
McCain’s response to the man went
like this: “Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in
the Navy. My father was in the Navy. My
grandfather was in the Navy. We in the mil-
itary service tend to move a lot. We have to
live in all parts of the country, all parts of
the world. I wish I could have had the lux-
ury, like you, of growing up and living and
spending my entire life in a nice place like
the First District of Arizona, but I was doing
other things. As a matter of fact, when I
think about it now, the place I lived longest
in my life was Hanoi .”
Needless to say, McCain won that race,
and he served in the House for four years
before advancing to the Senate, where he
served for 32 more until his death.
Some of his greatest achievements as
a Senator probably won him more praise
from Democrats and Independents than
they did from Republicans. His signature
accomplishment was the McCain-Fein-
gold Campaign Finance Reform Act, but
also noteworthy were his bipartisan efforts
to help restore the normalization of dip-
lomatic relations with Vietnam and his
See MCCAIN, Page A5
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