Free Republic

A citizen uploaded a video to YouTube on Tuesday documenting extended verbal harassment of a KGW news crew as the crew attempted to report from the downtown Occupy Portland encampment during Tuesday's noon newscast. The video shows a kerchief-wearing man who repeatedly shouts epithets at the crew, and pushes and shoves KGW employees trying to stay between the man and KGW news reporter Art Edwards. (Warning: video is unedited and contains extensive swearing - viewer discretion advised) Video uploaded by YouTube user: daylightdisinfectant News Director Rick Jacobs said KGW employees have been cursed at, pushed and shoved several times during...

PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) - A convicted sex offender from California who registered his address at the Occupy Portland camp spoke to FOX 12 about his past and reasons for moving. "I'm not here to harm children," said Raymond Curtis. "I'm not harmful to children." Curtis said he left Mendocino, CA, started driving and ended up in Portland. Since last week, he's been living in Lownsdale Square among the dozens of other demonstrators in solidarity with the national Occupy Wall Street movement. "I found there was an opportunity to maybe change the system and I've put everything I have into it....

Under Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan, the managers of private equity funds--one of the most lucrative financial structures on Wall Street--would pay, on average, an income tax rate of just around 6 percent. That's less than the 9 percent rate most workers would pay, and it's a huge dropoff from the best assessment of the tax rate for private-equity fund managers under the existing tax code, which is around 29 percent. An accountant with the American Institute of CPAs prepared an analysis on Friday, at the request of Yahoo News that found that Warren Buffett would likely pay no income...

When it comes to views on global warming, Oregonians are living in "separate realities" based on political ideology, a new online survey indicates. Liberals and conservatives do line up on a lack of enthusiasm for coal and affection for energy conservation that knocks down utility bills, the survey commissioned by Oregon's Global Warming Commission found. The survey wasn't scientific, and likely garnered people with stronger views than a random survey would have. Survey designers recruited participants from 40 Oregon-based groups, including business and environmental organizations. But the ideological divisions among the roughly 2,250 people who completed the survey earlier this...

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STOCKHOLM (AP) - A seemingly intoxicated moose has been discovered entangled in an apple tree by a stunned Swede. Per Johansson says he heard a roar from his vacationing neighbor's garden in southwestern Sweden late Tuesday and went to have a look. There, he found a female moose kicking about in the tree. The animal was likely drunk from eating fermented apples. With the help of police and rescue services, the 45-year-old Johansson later managed to set the moose free in part by sawing off tree branches. But the animal appeared confused and wandered into Johansson's garden, where she was...

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) -- Overweight and malnourished? The dichotomy may not seem to add up, but nutritional experts say obesity is epidemic among the most malnourished, indigent people in Southern Oregon and the nation at large. "Undernourished is underweight, but you can be malnourished and obese," says Cathy Miller, a Medford-based registered dietician. "It means you don't have the right nutrition (to be healthy), but you have a lot of body fat." Julie Kokinakes Anderson, Medford-based registered dietician, says the phenomenon of obesity among the poor results from consumption of nutrient-poor foods packed with excessive calories, fat, sugar and sodium,...

Coyotes have lived in Northeast Portland’s Alameda Neighborhood for years. Audubon periodically receives reports from neighbors who have observed a coyote hunting mice at dawn in Wilshire Park or stealthily slinking down a neighborhood street as night approaches. It is no surprise that coyotes are there — coyotes, an animal that Navajo sheepherders once referred to as “God’s Dog,” have established themselves in neighborhoods across Portland just as they have established themselves in cities across North America. Although they are often observed alone, coyotes are pack animals and a pack will establish a territory over an area that can cover...

State officials deliberately underestimated the cost of Gov. Ted Kulongoski's plan to lure green energy companies to Oregon with big taxpayer subsidies, resulting in a program that cost 40 times more than unsuspecting lawmakers were told, an investigation by The Oregonian shows. Records also show that the program, a favorite of Kulongoski's known as the Business Energy Tax Credit, has given millions of dollars to failed companies while voters are being asked to raise income taxes because the state budget doesn't have enough to pay for schools and other programs. The incentives are now under intense scrutiny at the Oregon...

After noticing similarities between the brains of meth users and stroke victims, Portland researchers Marilyn Huckans and Jennifer Loftis theorized they could devise a more effective treatment for addicts. All they needed was a good chunk of money to prove it. And they got it -- nearly $1 million -- courtesy of the federal stimulus act, which in its first eight months has showered $1.8 billion on Oregon, according to reports released Friday. "This is our big opportunity," said Huckans, who works with Loftis at Oregon Health & Science University. The money will be used to hire support staff and...

