Memo to Privileged White Folk

February is half over. Have you genuflected enough? Have you acknowledged, with a quiver in your voice, the advantages bequeathed to you by your pale-faced father and mother? If not, a young blonde woman named Olivia did so on your behalf this week in the Council Chamber at the Templeton Campus Center at Lewis & […]


Surrendering to Drugs

Just say no to drug enforcement. That’s what the Oregon legislature is contemplating if it wipes out regional drug task forces. Why don’t lawmakers admit that the war on drugs is over; the dealers and their drugs won. The timing’s good, what with all the attention that Whitney Houston’s death is receiving. The co-chairs of […]


Hold the Applause

Failure can hide in what passes for “success” stories. Like the story Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk told recently about a graduate of Drug Court. Speaking to the Portland City Club, Schrunk described how a man holding a baby, and accompanied by an attractive woman and an older couple, approached him at a Drug […]


The Week That Wasn’t

“Trust Women Week” ended a couple of days ago, and had a friend not e-mailed me about it, I would have never known it was happening. Sadly, I don’t trust women. Neither do I trust Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, MoveOn.org and the other usual groups who are supposed to be fighting for […]


Max Williams and the jailbirds

God is smiling on Max Williams. Or at least the media are. After he recently retired as head of the state Department of Corrections, The Oregonian gave Williams a big, wet kiss in a front-page story that said, “Critics of Williams are surprisingly hard to find … .” You wouldn’t know that during Williams’ tenure, […]


Helplessness and the Status Quo

In Portland, Ore., school officials are struggling with a disconnect between how the city sees itself (very livable and very special) and the poor performance of its public schools (almost half of high school students don’t graduate in four years). Fifth-year seniors are becoming a trend. “The stigma of a fifth year is not what […]


Put a Dollar Sign On It

It tells you something that the only public member of Oregon’s Commission on Public Safety is a car dealer. Not that there’s anything wrong with car dealers. (I’ve owned three cars in my life, and two of them were bought from car dealers.) To his credit, Dick Withnell is the only member of the commission […]


A Day of Licentious Benevolence

I once worked for a newspaper editor who decided that on each day between Thanksgiving and Christmas we would strive for a “Santa presence” in the paper. Preferably, a picture of Santa. Or a story with a reference to Santa. This idea was probably cooked up by somebody in advertising to appeal to the business […]


Taking Risks With Crime

Like a burglar creeping outside a house testing the windows, Gov. John Kitzhaber has been trying to find a way to get inside the minds of Oregon voters and persuade them to stop locking up criminals. It costs too much, he says. In his corner, Kitzhaber has the Commission on Public Safety, which he created […]


The Crisis Next Door

The woman on the phone wants to kill Robert Kennedy. “He needs to be hooked up on life support until he has eaten every bit of his flesh,” she says slowly. She has given it serious thought. This woman obsesses about all of the Kennedys. “I have a theory about Karen Carpenter. She isn’t really […]