I got a voicemail today from the Speaker of the Oregon House. He’s running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Gordon Smith. His campaign tour kicks off tomorrow. Campaign for what, you may ask, besides gaining the Senate seat?

Nothing, apparently, except stickin’ it to Gordon Smith and Geo. W. Bush. Not one word in his message about what he thinks ought to be done about any of various situations, only that Gordon Smith and George W. Bush have led the country in a wrong direction and apparently he, Jeff Merkley, is the man to set it right. That’s right, apparently the Republican gentleman from Oregon, among the hundred senators, is the one hand-in-glove with Bush, just as responsible as Bush himself for whatever Jeff Merkley doesn’t like.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, President Bush and his top advisers continue to insist the escalation of the Iraq war is a prescription for success. It is mind boggling just how disconnected from reality this administration really is.

No, actually, based on the Petraeus remarks that you, Jeff Merkley, characterized as “a good man being forced to justify a disastrous war,” President Bush is now planning to withdraw troops based on the success already gained, not “escalate” in order to “prescribe” for some future success.

Note to Merkley speechwriters: Calling Petraeus “a good man” does not mask the fact that your opinion of him matches that of MoveOn.org.

And despite his efforts to remake his record, Gordon Smith voted for this escalation and is just as responsible as George Bush for the ongoing debacle in Iraq.

Just as responsible as the commander-in-chief, who, by the way, Jeff says, should have his duties usurped if Congress doesn’t like the way he fulfills them.

If the president won’t exercise his duty as commander-in-chief to bring an end to this war, Congress should do it for him.

It’s so cute the way the anti-war crowd speaks of war as something that can be ended just on somebody’s say-so. It’s almost as if they really believe the war would just end, poof, if we left. Of course then there are the others who know it wouldn’t and don’t care.

So no, Jeff Merkley, deposing Gordon Smith and George Bush, who by the way will leave office after next year’s election whether Gordon Smith does or not, so, you know, you really won’t have much to do with it one way or the other, is not a good enough reason to vote for you or your illogic.

What’s sad is that he knows his audience here in Oregon. Running on a platform of “I’ll have whatever he’s not having” is the Democrats’ best card right now. It’s too bad there are so many people willing to beg them to play it.

Perusing today’s articles linked in Oregon Reddit produced this little gem: a plan to post to the web the names and addresses of anybody signing petitions that run counter to the homosexual lobby’s agenda.

In addition to holding petition signers accountable, Stewart explains the underlying idea behind the project’s name, Know Thy Neighbor. “To me, it’s important as a queer woman to be able to look up people and see, are the people in my neighborhood on this petition? Are there people in my zip code on this?” she says. Finding out that people she knows—like friends or coworkers or even a boss or local business owner—signed the petition is valuable information, “if for no other reason than protection.”

“If” for no other reason? Do tell, what could be the other reasons? Leaving aside the laughable premise that people who oppose gay marriage, by definition, wish, and will perpetrate, harm on gay people, that is.

Privacy for me, but not for thee if you oppose me. Where have I heard that before?

It, um, wasn’t rain.

That was on a Sunday night after I’d seen a movie downtown. Tonight, Sunday night, I saw a movie at the same theater and walked back up the same street to get back to my car. It sprinkled … something … on me from the same building. Uuuggghh.

By coincidence I parked my car on the same street as a guy also seeing the same movie as I was … he said, “Maybe it’s just somebody with a kitchen sprayer at an open window.”

I gotta tell ya, I hope that’s all it was.

And next time I see a movie downtown, I walk on the effing other side of the street.

It sprinkled rain here tonight out of a clear blue sky.

Kid you not.

Moron jurors agitate to reopen a case to the point where the DA gives the guilty perp–a father who killed his 33-day-old daughter when he threw her into the air as high as he could and then “threw her down onto the couch with great force,” according to his confession–a new plea-bargain in order to avoid having the case reopened.

[Baby killer] Haley had been charged with felony murder for shaking Gabrielle to death. When he went on trial, [defense attorney] Connall brought in an expert witness who testified that shaken-baby syndrome is old medicine. But before the evidence was all in, Haley decided to plead no contest to second-degree manslaughter and received six years in prison.

When [Judge] Johnson informed the jurors, they objected and said they believed the expert witness had created reasonable doubt. [Moron juror] Hanau contacted Connall, who swiftly went to court to change Haley’s plea. The jurors appealed to District Attorney Michael Schrunk, who reminded them that they had not heard all the evidence. Still, the jurors pursued the case.

Schrunk tried to block the case from being reopened, but he lost in the state Supreme Court. The case was headed for a new trial last fall when Connall appealed to Schrunk to help forge a new plea agreement. After several rounds of talks, he agreed to accept Connall’s proposal, which Haley completed Monday.

He was serving six years, then got a second plea-bargain through the efforts of these moron jurors. The new deal includes four years of prison, three already served, plus probation and a prohibition against caring for children under 18. Oh, and parenting classes. He was high as a kite on weed and had thrown her around much more than once–all according to his confession, which was the return the DA got for this laughably lenient sentence agreement.

Note that the “reasonable doubt” the moron jurors cited was created by an “expert” witness testifying that the shaking need not have caused her death–it’s not reported whether the jurors doubted that she was shaken. You have to be a real moron not to believe that whipping a baby’s unsupported neck around violently will eventually kill her and a real asshole to testify to a “medical” opinion that it won’t.

And the moron jurors were stunned when the confession was read.

[Moron juror] Jean Maynard smiled ruefully. “We don’t think we were stupid jurors.”

Lady, as in everything else connected with this case, you and your fellow morons were dead wrong.

Oregon’s Democractic governor seeks to suspend the operation of a democratically voter-enacted law while he and his party in the legislature figure out how they’re going to abolish it. See, here in Oregon we have a lot of beautiful, scenic land. We also have a lot of garden-variety farmland that may or may not be useful to the landowner as farmland, but THAT’S BESIDE THE POINT, PEON! The point is, it’s scenic, and houses mar the scenery. So no, you may not simply put buildings on your land, willy-nilly. Or sell it to people who will put buildings on it. The government knows what the land needs, and buildings are not in the approved list.

At least, that’s how it was until Measure 37, which basically says that if a land-use restriction enacted after you buy property restricts your ability to do with your property as you wish, the government must compensate you for the loss of “fair market value” caused by the regulation or else exempt you from the regulation.

Not surprisingly, there are many, many claims for compensation and/or permission to enact changes that would otherwise violate the land-use restrictions. Even people who once thought the government should be restricting people’s use of their own property have now suddenly realized that they could lose money as well:

Gary Willis, a third-generation pear grower in Hood River County, says he initially liked land-use rules meant to reserve the country for commercial farming.

That was before he competed against cheap, imported fruit. Before he wondered whether his son could make a profit on the family’s 300-acre orchard.

You mean … you liked the restrictions until they affected you?

Never fear, Kulongoski is on the case. You pear farmers don’t know what’s good for you, and all these Measure 37 claims are bad for the land. We’ll just ease them off to the side of our desks until we can come up with a way to overturn a law enacted by popular ballot, otherwise known as “democratically.”

Welcome to Oregon! State motto: It’s our land, we just let you live on it. Barely.