Commentary

Let’s get one thing straight: The EPA's plan to limit greenhouse-gas emissions from standing sources is nothing radical. States may sue, a bipartisan swarm of senators may politick to stop it, and energy lobbyists may fret about jobs and the economy, but no matter what the alarmists say, the rule won’t shut anyone down.

MUMBAI–“An appalling irresponsible act.” That’s how General James Nattis, fresh at the helm of U.S. Central Command, characterizes the release of more than 76,000 classified Pentagon reports released by the website WikiLeaks.
You may recall that the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense, is the same outfit that loaded $24 billion in $100 bills onto shrinkwrapped pallets and loaded the cash onto C-130 transport planes bound for Iraq–guarded by enlisted men who earn $20,000 a year. Not one of those Benjamins has ever been heard from since. Which, given that the money was supposed to be paid to corrupt tribal sheikhs, is just as well. Don’t be surprised if you see contractors installing one of those great new Gunnite pools at the house belonging to your recently discharged veteran neighbor.

When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck an Alaskan reef in 1989, leaking 11 million gallons of crude into a marine ecosystem, Greenpeace ran ads showing the ship's captain, Joseph Hazelwood, with the message: “It wasn't his driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours.”
The ads scolded: “The spill was caused by a nation drunk on oil. And a government asleep at the wheel.” All the publicity about that disaster pressured Congress and President George H.W. Bush to pass a 1990 law establishing “the first coordinated, national system for responding to oil spills and compensating their victims,” according to the Anchorage Daily News. That law and follow-up regulations raised the limits on oil-company liability and spurred a shift to double hulls and other oil-tanker safety measures.

If history is any indicator, Oregon's latest tax measures have an uphill battle at the polls.
The point was underscored, perhaps a little unscientifically at a town hall-style debate in Bend earlier this week when Rep. Phil Barnhart, one of the Measures 66 and 67 chief proponents, took on one of the measures' biggest critics, Sen. Chris Telfer on her home turf. At times the meeting, which was taped for broadcast on Bend Broadband's Talk of the Town program, had the feel of an ambush.

I never thought I'd say this, but wolf recovery in the West has been the most successful program ever accomplished under the Endangered Species Act. Thanks to the efforts of the U.

What crystallized at the Jeff Merkley Town Hall, Sept. 1 was that the most pressing healthcare reform issue is actually education.

Deep in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument of southern Oregon lies my favorite wildflower meadow. This summer I need to step carefully, to avoid the lush clumps of Jacob's Ladder blossoms and the delicate columbines, their blooms nodding in the breeze. I breathe in the scents of the wild: the spice of the conifers, the earthy aroma of the wet meadow itself.
And today, for the first time in all my visits, the breeze carries no whiff of cow. Today, the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is virtually cow-free.

Curses, Foiled Again Scott Douglas Jury, 53, notified authorities in Charlotte County, Fla., that someone had withdrawn money from his checking account several times without his permission. He filed a claim with the bank to be reimbursed for the $1,515 that was taken but was told he needed an official sheriff’s office report. When Jury […]