The Oregon Supreme Court ruled today that qualified medical marijuana card holders can also apply for and receive a concealed-carry license. The case goes back to a retired bus driver in Grants Pass, who made the mistake of admitting that she was a cardholder in the state-run medical marijuana program when she went to renew her concealed carry license. Officials branded her as a drug addict and said that her medical treatment program barred her from the right to carry a concealed weapon under federal law. But the Supreme Court of Oregon reminded cleared things up for them.

The ruling issued in Salem, Ore., upheld previous decisions by the Oregon Court of Appeals and circuit court in finding that a federal law barring criminals and drug addicts from buying firearms does not excuse sheriffs from issuing concealed weapons permits to people who hold medical marijuana cards and otherwise qualify.

“We hold that the Federal Gun Control Act does not pre-empt the state’s concealed handgun licensing statute and, therefore, the sheriffs must issue (or renew) the requested licenses,” Chief Justice Paul De Muniz wrote.

In other words: states’ rights, bitches. Labeling law-abiding medical patients as dangerous criminals because their treatment is “wrong” in the eyes of authoritarian lawmakers is not only petty and childish, but also downright dangerous when real criminals come into the picture.

The more innocent people get caught up in the prohibition mentality, the more ambiguous the justification for these laws becomes. If the goal is merely to keep guns out of the hands of violent offenders (who are less likely to follow concealed carry laws anyway), it’d be difficult to find anyone less violent than a stoned medical marijuana patient. Oregon has nearly 40,000 registered marijuana patients, who don’t fit the Cheech and Chong paradigm, and have had their medicine prescribed for any number of reasons. Their rights, as well as the rights of the states to make their own policy on guns, drugs, etc., should trump federal meddling of how things “ought” to be.

This installment of Oregon news briefs is all about nanny bills. Special thanks to the Oregon Legislature for plenty of fodder via their vaguely-sexualized obsession with getting involved in other people’s lives.

Despite the fact that we already have anti-littering laws, cops are complaining of a lack of enforcement when it comes to flicking cigarette butts on the ground. Their plan: make a new crime, and classify “unlawful disposal of a tobacco product” as a separate littering offense that would carry a $90 fine. Current laws do cover cigarette butts, but are seldom enforced, possibly because “offensive littering” carries potential jail time, and is sometimes considered too harsh.

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But this kid got lucky. Gives quite a new meaning to drinking underage.

I foresee freshman sending their parents cards with this kids picture and a note that says “at least I didn’t start when he did. Love you.”

Picture borrowed from www.dutchbros.com

Thanksgiving Eve in Eugene this year was marred by a shootout at a Dutch Bros coffee stand. While one (alleged) robber, Sirius Combs was shot dead, another, allegedly Brandon Lee Plunk fled the scene. The trial began on Tuesday with the defense alluding that the robbery was not in fact a robbery, but rather a drug deal. According to the defense, Plunk had been told by Combs that Combs was picking up money which was owed to him.

When asked if he had framed Combs, the barista responded that he had “absolutely not.”

Plunks integrity was brought into question when Plunk was shown telling police that he was not with Combs that evening and then footage from a Wendy’s showed the two men eating together.

The bartista, who brought his .40-caliber Glock to work testified “I recognized I was in a vulnerable position all by myself.”

According to the Register Guard, while Combs was in the kiosk with the barista and distracted the barista “quickly pulled his own gun, from his waistband holster, put a round in the chamber, and began firing at Combs.”

(Perhaps this is a silly question, but if the barista had a gun in a waistband holster and said robber was in close proximity wouldn’t the  robber have noticed?)

Peter Wong of the Statesman-Journal writes about possible amendments being made to the state constitution allowing law enforcement officials to set up roadblocks and the measure that would call checkpoints to a vote :

It was law enforcement against civil libertarians Monday on the issue of whether voters should be asked to change the Oregon Constitution to enable police to set up checkpoints to deter drunken drivers.

Along with Washington and Idaho, Oregon is among the dozen states that do not allow such roadblocks. The state Supreme Court, by a 5-2 vote in 1987, disallowed them as a violation of the state constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures without “probable cause.” The other 38 states do allow them.

