The bill encourages community colleges and professional-technical programs across the country to design and offer training programs and industrial certifications that are transferable anywhere in the country. The bill is supported by manufacturers, labor and community colleges, what Minnick spokesman John Foster called the "three-legged stool" of the workforce.

Alisha Hyslop at the Association for Career and Technical Education, which represents teachers and administrators at community colleges, said they support industry recognized credentials that are national and portable, but she said the bill appears to be driven mainly by industry concerns, specifically the National Association of Manufacturers.

But Minnick also demonstrated support from organized labor, quoting the Pacific Northwest Carpenters union in his press release, along with representatives of NAM and North Idaho College.

But here's the best part; the bill is short, as in a page. Here it is in its entirety, from the Library of Congress:

A BILL

To require that certain Federal job training and career education programs give priority to programs that provide a national industry-recognized and portable credential.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `American Manufacturing Efficiency and Retraining Investment Collaboration Act' or the `AMERICA Works Act'.

SEC. 2. NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED AND PORTABLE CREDENTIALS FOR JOB TRAINING PROGRAMS.

(a) Workforce Investment Act-

(1) GENERAL EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ACTIVITIES- Section 134 of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (29 U.S.C. 2864) is amended by adding at the end the following:

`(f) Priority for Programs That Provide a National Industry-Recognized Credential- In selecting and approving training programs or services under this section, a State, a local board, and a one-stop delivery system shall give priority approval to programs that provide a national industry-recognized and portable credential, certificate, or degree.'.

(2) YOUTH ACTIVITIES- Section 129(c)(1)(C) of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (29 U.S.C. 2854(c)(1)(C)) is amended by redesignating clauses (ii) through (iv) as clauses (iii) through (v), respectively, and inserting after clause (i) the following:

`(ii) to the extent available and appropriate, a national industry-recognized credential, certificate, or degree;'.

(b) Career and Technical Education- Section 3(5)(A)(ii) of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (20 U.S.C. 2302) is amended by inserting `that is nationally recognized and portable and which may provide a basis for additional credentials, certificates, or degrees' after `an industry-recognized credential'.

(c) Training Programs Under TAA- Section 236(a)(5) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2296(a)(5)) is amended by inserting after the sentence that follows subparagraph (H)(ii) the following: `In approving training programs under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall seek to approve programs that provide a national industry-recognized and portable credential, certificate, or degree.'.

PS You may have to read the three other lengthy pieces of legislation this bill amends in order to fully comprehend this stuff. But it's still short.

At least, until now, thanks to citydesk editor Hoffman, who gave me 10 minutes notice for this assignment.

I boarded the elevator to the Stueckle Sky Center for an apparently formal noon luncheon with the President of my school, Bob Kustra and his rival fresh-off-the-boat chief at the University of Idaho, Duane Nellis, at exactly 12:08 p.m. I tapped the “close door” button repeatedly, until I emerged on the sixth floor, and was overcome by the panoramic view of Boise from the sky.

The luncheon, scheduled before tomorrow’s Broncos vs. Vandals football game, brings to light the little told story of partnerships between Boise and that school in Moscow.

I managed to maneuver to a nearby table, just barely catching the end of the remarks made by University of Idaho's new president, Duane Nellis. Frank Zang, Kustra’s media-relations guy, pulled me aside to fill in the details. Turns out I'd only missed cursory opening remarks; the banquet was more high-class tailgating than the research collaboration symposium promised.

At the tables around me sat numerous members of faculty from Moscow as well as from here in Boise. The professors are members of multiple groups that seek to foster a more heady research climate in the state of Idaho.

Working together, the faculty seek to further the relationship between Boise and Moscow, as well as with the Idaho National Lab, to help Idaho prosper in biomedical research, new energy development, creating research opportunities for students, and managing innovative water solutions.

Those in attendance were a part of the groups CAES, the Center for Advanced Energy Studies, EPSCoR, the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, INBRE, the Idea Network of Biomedical Research Excellence and IWRRI, the Idaho Water Resources Research Institute.

