Glass Slipper

People who want to be mayor of Bend aren’t supposed let anybody know (publicly, at least) that they’re after the job. Traditionally, they’re supposed to sit with their hands demurely folded in their laps like wallflowers at a 6th-grade dance and wait to be chosen by their fellow city councilors. Councilor Mark Capell boldly broke […]

The word “filibuster” derives from the Spanish noun filibustero, which means, basically, a pirate. The origin is appropriate, because for the past six years the Republican minority in the Senate has been using the filibuster to hijack the legislative process. Victims of this piracy have included, among many others, a military appropriations bill, the “Dream […]

“Whiskey’s for drinkin’ and water’s for fightin’,” goes the old Wild West proverb. There’s no better example of that than the political and legal battle raging over Bend’s Surface Water Irrigation Project, aka SWIP, aka the Bridge Creek Project.
It all goes back to the EPA’s determination that Bend’s water supply¬ drawn from Bridge Creek just below Tumalo Falls isn’t clean enough, and that if it keeps getting water from the creek the city will have to install an expensive filtration system by October 2014.

Members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club have been convicted of offenses including meth trafficking, firearms violations, robbery, assault and murder. The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is described as an organized crime syndicate by the US Department of Justice; the list of its criminal activities is so extensive that it rates its own entry in Wikipedia.
The two clubs have a history of bad blood – literally. In 2002 they had a little disagreement in a Nevada casino that resulted in one Mongol being stabbed to death and two Hells Angels being shot to death.

The media and pop culture celebrate them as “heroes,” but for America’s veterans the compliment sometimes rings hollow.
Besides often having wounds (physical or mental) to deal with, they face the everyday struggles of trying to get by in the worst economy since the Great Depression. And the federal government has done disgracefully little to help.
On the local level, Central Oregon Veterans Outreach – a private, non-profit organization – is doing what it can to bridge the gap between what veterans need and what the government does. Founded in 2005, its efforts include providing food and clothing to homeless vets, transporting veterans to the Veterans Administration hospital in Portland for medical care, and running “Home of the Brave,” a transitional housing facility.

It’s been said that the hallmark of a good compromise is that no one gets everything that they want, but everyone gets something. That’s pretty much the summation of the recent agreement about how to apportion the remaining unclaimed water in the Prineville Reservoir.
The agreement, which was brokered by Senator Jeff Merkley, D-OR, and his staff, divides the remaining resource between wildlife, farmers, and the growing city of Prineville that, according to city staff, is running out of available water for future growth.
It also addresses the issue of whether Bowman Dam will be available for hydroelectric power development.