The Multnomah County commissioners never seem short of resolutions to pass and proclamations to make, but today's unanimous vote to support the federal Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act was particularly emotional for both the commissioners and the audience who came to support it. Known as the DREAM ACT, the legislation that would allow children brought into the country illegally to attend and pay in-state tuition at public universities, was reintroduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in March. But as it has stalled in the past year, it again has yet to be heard on...

Does human activity affect Earth's climate? A simple question, no? It's been settled with a ringing "yes" among the scientific community. Yet, the so-called "climate debate" still pops up on editorial pages, political blogs and television talk shows. Apparently, we scientists have failed to explain to the entire public how we have come to understand the climate system. For this we owe another attempt to engage readers who still feel there is some doubt about the role of human activity in Earth's climate. What follows is a no-frills, nonpartisan explanation of how a group of scientists working on a particular...

In a warming world, scientists have told us to expect more rain and less snow in the Northwest -- but not less overall precipitation. New evidence, however, suggests that dry years are becoming more severely dry across the region. Even in the rain-drenched Northwest, the trend could escalate water conflicts if it continues. Farmers, conservationists and city water managers would face severe challenges trying to balance human needs with the survival requirements of endangered salmon that need cold, clean, rushing water. Researchers with the U.S. Forest Service looked for changes in the amount of water flowing out of mountain basins...

We see the spectacle of the U.S. Congress unable to manage decent health care reform that will actually enable the American citizenry to join the rest of the industrialized world in having health care for all. The problems, it is clear, come from those who are lying. Death panels? That's true. We already have them. Insurance companies deny care to Americans who then die as a result. It happens every day, Sarah Palin. But ascribing that to the plans in Congress is untrue. In fact, those corporate death panels would be outlawed. Find the language in Obama's bill that says...

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials shot and killed two wolves today that were linked to five attacks on livestock in the Keating Valley area of Baker County. The wolves were shot after nonlethal efforts failed to keep them from killing livestock again. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife then authorized Agriculture's Wildlife Services to kill the animals, one of which was wearing a tracking collar, from a fixed-wing aircraft. "It's unfortunate that we got to this step," Russ Morgan, wolf coordinator for Fish and Wildlife, said in a news release, "but these wolves continued to kill livestock despite our...

In ultra-green Portland, textbooks offer superficial take on global warming While visiting Portland recently, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood proclaimed that "Portland is the green capital of our country." Well, maybe when it comes to streetcars and light rail, but not when it comes to the public school curriculum. Today's most pressing environmental issue is climate change. James Hansen, chief climatologist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, warns of "a potential for explosive changes with effects that would be irreversible -- if we do not rapidly slow fossil fuel emissions over the next few decades." Climate change, noted...

As hunger grows for an inquiry into interrogation techniques, questions crop up about the nature of congressional oversight Congress is moving to examine how torturing captives became a national policy under the administration of George W. Bush. Such an examination could be a useful thing, but it also could devolve into a poisonous political bloodletting that would serve no purpose higher than exacting partisan punishment. This must be avoided, which is the reason President Barack Obama said he opposes the creation of independent commission to look into torture. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate Select Committee on...

They break the law, damn it. They are criminals, and they need to be treated as such. If they get sick, let them suffer like dogs. If children who have been socialized and brought up as Americans in our public schools want an affordable college education, tough oats. This riff-raff of undesirable "illegal aliens" needs to head south of the border and the sooner the better. Thus runs the tenor of anti-immigrant (and specifically anti-Mexican immigrant) discourse these days in our country. Undocumented workers come to the United States precisely because they can get a job. If there were no...

Secret Service - The man seems to think "we are aiding . . . the 'illegal U.S. President' " A Springfield blogger is accused of threatening the life, limbs and lower alimentary canal of a Secret Service agent. James T. Cuneo, 43, was indicted Thursday on charges of making a series of threats against Special Agent Ronald Brown in the course of his official duties. This was strange turnabout for Brown, whose job in the agency's Presidential Protection Division is mainly to thwart threats against the commander in chief. For the first time in his 15-year career, Brown wrote in...

Ranching - If confirmed, the attacks east of Baker City will be the first in years LA GRANDE -- A gray wolf may have killed 19 lambs on an eastern Oregon ranch south of the Eagle Cap Wilderness in separate attacks April 9 and 12, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department officials said Tuesday. Seventeen lambs died and two were injured in the first attack on the ranch, which belongs to Curt Jacobs and is in the Keating Valley east of Baker City, said Michelle Dennehy, Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman. Two died in the second attack. If confirmed, the attacks will...