Duane Nellis said: “It’s about competing on a national level. Without investing in higher education, we will lose our edge against other states."

Writes Fischer in his Focal Point blog:

It it is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. The reason is simple: the more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security. Devout Muslims, who accept the teachings of the Prophet as divinely inspired, believe it is their duty to kill infidels. Yesterday's massacre is living proof. And yesterday's incident is not the first fragging incident involving a Muslim taking out his fellow U.S. soldiers. (Nov. 6)

It's an argument that builds on an Aug. 27 post in which Fischer posited that devout Muslims cannot be good Americans.

Fischer's comments also briefly riled the feathers of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who called Fischer a "knee jerk racist."

“It is with great reluctance that I withdraw from the race for the First District congressional seat of this great state. For the past several days, I have been dealing with an unexpected health issue that has affected my candidacy and hampered my ability to make this run. I feel that it is my responsibility to my family to step out of the race at this time and concentrate on my health.”

Roberts said he had carried the "conservative banner" as far he was able, and said that two potential conservatives have approached him about the race.

An hour and a half after Roberts' announcement, Eagle Rep. Raul Labrador told Dan Popkey at the Idaho Statesman that Roberts had been referring to him and that he would be running for the post.

• Vaugh Ward at BW HQ

Ward, who has now taken to referring to Minnick as "Walter," tried not to talk about the congressman too much, but could not help himself in a few instances.

"This idea of voting no isn't enough," Ward said. "There's a lot of hand wringing ... my intellectual honesty is not a curiosity, it's what I believe."

Ward also positions himself as a conservative, a real Idaho Republican, asserts that he does not see eye to eye with Sen. John McCain, though he worked for his presidential campaign in Nevada and stresses his relative youth. He fired off a list of Idaho politicos and their ages when they entered politics: Steve Symms, 34; Larry Craig, 35; Dirk Kempthorne, 40; even Frank Church, 32.

Ward is 40.

We asked Ward, who remains in the Marine Corps Reserve, about his past CIA involvement and this is the best answer we could get: He was a case or operations officer—an agent. He was recruited, there are no job ads for that position. And his job was roughly to "engage known Taliban or al-Qaeda and then to get them to do something for us."

Today, Ward commended Roberts legislative service, dropped Pelosi's name again in close proximity to Minnick's and reiterated his conservative cred.

Roberts campaign manager Kevin McGowan issued a terse announcement of his Oct. 23 resignation just yesterday. Popkey also reports that former U.S. Rep. Bill Sali has neither confirmed nor denied his interest in the race.

First there is Vern Bisterfeldt, who fended off two opponents, winning every precinct in the city, all 81 of them. Vern transcends Cole Road.

Then there is Maryanne Jordan, who lost only one precinct, 27—in far west Boise south of Eagle and McMillan roads—to Lucas Baumbach, 106 to 92, with David Webb pulling in 41 votes there.

So Jordan also managed to win supposed “conservative” and "liberal" votes on both sides of Cole.

So why does the TJ Thomson-David Litster map below appear so divided? Well Thomson and Litster did the most outreach to voters and got the most press, and we can see roughly where they likely spent most of their time on the map below. But their impressions of city politics probably align with their personal politics to some degree, so the east-west divide represents more than mere electioneering, as we have seen in recent legislative and other contests.

View Larger Map
Precincts that went for Thomson appear in green, Litster precincts are orange. Click through to see vote totals in each precinct. Details on the map are in the more geeky post below.

One other factor complicates the picture: so few of ya’all voted, that it makes it hard to draw too many conclusions.

The map above represents the precinct level returns [.pdf] for the recent Boise City Council, Seat 4 race between TJ Thomson and David Litster. Litster won the precincts in orange and Thomson won the green. If you click anywhere on the map, a box will pop up with the vote count for that precinct, including absentee votes.

Here's how we made the map. I think it's kind of a hack, so if anyone has a better system, please let me know. But we're using all open source software, so don't try to sell us a million dollar solution.

