The drone memo of the Obama administration is important, but not for the reason some senators and cable TV commentators say. Its main significance does not lie in the fact that the administration justifies the killing of American citizens who are leaders of al-Qaida or associated forces abroad. Of course the government is justified in killing people […]
A reader’s strong reaction is below. Obama would be more believable in his quest for more gun control if he made some sort of sense. In Minneapolis on Monday, he once again said he wanted to prevent another Newtown and the way to do this was to require “universal background checks” and to ban “assault […]
Just what we need — another illegal drug. That’s what state Rep. Mitch Greenlick apparently wants. The Portland Democrat has introduced a bill, House Bill 2077, that would make possession of nicotine a crime. We are talking about cigarettes here, or really any kind of tobacco. The bill says it would create the crime […]
President Obama says now’s the time for immigration reform. Easier said than done, obviously. One question: If we have lived with illegal immigration and its consequences for 40 or 50 years, what makes dealing with it so urgent now? But let’s look at the details. An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants are believed to be […]
Don’t look now, but they want to increase your property taxes. By “they,” I mean the majority of those senators who were on the state Senate Interim Committee on Finance and Revenue. They have introduced a constitutional amendment that would remove the property tax limits where local option tax levies are concerned. This has been […]
There’s good news for customers of the Albany city water system, assuming that voters don’t erase part of it with the initiative election that ends March 12. The good news: Last year, when the price of water was raised 3 percent, Albany’s public works department projected the price would have to rise 4 percent in […]
O&C Panel: No conclusion
If you didn’t expect much from Governor Kitzhaber’s O&C Panel, you were not disappointed when the group’s report came out on Feb. 7. Still, the report was useful in one respect. It summarized once again the long and convoluted history of the O&C lands, the forest lands originally granted to the Oregon & California Railroad […]
Tags: Clinton Forest Plan, Kitzhaber, O&C lands