The Boot

When he became Oregon's treasurer in January, Ted Wheeler brought in a new broom that he wielded vigorously against ethically questionable behavior. But lately Wheeler seems to have put his broom away in a closet.
The backstory gets rather complicated, so please bear with us.
The Treasury Department employs people called “investment officers” who act kind of like financial traffic cops. They're supposed to make sure the bonds and other instruments into which the state puts its money are legally and ethically kosher and financially sound. They also give thumbs-up or thumbs-down to new investment opportunities that are pitched to the state.

Like a drunk going back to the bottle, Republicans can't seem to stop themselves from returning to the same “family values” issues the party has been obsessed with at least since the reign of President Bush the Elder.
In Washington, with the economy still slumping, the Middle East exploding and other urgent problems waiting to be tackled, Republicans in Congress are focused on stuff like defunding Planned Parenthood, kvetching about the repeal of the military's ridiculous Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, and talking about impeaching President Obama for not enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act.

Zeal, in general, is a fine thing in a district attorney. We want a DA who goes after the bad guys with vigor and single-minded intensity.
In his first couple of months on the job, though, Deschutes County District Attorney Patrick Flaherty seems to be channeling most of his zeal into going after county employees and local journalists.
It all started when The Bulletin put in a request for copies of the job applications and résumés of the new assistant district attorneys and other staffers Flaherty has hired since taking over. It was a perfectly legitimate request; the public has a right to know the qualifications and backgrounds of people who are being paid with its tax dollars. Since the request was legitimate, the county complied.

Everybody thinks the Cyrus family is good people. We think they're good people. Government officials in Central Oregon think they're very good people.
They think the Cyruses are such wonderful people, in fact, that they keep trying to rewrite the laws for them.
The Cyruses, whose ancestors came to Central Oregon in pioneer days, have been hoping for years to turn their Aspen Lakes subdivision near Sisters into a destination resort. Last year, the Deschutes County Commission fiddled around with the county's new destination resort map to create a special loophole that would allow them to do it.

In 1916, Margaret Sanger, founder of the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood, opened the first center in the United States offering birth control devices and counseling. She was promptly arrested and jailed.
You won't get thrown into prison for passing out condoms in the United States in 2011, but the vote in the House last week to strip Planned Parenthood of all federal funding proves that the battle of women for full reproductive freedom is a long way from being won.
The vote on the amendment to cut funding was 240 to 185. Virtually every Republican – including our own Rep. Greg Walden, naturally – voted in favor. To their credit Oregon's four other members of the House, all Democrats, voted no.
The vote was the climax of what has every appearance of a well-orchestrated campaign to discredit Planned Parenthood, which is the largest family planning provider in the United States and serves more than 5 million clients a year. Video from a clever sting operation staged by an anti-abortion group aimed at showing that Planned Parenthood supports child prostitution got a lot of publicity; less well-publicized was the fact that in every case, staffers reported the man posing as a “pimp” to police.