House Joint Resolution 25, sponsored by Rep. Andy Olson, R-Albany — a retired state police lieutenant — and others, would put the issue to the voters. Previous attempts to do so have not made it past the Legislature.

Drivers in Oregon wanting to drink on the road may have to become more clever than popping breath mints to evade DUII citation and arrest.  State voters have not wanted checkpoints in the past, but the latest bill announcement of House Joint 25 not only calls personal liberty into question but also driver protection.  Rep. Andy Olson is presenting the proposal  along with House Bill 3133 (HJ’s sister bill), which would change Oregon constitution to allow sobriety checkpoints throughout the state.

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The smart, wonderful, capable kids over at the Desert Lamp (University of Arizona) are reporting on Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposed 20 percent cuts to higher education:

It’s clear that pressure to increase tuition will be high this semester. Pressure to increase fees, which are easier, sneakier, and murkier, will be even higher. Adding extra variables to the tuition tussle in the form of incidental fees makes it much harder to come up with a clear and coherent proposal, and multiplies the number of options available to propose. That taxes the time of student leaders and ends up requiring, in effect, a separate proposal for each fee, plus tuition. Suddenly, a little referendum doesn’t look so bad after all.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

From the Oregonian:

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger announced today that he will draft legislation that will make it illegal under state law to look at child pornography on the Internet.

Kroger plans to propose his draft to state lawmakers some time after their latest session starts in February. Kroger’s announcement comes one day after the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that state law doesn’t make it a crime to look at child pornography while surfing the Internet if the viewer doesn’t purposefully download the images, print them out or pay for them.

Most obviously, the explanation for this is that one of Attorney General Kroger’s interns/assistants “misplaced” all forms of current news for amusement purposes- you sir, I applaud.

Net neutrality has reared its head again in the passed couple weeks, thanks both to a new piece of legislation (which isn’t all it’s cracked up to be) and a lot of shotty interpretation of what net neutrality is and why we need it.

Basically, net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service Providers, like Comcast and Time Warner, are not allowed to differentiate between types of Internet data even though it’s delivered via wires and tubes that they own. This means subscribers get the “whole” Internet, without discrimination based on format or content. Doing this prevents ISPs from charging more for certain sites, blocking sites of their choice, or throttling traffic speeds based on content, pay, or the amount of data used.

It isn’t what’s espoused by some of my colleagues, that “local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Time Warner Cable must treat [one’s] illicit video with just as much urgency as [another’s] life-saving medical data.”

It’s also about a lot more than protecting music and software pirates from legal action. The term may be new to a lot of people, but net neutrality itself isn’t a new idea. It’s a new name that’s been tacked on to describe something that’s been the norm since the dawn of the Internet until pretty recently; one that stands at the core of the Internet as the cultural driving force it has become.

Why we need an open Internet

In the early days of the Internet, it wasn’t so much an issue because the technology that allows “deep-packet inspections” – intercepting and analyzing data on that large a scale – just didn’t really exist yet. Besides, there wasn’t enough on the Internet to be worth regulating.

So all of the content that was put on the Internet was free, and open for anyone to access. All you needed was a phone line and an ISP subscription, and the entire Internet was at your disposal: a virtual wild west for information junkies.

And then there was porn. And porn meant money. Whether a good or bad thing, it drove the expansion of the Internet since the very beginning, and helped spur new advances in images and video on the Internet. Soon people were sending pictures and video to their friends, and more and more people were getting online. (Random cool fact: Even before it was possible to send images, people were sending text-generated ASCII porn to their friends. It goes that far back.)

Fast forward 15 years or so. Now we have Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, iTunes, Google Earth, and the entire peer-to-peer file-sharing universe, which with the help of others comprise the biggest library in all of human history. You can read a 2,000 word entry about the use of the umlaut in heavy metal on Wikipedia, watch old videos of Jack Kerouac on YouTube, and then download every book Mark Twain ever wrote and the entire Clash discography in as few mouse clicks to count on one hand. Am I the only one who thinks that, from a cultural standpoint, that’s pretty freaking cool?

