My Page: Gil Brady

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Secrecy Watch

A freely available OPINION: Should JHMR still cough up that old engineer's report?

With a regularity approaching tyranny, the Center for Public Integrity recently expanded its litany of “Fs” Wyoming has received for transparency in government.

This time, it was the Wyoming Supreme Court and the office of the Cowboy state’s centrist Democratic governor, Dave Freudenthal, who got the low marks, according to the editorial "Another 'F' for Wyoming" by veteran capitol beat reporter Joan Barron of the Casper Star-Tribune.

Last month, in an editorial calling for Vice-President Dick Cheney to resign, I theorized that the Veep’s obsessive penchant for secrecy and disdain for the meddling press was a byproduct of cutting his political teeth in Wyoming.

Then again, it could just be that because the Veep thinks 9/11 turned America into Rome that means he gets to be Ceasar without the cool ass Laurence Olivieresque haircut.

Regardless, the problem of night swallowing up daylight in our state runs deeper than a couple of high-profile politicos playing hide the ball – excessive secrecy permeates nearly every rung of Wyoming public life right down to the county and local level. [more]

Koberna Drowning "Accidental"

Sheriff’s investigators have closed the tricky case of a 24-year-old man found dead here in a cold creek over two miles downstream after a security camera captured him leaving a local saloon alone and intoxicated well past midnight last May.

During a convoluted two-month-long investigation -- where officials initially suspected foul play and released incriminating information they later recanted -- Jonathan Koberna’s death May 23 has now been ruled an accidental drowning “after hypothermia and paradoxical undressing,” Det.-Sgt. Slade Ross of the Teton County Sheriff’s Office said Friday. [more]

Media Obsessing on Obvious

The doubly tragic saga of a National Guardsman and former Army sniper who killed himself after allegedly murdering his ex-wife at a Cheyenne nightclub last week has taken up lots of news ink and airtime on national broadcasts.

And while the story merits much of the coverage it's getting, none of it so far has probed very hard the “whys” of David Munis' apparent killing spree. Instead the media is focusing, as so many of these stories do at first, on the sensational: the shooting, macabre descriptions of the crime scene, vacuous interviews with a band member who knew Robin Munis, but only superficially, and the manhunt that resulted in authorities finding Munis dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.

The other night on television, a woman in Robin Munis' rock and country-western band said, when asked if Robin Munis talked about her troubles with her husband, that she "wasn't the kind of person who talked about her problems". Oh, really?

Obviously, that wasn't the case. Robin Munis had told police about harassing phone calls from David Munis just hours before she was murdered. And police had told Munis to knock it off.

Monday night on MSNBC's "Live with Dan Abrams" former FBI profiler Cliff Van Zandt theorized that Munis shot his wife at the nightclub because he wanted to 'hurt her where she's the happiest'.

While that sounded real good when I first heard it, and it might even be correct, something about it left me wanting more. Maybe it's that since it appears Munis intended to execute his wife, rather than just wound her, then how does he accomplish Van Zandt's ascribed motive of "hurting" her socially and psychologically, and savoring the deed, if she's dead and he kills himself?

Today’s Star-Tribune began the inevitable media inquest and psychological autopsy with a paragraph attributed to Munis’ friends about the deterioration of his relationship with his recently estranged wife.

In all the hullaboo, has anyone in the press asked: "How are the respective families of the dead taking all this?" And what are their reactions to this unfolding story? Lastly, since we know Robin Mulins talked to the police about her troubled marriage, as well as close friends, imagine what light the two families could shine on a very dark and so far only dimly lit matter?

A freely available OPINION

It would be nice to believe the “I’m okay, you’re okay, let’s all get along” rose-tinted view of immigration and bootstraps entrepreneurship as recently portrayed by a certain local alternative weekly.

Unfortunately, reality is a bitch. And a tough one, apparently, to report on.

In a breathlessly Pollyannish assertion, devoid of any recent legal history or nuance, the periodical, Planet Jackson Hole, reported: “But things have changed. In the past decade, a river of immigrants mostly from Mexico and Colombia has washed over the formerly homogeneous valley, helping to support Jackson Hole’s booming service and tourist-based economy.”

In all that washing and rinsing, the Planet certainly got one thing right: Jackson Hole’s demography has changed dramatically over the last ten years.

As has its violent crime profile.

