Phil Busse

The legal fight began as a simple accusation of jaywalking. With the Rose Festival in full swing last June, Front Avenue had been closed to car traffic. Hoards of people swarmed around the waterfront and streamed across the street. Black and wearing dreadlocks, Terry Yancy stood out in the crowd. Earlier in the afternoon, two […]

In 1977, when San Francisco changed to a voting system in which City Hall officials were elected not by a popular citywide election, but by districts, the results were staggering. Harvey Milk–a gay storeowner–was swept into office as the first representative for the Castro District, the city’s notorious gay neighborhood. It was an election that […]

If State Representative Betsy Close (R-Albany) has her way, Oregon’s teens will be on a tight leash, effective immediately. Over the past few weeks in Salem, Close has introduced a series of bills that, if successful, will curtail liberties throughout Oregon–not only those for youth, but perhaps yours as well. From demanding that the Ten […]

Nine years ago, in the sleepy seaside village of Florence, Oregon, a member of the Oregon National Guard pointed a thermal imaging device, the Agema 210, at a frumpy triplex. For a few weeks, agents routinely had been casing the house, looking for evidence that marijuana was being grown and sold there. With help from […]

On a Monday afternoon, local conservative KXL radio host Lars Larson spoke on the air with Tim Jordan, an alleged spokesperson for Pacific Northwest Energy Consortium (PNEC). According to Jordan, PNEC proposed to settle a two-reactor nuclear power station in bucolic Astoria. Larson quizzed the PNEC spokesperson about the pros and cons, and the logistics […]