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Defiant Oregon bakers fined $135,000 for their 2013 refusal to make a cake for a lesbian wedding reportedly vow to "fight back" against the state labor commissioner's stiff penalty – and are calling on "Christians … to take a stand." "For years, we’ve heard same-sex marriage will not affect anybody," Aaron Klein, co-owner of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, told The Blaze. "I’m here firsthand to tell everyone in America that it has already impacted people. Christians, get ready to take a stand. Get ready for civil disobedience." Oregon's Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian on Thursday issued a final ruling in the...

After getting hit with a financially-crushing $135,000 fine Thursday for their decision to not bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, the owner of the Oregon "Sweetcakes by Melissa" bakery has a dire warning for Americans. "For years, we've heard same-sex marriage will not affect anybody," Aaron Klein said in an interview with The Blaze. "I'm here firsthand to tell everyone in America that it has already impacted people." Aaron and his wife Melissa are required to immediately write a $135,000 check to the lesbian couple they refused to bake a wedding cake for, Rachel Cryer-Bowman and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, to...

An Oregon official certified a ruling Thursday imposing a $135,000 fine against Christian bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. The official then ordered the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa not to speak publicly about their conscientous decision to follow their religious beliefs by not baking any cakes for same-sex weddings. The company has gone out of business due to the legal battle. An article by The Daily Signal, a publication of the Heritage Foundation, states that Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian ordered Aaron and Melissa Klein to "cease and desist" from openly professing...

The last we had heard from Aaron and Melissa Klein, the former owners of Sweet Cakes in Oregon that lost their bakery business after refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, the site GoFundMe had shut down their crowdfunding operation. That was in April, but the drama was not over for the Kleins, who faced a stiff fine for their allegedly discriminatory conduct. Aaron and Melissa defended themselves in media interviews in an attempt to prevent the state of Oregon from further penalizing them, but Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian went even further than anyone might...

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service. “This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.” In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for...

Oregon launches program to tax drivers per mile Never autoplay videos David Hastings is a rare American. This long-time hybrid car owner from Oregon wants to pay higher taxes for roads and bridges and says the current 30 cents per gallon state gas tax barely affects him. "I've been free-loading on the highways for 20 years driving electric cars or hybrid cars, getting at least 40 miles to the gallon. So I haven't been paying my share," Hastings said. Now, Hastings will pay more thanks to OReGO -- the first pay-by-the-mile program in the U.S. Oregon’s Department of Transportation has...

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian on Thursday ordered the owners of a former Gresham bakery to pay $135,000 in damages to a lesbian couple for refusing to make them a wedding cake. Avakian's ruling upheld a preliminary finding earlier this year that the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa had discriminated against the women on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Forty-two years after Oregon became the first state to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, the state is taking its first steps along a road leading to state-licensed stores selling limited amounts of it to anyone over 21. "Oregon has long been a pioneer on sensible marijuana policies," said Anthony Johnson, chief petitioner on Measure 91, which on Wednesday makes Oregon the fourth state to adopt laws legalizing recreational use of cannabis for people old enough to drink. He added though that he doesn't expect much increased demand for it. Smoking it in public is illegal, but in Portland police are...

Multnomah County has the state's highest percentage of global warming believers, according to new figures from Yale University. According to the university's national climate change opinions map, 74 percent of residents believe global warming is happening, while 13 percent don't buy it. The newly released figures are based on a complex statistical analysis of public perceptions about climate change in every state, congressional district and county across the country. Washington, D.C. residents led the nation in climate change affirmation, with 81 percent of residents. Floridians' title as the nation's biggest climate change deniers. Curious what your neighbors think about global...

Today, we learn that two felons in Oregon were arrested and charged with illegally possessing firearms, one of which deputies believe was 3D printed. Nolan DeBell, 42, and Joshua Holloway, 27, were arrested three weeks ago on June 9 when deputies found a large number of illegally-modified and stolen firearms at their house in Chiloquin, Oregon. One of the weapons that was seized was an AR-15 assault rifle, which included a lower receiver that investigators now believe had been 3D printed. The lower receiver is of course a part of the gun that contains the firing mechanism, and is basically...

This past weekend’s Wall Street Journal carried an article entitled “Our Most Peculiar President” which reviews two new books on former President Richard M. Nixon. The reviewer concludes that Mr. Nixon was an extreme introvert in an extreme extrovert job. The lengths to which Mr. Nixon would go to avoid engagement in social discourse – focused primarily on conversations with others – were extraordinary. Virtually everyone in Washington was aware of Mr. Nixon’s peculiarities – meaning that the press had to also know – and yet it was left to the historians to compile and comment on those peculiarities decades...

