Who’s to blame for the federal budget mess? Everybody, including — sad to say — local governments in places such as the city of Albany and Linn County and their counterparts all over the country. The local paper reports that Linn County is seeking $7 million from the federal government to make improvements on the […]
A couple of weeks ago I made fun of state Sen. Ginny Burdick’s bill to require drivers to use the right lane on multi-lane highways. But it did no good. Her colleagues in the Senate seem to like the bill. So unless good sense prevails after all, we may be stuck with yet another reason […]
By echoing Obama’s predictions of disaster if spending cuts are allowed to take effect on Friday, the networks and the press have done the public a disservice. An exceptiion was the Wall Street Journal, which on Tuesday ran an editorial reporting significant news. The news is that contrary to what Obama has been preaching […]
What if Oregon voters did get the chance to vote again on the death penalty, and what if they affirmed it? The question for Governor Kitzhaber then is whether he would keep standing in the way of it being carried out. As we’ve been discussing, capital punishment has been carried out only twice since Oregon […]
Even though the word from Salem was that supporters of gun bans were backing off a little, it’s worth taking a look at one bill and who proposed it. This is House Bill 3200, which would ban some common rifles and pistols, calling them assault weapons. It is an extraordinary piece of legislation, even […]
Firefighters and police lined up behind President Obama on Feb. 19, when he made a speech at the White House blaming House Republicans for not preventing automatic budget cuts he and Congress had agreed to before. “Emergency responders like the ones who are here today,” the president said, “their ability to help communities respond to […]
Several years ago the legislature authorized ODOT to raise the speed limit on interstate highways to 70 miles an hour if the agency determined the higher speed would be safe enough. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ODOT found that no, 70 mph would not be safe anywhere on I-5, even on the 30 miles or so that run […]