The best part? So can anybody else with open access to the Internet. Regardless of nationality, social strata, race, religion, or any other divider, as long as one has access to an Internet terminal, they can experience just about any event they want, even if it happened ages ago and they’d previously only read about it in a dry history book.

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Our favorite anonymous professor over at UO Matters has a breakdown on proposed changes in public records legislation for the state of Oregon to be addressed in the new legislative session. The first provides some clarity on fees and deadlines for filling public records requests, and the second requires certain public bodies to digitally record their meetings and make those recordings available. Interestingly, the second also requires the Attorney General to create trainings for public employees on public meetings law. Our anonymous professor’s comments:

Delays and fees are a common strategy of UO Public Records Officer Liz Denecke, as they were for her predecessor Melinda Grier. The OUS board, meantime, has not prepared written minutes of its meetings since Dec, 2006. So I think both these laws will have an immediate and positive effect for transparency at UO.

University of Oregon Adjunct Professor Bill Hillar is under investigation by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department for fraud after some of his students at the Monterey Institute of International Studies discovered that Hillar had been lying about his exploits as a member of the US Army Special Forces and receiving a doctorate degree from the University of Oregon. Hillar had been a part-time instructor at the Institute, which is an adjunct campus of Middlebury College. He was scheduled to teach a Substance Abuse Prevention Program class this term at the University of Oregon, and during winter term 2010 taught a SAPP class in International Drug Trafficking that had 241 enrolled students. He also was one of the keynote speakers at last year’s Slavery Still Exists conference. He was scheduled to give a lecture at the University of Portland this month, but failed to show up, and all contact attempts have been fruitless. His website has since been taken down.

From the LA Times:

Bill Hillar, a part-time instructor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, told students enrolled in his workshops on terrorism and human trafficking about what he described as his own dangerous exploits as a former colonel in the U.S. Army’s Special Forces.

He also boasted, they recalled, that the 2008 action movie “Taken,” starring Liam Neeson, was based on his life and his daughter’s kidnapping by men who wanted to enslave her.

Such claims, along with incidents in which Hillar seemed to borrow material from other people’s books, raised suspicions among some of his graduate students about Hillar’s resume and background. “He didn’t seem to act like a veteran or someone who served so highly in the military,” recalled Brian Hubbs, a graduate student and Marine veteran.

So this fall, Hubbs and several other veterans attending the graduate institute began investigating Hillar’s resume. And the school now says their suspicions had merit.

Monterey Institute officials said Hillar, who has taught workshops twice yearly at the school since 2005, had claimed to hold a doctorate from the University of Oregon, but a check showed that he had only attended classes there. The institute, which is well-regarded for its foreign language and international relations courses, has been unable to confirm the instructor’s claims of military rank and service, officials said.

Hillar, who has also been an expert speaker on security and leadership at other colleges and police agencies across the country, did not respond to messages left Monday at the phone number and e-mail address listed on his class syllabus.

An apology from the Monterey Institute of International Studies can be found here. It seems Hillar fooled a lot of people, including various law enforcement agencies.

Also from the LA Times, on the investigation:

Deputy Keith Bickford, who heads the human trafficking unit of the Multnomah sheriff’s agency and is helping in the investigation, said he had heard Hillar speak twice at conferences and emotionally recount the supposed kidnapping and murder of his daughter.

“The story that he told was very sad and he did a very good job in making everybody feel horrible,” said Bickford, who did not initially suspect Hillar’s credentials. “If he is a fraud, he’s hurt a lot of people and taken advantage of a horrible, horrible crime,” he said, referring to trafficking.

Hillar could not be reached for comment at the phone number and e-mail address he listed on a syllabus for his Monterey Institute class.

Retired Green Beret Jeff Hinton started a website, professionalsoldiers.com, in order for Special Forces members to discuss their lives. Hillar has been listed on the website as a fraud for over a year. From KION News:

Hillar has been posted as a fraud for over a year on the website Jeff Hinton started, professional soldiers.com. A place for special forces to network with each other. It was there that Brian Hubbs and the other students at the Monterey Institute of International Studies found more evidence to back up their research on Hillar.