First I got the GIS shapefiles from the city. I used OpenOffice Calc to add the vote data to the .dbf file. Then I loaded it into a GIS program. I've been playing with Qgis and also with udig, but I ended up using Qgis to make the map. There is something I'm missing with udig ...

I used Qgis to color code the precincts by winner, exported the new shapefile and then moved to a PC. I use a program called MapWindow and a plugin called Shape2Earth for this step. It took me many tries and a call to a friend to get the projection right—Boise kept showing up off the coast of Guinea in West Africa when I loaded it into Google Earth.

We're almost done here. Load the .kml file into Google Earth and then save it as a .kmz file, which is a compressed Google Earth map file, I guess. Then I uploaded the kmz to our server, went to Google Maps and pointed the map to my kmz file. It worked!

Now you can zoom in and out, find your house, pan around the city and click away to see what precinct you are in and how the two candidates fared among you neighbors.

I'll save the political stuff and the analysis for another post. But this is the process that I have been trying to nail down for a year now. If only some hack had put it down in ones and zeroes and saved me all this time.

We did promise ya'll in the article that we'd walk you through the process for analyzing your hourly power consumption, so here ya go, step by step. We'd love to hear from readers how you plan to use this glut of new information.

If you want to read your actual digital meter, the one outside your house, you can follow the detailed instructions in the Idaho Power video on this page.

• Log in to your Idaho Power account, you may need to register, if you have not done that before.

• Then click on the "Energy Usage for ..." drop down menu at the bottom of your billing information.

• Then choose "Detailed Meter Data" and click on the bar representing any month.

• And voila, you can see when your kid gets up in the middle of the night to visit the refrigerator, the extra processor use in the middle of the day when someone is surfing, or, seriously, all the appliances that suck juice just because, even when you are not using them.

“Over the last several months, I have met with thousands of constituents from all over Idaho’s First Congressional District. They are gravely concerned about the economy, about job security, and about the kinds of opportunities their children and grandchildren will have to make a better life.

“Like most of them, I believe that cutting down the cost of health care is one important step we can take in moving our economy forward. We need to reform the insurance industry by demanding accountability and increasing private-sector competition. We must reduce government spending on programs such as a Medicare, and look to Idaho for examples of ways to do just that. And we must reduce costs throughout the health-care system, so the long-term benefits of reform will truly help our economy to grow and our nation to prosper.

“Unfortunately, the new health-care bill in the House does not adequately meet those goals, so I will vote ‘no.’ However, I am encouraged by the work of the U.S. Senate, and am hopeful that the final bill I vote on will be one that all Idahoans can support.”

Bisterfeldt, who told KBOI radio tonight that this would probably be his last term, according to Statesman Opinion Editor Kevin Richert's blog, was the biggest vote getter of the evening. David Honey, who was doing the karaoke thing at the 44 Club tonight, according to Facebook, wished his opponent FB congratulations, though Vern will never see it. Vern does not even know what his own e-mail address is.

Dunham and his running partner, Lucas Baumbach pulled in 3,000-4,000 votes, illustrating the divide between old-school Republicans like Bisterfeldt and the intensely ideological splinter Republicans organized under the Tea Party phenomenon.

David Webb, who did very little campaigning, as far as we could tell, managed to earn 3,000 votes as well. Not sure where those came from ... we'll have to ask him tomorrow.

David Litster, in the highest profile race of the cycle, managed to win 43 percent against Thomson's 57 percent. Thomson ran for the better part of a year for the seat. It remains to be seen if fighting the streetcar is Litster's real passion or if it was mostly an electoral ploy, as Litster is still collecting signatures to put the streetcar up to a vote.

With less than 20 percent voter turnout, It's hard to say if this vote can be read as a referendum on the City Council, much less on Mayor Dave Bieter. But since the majority of candidates positioned themselves as challengers to the status quo, it is telling that the incumbents, and Thomson, who had the mayor's backing, won comfortably.