They wanted their Obamacare prices to be low—but the state said "no." The state of Oregon reportedly has ordered a number of insurers to raise proposed Obamacare premiums for 2016 after some of those companies asked for rates that were only moderately higher, if not lower than this year. Now, many Obamacare customers there are looking at likely double-digit percentage rate increases after having experienced some of "the lowest premiums in the nation," the Oregonian noted. For example, Oregon's Health CO-OP asked for a 5.3-percent average rate increase for next year, but the state's preliminary decision calls for a 19.9...

More than 220,000 Oregonians who buy their own health insurance are poised to pay higher premiums next year -- some of them a lot higher. State regulators on Thursday announced rates for people who aren't covered by their employers or government programs. And the news is not good. While some insurers proposed rates similar to or better than this year's, officials are ordering them to be raised -- saying they need to close a sizable gap between what insurers have collected and what they spend on claims. As a result, the least expensive "silver" plan premium available to a 40-year-old...

The man playing the role of Edward Snowden in the $300 million Oregon production of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not rot in prison for blowing the whistle on former governor John A. Kitzhaber—who in this Left Coast drama was playing the role of Hillary R. Clinton. Michael Rodgers was the interim administrator of the state's Enterprise Technology Services division of the Department of Administrative Services and a man with 200 employees under his sway and 15 years on the books when Feb. 5 Jan Murdock sent him an email directing him to destroy all of the...

Hillary Clinton's Saturday campaign reboot isn't just her first public rally. Coming a day after President Obama suffered an embarrassing legislative defeat, it is a changing of the guard for the Democratic Party. Make no mistake: while House Republicans also voted overwhelmingly against the president on a key trade bill Friday, it was his fellow Democrats who handed him the most stinging rebuke. Just 40 Democrats out of 188 voted with Obama. Nearly 80 percent of House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, went against him. A mere two of the 10 Democrats representing Obama's home state of Illinois in...

A day after the parents of Rachel Dolezal, the President of the Spokane Chapter of the NAACP, said she has been misrepresenting herself as black for years, the NAACP says they are standing by Dolezal. In a statement released Friday, the organization said: "For 106 years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has held a long and proud tradition of receiving support from people of all faiths, races, colors and creeds. NAACP Spokane Washington Branch President Rachel Dolezal is enduring a legal issue with her family, and we respect her privacy in this matter. One's racial identity...

One of the largest companies to manufacture solar panels in the United States uses a surprising resource to keep costs low and compete against producers from China: prison labor. Suniva Inc, a Georgia-based solar cell and panel maker that is backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc, farms out a small portion of its manufacturing to federal inmates as part of a longstanding government program intended to prepare them for life after prison. Suniva does not actively publicize its work with the prisons, saying it prefers to talk about its in-house factories in Georgia and Michigan, which handle most of its...

The Oregon couple who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding says the case against them should be “pulled out” of the state’s administrative court system due to concerns that the government agency responsible for overseeing the trial is biased.The Daily Signal obtained communications between Basic Rights Oregon, a prominent gay rights group, and the Bureau of Labor and Industries, which is the state agency pursuing the case against Aaron and Melissa Klein.Based on that information, the couple’s lawyers suggested potential bias against the Kleins and requested the judge re-open the case for further investigation.Now the Kleins, who...

There may be evidence that the government agency in charge of enforcing Oregon anti-discrimination laws colluded against Aaron and Melissa Klein, former owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery, with the pro-LGBT group Basic Rights Oregon. The Daily Signal, the news arm of The Heritage Foundation, exposed the communications contact between officials at the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and Basic Rights Oregon, obtained through a public records request, in their story titled, "Emails Raise Questions of Bias in Case Against Bakers Who Denied Service for Same-Sex Wedding." The communications between the two groups raises questions of the impartiality...

The Daily Signal has exclusively learned that the government agency responsible for enforcing Oregon’s anti-discrimination law appears to be working closely with a powerful gay rights advocacy group in its case against Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa. Communications between the agency, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, and the LGBT organization, Basic Rights Oregon, raise questions about potential bias in the state’s decision to charge the Kleins with discrimination for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. In April, a judge for the agency recommended the Kleins be fined $135,000. Communications obtained...