[more]

Should Cheap Housing Go in Your Backyard?

As many long-time Jackson Hole public servants, nurses and low-income workers know, affordable housing in The Valley is spiraling out of control.

Many Valley workers who provide essential emergency and service-industry related labor have had to make their homes in satellite towns well outside the county--creating commute times that in theory could jeopardize lives and the local economy in the event of a disaster.

Recently, Jackson attorney Peter Moyer filed a lawsuit accusing the Teton County Housing Authority of illegally meeting in secret to green light the $2.1 million purchase of 5.2-acres of land in the Cheney neighborhood in the exclusive and tony West Bank area off the Moose-Wilson Road.

Moyer alleges the deal was struck in violation of the state's open meetings law.

The landowner's attorney, Andrea Richard, filed a counterclaim to Moyer’s suit demanding that her client be compensated for damages and attorney fees.

In the meantime, the Housing Authority has announced it's moving ahead on the deal and vowed to file its own suit, seeking answers to issues raised by Moyer.

For more on the claptrap and controversy, click here to read Planet Jackson Hole's up close and personal interview with the "N(not)I(in) M(my) By(backyard)" Cheney area residents who stand to be impacted by the plan.

And here, to read the Jackson Hole News & Guide's scorecard on the ongoing legal drama.

A Super Breezy Sunday Take on a Totally Serious Book Review

A recent high-profile book review got me thinking about voters, voting and what’s left of democracy.

Or as my brother says: "If everybody's right, then no one's left!"

Well, sort of. Let me true that up some, homes.

Perhaps, if I'd read the damn book, instead of pretending, like some fawned over cocktail party dilettante, maybe I could sort out what I think, I think I know from what "is known" to be true, and right and so evenhandedly brilliant you'd respect me in the morning for my wise assertions in this essay instead of my offhanded discursiveness.

Regardless, the reported thesis, as summarized by The New Yorker, that legendary, soul-searching juggernaut of elite, east coast townhouse pretenses, alleges “too much voter participation is a bad thing.”

Further, this well-rumored to be audacious new book is said to say that the “average voter is not held in much esteem by economists and political scientists”.

If you’re like me, you’re probably saying by now: “Well, screw you, snobby egghead pants, who didn’t know that? Who cares?”

I guess the simple answer is, maybe we all should. [more]

Are Killers Still On the Loose in Your County?

The power of a single letter to rattle unseen forces can never be underestimated, apparently.

Recently, officials spearheading one of western Wyoming's abiding mysteries were confronted with an anguished letter to be published in a local newspaper.

The missive was written by the sister of a dead young woman, one of three Jackson residents under 30 executed, gangland-style, over a span of eight months more than 20 years ago.

"I cannot believe that after all these years,” the sister of the dead woman wrote, “that there isn’t someone who knows something, and that more hasn’t been done to find her killer. She is in our thoughts every single day.”

And like that: sheriff's investigators released the 1986 sketch of a man they believe is connected to the June 21, 1984, killing of newlywed Lisa Ehlers of Jackson. [more]

Couple & Baby Appear in Federal Court

As a grandmother sat cradling their baby in her arms, an Alta couple in shackles and blue prison jumpers kissed one another before U.S. Marshals whisked them back to jail following their initial court appearances Tuesday before a federal judge in Jackson.

Tania Longtin, 32, and Jamie Alan Cordell, 33, recently indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to deal 500 grams of methamphetamine in Montana.

They have been charged with three federal crimes: two counts of possession of methamphetamine, with intent to distribute, and one count of knowingly intending to distribute a substance containing methamphetamine.

[more]

70-Year-Old Woman Dies Motorcycling

A 70-year-old Arkansas woman died Monday in Grand Teton National Park when the motorcycle she was on went off the road…

The Horse Creek Fire was declared fully contained yesterday and is now in “Patrol and Monitor Status”. The fire will be watched by a small group of firefighters… [more]

Gingery On Short List

BREAKING...8:37 p.m., MST

President Bush has received a list of three nominees for U.S. Attorney for Wyoming, according to a press release late Friday from the office of Wyoming’s senior Republican Sen. Mike Enzi.

In alphabetical order the names submitted to the White House are: Keith Gingery of Jackson; Kelly Rankin of Casper; and Harlan Rasmussen of Sheridan [more]

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