Here are the final, unofficial results:

City Council Seat #2
Vernon L. Bisterfeldt 13,236 71.37%
Daniel L. Dunham 3,281 17.69%
David A. Honey 2,029 10.94%

City Council Seat #4
David S. Litster 8,162 42.63%
TJ Thomson 10,984 57.37%

City Council Seat #6
Lucas Baumbach 4,096 22.08%
Maryanne Jordan 11,333 61.08%
David Webb 3,125 16.84%

Voter Turnout
Ballots Counted (based on precincts reported as of 11:56 pm) 19,464
Total Registered Voters (as of 11/02/09) 110,749
Voter Turnout (based on precincts reported as of 11:56 pm) 17.57%

PS We don't know too much about the Canyon County jail bond, but it's interesting that Canyon County residents appear to have voted for an ACLU law suit. They love the ACLU in Canyon County, right?

Boise Public Works spokesman Vince Trimboli, who is on scene at the Ada County Elections Office, which is running the city elections this year, just told citydesk that it took a while to get all the ballots from precincts, after polls closed at 8 p.m. But the ballots are all at the office on Benjamin Lane now and all seven optical scan machines are running.

Incidentally, the county is only counting Boise votes tonight; other Ada County cities have their own abicuses. Abici.

Here's the latest numbers:

City Council Seat #2
Vernon L. Bisterfeldt 5,800 77.54%
Daniel L. Dunham 1,353 18.09%
David A. Honey 812 10.19%

City Council Seat #4
David S. Litster 3,275 39.73%
TJ Thomson 4,968 60.27%

City Council Seat #6
Lucas Baumbach 1,705 21.24%
Maryanne Jordan 5,064 63.07%
David Webb 1,260 15.69%

According to cincinnati.com, the question is losing 56 to 44 percent, with most of the returns in.

In Charlotte, N.C., a Democrat and streetcar booster also won a narrow victory tonight.

Opposition candidates in Boise, led by David Litster, seized on a similar notion, circulating a petition to force a vote on a streetcar in some future election. It is too early to tell how that issue will affect returns here, with only one precinct reporting, though the anti-streetcar block lost big in absentee voting.

If you are just sitting around waiting for the results to come in, you may want to read our analysis, hot off the press, of a poll question on Boise's streetcar that the Idaho Statesman released on Saturday. The numbers are not what they seem.

City Council Seat #2 - Four Year Term

Vernon L. Bisterfeldt 1,720 80.56%
Daniel L. Dunham 279 13.07%
David A. Honey 136 6.37%

City Council Seat #4 - Four Year Term

David S. Litster 591 27.05%
TJ Thomson 1,594 72.95%

City Council Seat #6 - Four Year Term

Lucas Baumbach 308 14.23%
Maryanne Jordan 1,626 75.10%
David Webb 231 10.67%

• Starr Thomsen, Holly Lockett and Eileen Wilson of Star and Molly Coonrod of Boise man the polling place at the First Congregational Chuch on Woolawn Ave.

When citydesk walked into the polling place for Precinct 36, the four women pictures above put down their books and prepared to take my vote. Then I took their picture. Fewer than 100 voters had voted here today, as of 1 p.m. Low turnout is being reported in other precincts as well.

Find your polling place here.

After the polls close, you have at least two options for parties.

David Litster, Dan Dunham and Lucas Baumbach will host a gathering at the Quiet Bar Lounge at the Double Tree Riverside, 2900 Chinden Boulevard. Other candidates may attend, according to the press release for the shindig.

TJ Thomson will watch returns at Bittercreek Ale House, 246 N. 8th Street. Both parties are open to the public and the press.

citydesk is messing around with his GIS and will either hit the town as a roving reporter or stay chained to his computer messing with data. Do not look in tomorrow's paper for our usual in-depth post-election analysis: BW goes to press too early this week to report on the returns. But we'll let you know what we know both on this blog and in the Nov. 11 paper.

