WTF

A big thanks to everyone that bid on items in our recently concluded Charity Auction and to all of our business and community partners that donated goods and services to this year's fundraiser. Thanks to you, we managed to raise more than $5,500 for our charity partner, the Family Access Network. It's money that will help support programs that keep kids in school by giving students and families the basic tools that they need, including food, shelter and a stable home life.

Yes, it's really almost over. The Source's annual Charity Auction is coming to a close this week, but it's not too late to score a great deal for a good cause. There are still dozens of items there for the taking, ranging from motorized scooters to hand-knitted scarves.

This week, tucked down at the bottom of the Bend City Council's always dry agenda is one item that caught our attention: A letter of support for drone flight testing. You read that right. The city is actually pursuing a chance to get a piece of the controversial unmanned drone strike program, the same one that has killed scores of civilians, including, recently, women and children attending a wedding in Pakistan.

43
That's the number of inches that Mt. Bachelor was reporting as a base on Tuesday afternoon just a few hours before opening day of the 2010-2011 season.

8
That's the number of votes that separates City Council candidates Chuck Arnold and Scott Ramsay as they head into a state-mandated recount.

Rabbits are pretty innocent, not exactly straddling spider or rattlesnake territory when it comes to the terror factor. But the Hanford nuclear reservation took one rabbit and turned it into a radioactive death machine.

The front page of the newspaper has always been held with a certain amount of reverence within the world of journalism. So it was disappointing to see that our local newspaper saw fit to serve up this past Sunday's paper wrapped in a political ad for the extremely partisan Central Oregon Association of Realtors.

Greg Walden was back in Bend soft pedaling his Bush-onomics and fomenting small business owners with his patented Washington-is-out-to-get-you rhetoric. This time Walden was meeting with the local chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business Owners.

File this one in the “You must be freaking kidding me” folder:

This week represents the start of our month-long election coverage and we thought we'd kick it off with a big WTF for Judy Stiegler's campaign