Bob Packwood

• Offense: sexual abuse and assault, cover-up.
• Cover-up aided by: The Oregonian
• Story broken by: The Washington Post, November 1992
• Outcome: resignation in disgrace from the US Senate after a unanimous Senate Ethics Committee vote to expel him

Neil Goldschmidt

• Offense: statutory rape, cover-up.
• Cover-up aided by: The Oregonian
• Story broken by: Willamette Week, May 2004
• Outcome: far-reaching public disgrace and resignation from life as a public figure

________________________

• Offense: sexual impropriety, cover-up
• Cover-up aided by: The Mercury (whose former news editor took a job with the administration)
• Story broken by: Willamette Week, January 2009
• Outcome: ________________________________

This has nothing to do with Sam Adams being gay, obviously.

This story is about powerful men from Oregon who can’t keep their dicks in their pants, and the local newspapers who protect them.

I should be thrilled, as an atheist, to be on President Obama’s short list: “Christians and Muslims. Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.” Seriously. For all the God goin’ around today (some of it a tad — ahem — intolerant), I was surprised to get an atheist shout-out. (As for my Sikh, Buddhist, Wiccan, Pagan, Confucianist, Shintoist, Jainist, Bahá’í, and agnostic brothers and sisters, they may not feel so special being grouped in with us non-believers.)

Less surprising was President Obama’s ode to the market and its “power to generate wealth and expand freedom.”

Well, it’s sure provided the idle rich with a lot more wealth and freedom over the past 30 years, but any student of economics knows the market doesn’t create wealth. It merely distributes wealth, which is created from capital and raw materials by human labor. The market has proven itself very adept at the upward redistribution of wealth from those who create it to those who finance it.

Obama’s proposed trillion dollar (we all know it’ll get there) stimulus plan is a bastard child of New Deal-style public works investment and Reagan-era trickle down (better-termed “shovel up”) economics.

Them rich capitalist bastards don’t need any damned retro-active tax breaks. In fact, we need to levy a wealth tax on their accumulated capital, and use it to finance even more public investment. The kind that not only builds roads and schools, but also reinforces our tattered social safety net with universal cradle-to-grave health care.

Don’t get me wrong, folks. I’ve been doing the happy dance all day, ‘cuz George W. Bush went riding off into the sunset today, and the election of Barack Hussein Obama II is undoubtedly one of the most important milestones in our nation’s history. His suspension of the kangaroo court at Gitmo is a significant ray of hope, even as he continues the jingoistic talk of being “at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.”

(The notion of a “war on violence” is more ironic than a “war on terror” is risible, and equally absurd, isn’t it?)

…it’s the cover-up.

Also, it’s not about sex, it’s about power.

Randy Leonard says this wouldn’t be an issue if Adams weren’t gay.

Evidently, he never heard about “that woman.”

That’s all I’ve got to say about it for now.

There are about 2% of Americans who are homosexual or gay and lesbian people. We should not let 2% of the population change the definition of marriage.

This is not even just a Christian issue. It’s a humanitarian and human issue.

—Pastor Rick Warren, in support of California’s Prop. 8

Clinton waited until he was sworn in before pissing of the LGBT community members who helped elect him. Obama went ahead and did it before being sworn in.

Huh.

Aretha almost makes up for it. Almost.

How about a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Mr. President?