"And rather than take death penalty cases to juries, prosecutors across the state are opting not to pursue executions at all or are agreeing to plea deals that put killers in prison for life," Orr reports.

And since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 said that juries, not judges, must issue the death penalty, prosecutors around the state have been forced into a guessing game: Even if jurors believe the accused committed the crime, will they pass a death sentence?

So far, only Ada and Canyon counties have asked juries to issue the death penalty, and less than half of those cases resulted in death sentences. Not one of Idaho's 42 other counties has taken a death penalty case to trial.

The subtext here, is that prosecutors in the "good old days" before 2003 had a better read on Idaho judges' feelings on the death penalty than they can now surmise from a jury of our peers.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been revising policies that had favored applications for projects that moved people further and faster, like rapid-transit buses, but downplayed attributes like economic development.

"The bottom line is, this administration wants more transit options for more people and that includes streetcars," LaHood told The Associated Press last week.

In Cincinnati, the streetcar is actually on Tuesday's ballot, while in Boise and Charlotte, N.C. the elections have focused on candidate's positions on transit.

Will Boise's election be seen as a referendum on the streetcar?

• Brad Little's Stolen Facebook Profile Picture

Little has scheduled a 9 a.m. press conference at Capitol Park, in front of the Statehouse cyclone fencing in Boise, followed by events in Idaho Falls and Coeur d'Alene. Actually, he's holding a $25 a pop announcement breakfast at the Crystal Ballroom prior to the press announcement.

He has a full campaign committee, chaired by former Lite Govs Gov. Butch Otter, Sen. Jim Risch, and the other former Lite Govs Jack Riggs and Mark Ricks and deputies divided up by regions of the state. He has been raising money for a year. He is "officially running for the Office of Lt. Gov." according to a campaign official.

And yet, even his campaign Web site is totally vague on what office he's running for. Even his Facebook friends appear clueless.

Why all the secrecy for a popular, sitting lieutenant governor? Is it just a social media ploy? Does Little have something up his sleeve? Or is citydesk just a sucker for a good conspiracy theory?

Michael Zuzel, with help from police and lawyers, presented the findings of the committee, including suggestions for infrastructure, enforcement and education.

As Zuzel had predicted, the three-feet-to-pass law garnered the most discussion, with Councilman Alan Shealy suggesting that writing "when possible" into the law would give drivers and excuse not to follow it.

"I'm just concerned that 'when possible' is going to completely emasculate the three-feet-to-pass," he said.

In Colorado, drivers are permitted to cross the double yellow line to get around a cyclist, but that would require a change in state law in Idaho, not just city code. The Task Force has been talking to Sen. Elliot Werk about other possible changes to state law that would improve bike safety.

Even among the Council members, the need for bike safety education was apparent. Councilman Vern Bisterfeldt, a former cop, suggested that cyclists used to be told to ride against traffic and cautioned against confusing people too much, particularly the elderly and kids.

Although officially titled "The Future of Your Daily Newspaper," Parrish's comments revealed less about the future than they did of the present. In short, Parrish said the Statesman's readership is up (even in the 18-34 demographic), that McClatchy is a "solidly profitable multi-media company" (emphasis on the multi-media with warm fuzzies for Twitter, Facebook and idahostatesman.com) and that while it may look like the paper is down, given the one-two punch of a deep recession and the rise of the Internet, the Statesman is certainly not out.

Come question time, City Clubbers seemed mostly concerned about money. At least at first.

Parrish fielded questions about selling Statesman content on the Internet, the impact of free classified listings like Craigslist and the possibility of large dailies becoming 501(c)3's or getting a government bail out. The answers: Parrish hates to give away content, including on the Internet; non-profit status could help secure grants to do expensive investigative reports; and she's no fan of government bailing out media—better to keep a free press free of Uncle Sam's money.

Eventually Parrish was faced with questions about the Statesman's editorial content, specifically its paltry business section and what one questioner called a complete lack of investigative reporters. As to the former, Parrish said sure, she'd like to have a bigger biz section but to the latter, she simply flat out disagreed. While that was a short and sweet answer to a serious concern, it at least came off better than a backhanded "duly noted," which she delivered in answer to a question about the defunct Tech Monday column.

Someone in the audience beat citydesk to the punch with a question about Boise Weekly, and whether the Statesman considered BW competition, or if there's a possibility for collaboration between the two papers. Short answer: like all media, we compete editorially but it's not necessarily an adversarial relationship.

And in case Parrish's McClatchy bosses want to know how well she towed the company line without giving away too much, citydesk gives her an "A." We heard more than once about "core competencies" and when asked to state exactly how many people had been affected by the Statesman's recent lay-offs, Parrish had a great non-answer answer. Parrish started the lay-off numbers with 28 pressman (14 of whom moved to Idaho Press-Tribune with the press switch earlier this year) and then wandered off into different territory without addressing numbers in the newsroom or elsewhere—numbers that citydesk wagers the asker was actually interested in.

Citydesk did get a couple of good chuckles out of the forum. First, when Parrish said the Statesman has been accused of being too far left. (Heck, if that's the case, some people out there must think BW is so far left we're almost right.) And second, when moderator Marcia Franklin told Parrish the new-ish headline/subhead/first graph is sometimes too confusing for readers.

In the end, what did we learn about the future of Idaho's largest daily newspaper? Well, its publisher doesn't think we can live without it and since she inked a 20-year print contract with the Press-Trib, she's optimistic that it'll be around a while.

One final note: The forum had originally been titled "The Future of Newspapers" before it was slightly altered to better reflect Parrish's area of expertise. Regardless, the forum apparently didn't draw much attention from Parrish's counterparts at other area newspapers. Idaho Press-Tribune Publisher Rick Weaver and Boise Weekly Publisher Sally Freeman passed up City Club to dish on industry gossip over lunch at Sweetwater's Tropic Zone.

Just put in your address (house number and street go in different fields), and it spits out a Google Map, complete with directions to your polling place.

Check it out, especially if you live in one of the notorious consolidated precincts.

Note: Google still will not tell you whom to vote for. That is a job for ... Electionland!

One important debate since the Bike Safety Task Force took its recommendation public is the retention of a "when possible" clause to the three-feet-to-pass ordinance. The summary of the report notes that this was a controversial addition, taking some teeth out of the proposed ordinance, but that it was necessary to make the law relevant on narrow city streets. Some cyclists maintained that if there is not three feet available on a particular street, motorists should wait to pass, said Michael Zuzel, a Task Force member representing the Mayor's Office.

"That will be one of the issues that's discussed most by the Council if and when this finally comes to them in the form of an ordinance," Zuzel said.

The Task Force will present the report to the City Council on Tuesday at noon, at City Hall. The City Council will then decide which of the 24 recommendations to implement, and how to pay for them. The recommendations fall into several categories, including new city ordinances, like three-feet-to-pass, an anti-harassment of cyclists law and a reckless cycling law. The are also education initiatives and reccomendations to prioritize certain street engineering projects—widening and bike lanes—to be coordinated with ACHD.

The public also shared some interest in anti-texting or cell phoning while driving regs, but the Task Force preferred to leave that up to the state; the Legislature may consider an anti-texting rule this winter.

The Forest Service and the Sho-Pai assert that the rock and mortar pools were built illegally and need to go.

Hot springers on a Yahoo! Idaho outdoor listserv and this guy are making calls to try to stop the imminent reclamation of the slope down to the Middle Fork of the Payette.

Channel 7 had a report on Wednesday, followed by the Statesman today:

"Those (hot springs) are still sacred to us - the tribes are a living culture, and we are still protective of our culture ... What we prefer is to leave it in its natural state. Nobody is saying (people) can't go and enjoy themselves at the hot spring. Just leave it natural. It's a spiritually significant site." — Ted Howard, Shoshone-Paiute cultural resources director, Duck Valley