A client list from Hillar’s now defunct website shows a lot of people believed his stories for a long time, “It’s because he’s never run across a real Green Beret… They read just enough or watch just enough movies to pass themselves off,” said Hinton.

This story is still unfolding. Updates will be added as they are received. If you have any info on Hillar, or have taken a class with him, please email us at [email protected].

The ASUO Senate is a public body that deals with $12 million in student money. Their emails are — surprise, surprise — public record.

So I put in a public records request for all emails from May 25, 2010 until now:

November 16, 2010

Mr. Fielding
Ombudsperson
ASUO Senate
EMU Suite 4
1228 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403

Dear Mr. Fielding,

Pursuant to the Oregon open records law, ORS 192.410 to 192.505, I write to request a digital copy of all email correspondence sent to [email protected] or [email protected] from May 25, 2010, to present. If you do not maintain these public records, please let me know who does and include the proper custodian’s name and address.

I agree to pay any reasonable copying and postage fees of not more than $5. If the cost would be greater than this amount, please notify me. Please provide a receipt indicating the charges for each document.

If you choose to deny my request, please provide a written explanation for the denial including a reference to the specific statutory exemption(s) upon which you rely. If some of these records are disclosable and others are exempt, please provide the disclosable records and let me know the exemption(s) preventing disclosure of the rest.

Please understand that we seek these records for the purposes of public interest, and we hope that the spirit of openness in Oregon government will prevail.

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Alyssa Diamond
Managing Editor
Oregon Commentator
EMU Room 319
1228 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403

From Mr. Ian Fielding, I received this response:

Jubilant Jalousean Jannocking Journalists,

Ex-senator Diamond, you recently contacted me via a lovely letter to have access to all Senate emails from May 25th 2010 onwards. I ensure you that are [sic] senate conversations are absolutely enthralling. As a former senator, and current prestigious journalist, I can understand your lust for this information.

Franklin, you seemed to echo the aforementioned similar sentiments of Ex-Senator Diamond. After all, who would want to miss out on experiencing the exhilarating rush of deciphering senate emails!

I want to make sure both of your requests are fulfilled so you can join me, and my fellow senate members, in analyzing fun issues!

In order to receive this information we will need you both to fill out an official public record request for this information. I have taken the liberty of providing you a link to the appropriate webpage to do so:

http://www.oregon.gov/DOC/public_record_requests.shtml

We also will need you to cover the costs that it will take to provide you with this substantial amount of information. If the cost is inaccessible I will look to find ways to make it more accessible.

If you have any further questions or need additional aid in this process feel free to contact me!

Much love,

Ian Fielding
Senate Ombudsperson AKA The Sergeant in Arms

Hey journalism students — what’s wrong with this picture?

I spoke to Franklin today (ASUO reporter for the Ol’ Dirty) and apparently he went to Ian to whine about the fact that I got access to information he didn’t have, and thus I was able to scoop him. LOL to that.

My response to Ian:

Ian,

Uhh . . . that is a link to the department of corrections website. You sure that’s where you wanted to send me? The letter I sent you WAS an official public records request. With reference to the statutes and all.

Please let me know exactly what else you need from me. I am willing to cover costs up to $5 without any other correspondence, but if it is going to be more than that, you have to tell me why, and provide a reciept. Also, please keep in mind that I requested a digital copy, not printed copies.

Thank you,

Alyssa Diamond

Ran into ASUO Senate President Zachary Stark-MacMillan in the EMU a little while ago, and he said something about how the ASUO is an entity of the UO, so they’re going to have to run the request to UO’s general counsel.

So much for student autonomy, I guess. (Alternate statement here – wah wah wah wah wah.)

I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.

Apparently a few police officers in Clackamas have had their feelings hurt by a local man, Robert J. Ekas. According to an article by the Oregonian, Ekas has been arrested several times in the last few years for offering his middle finger to passing officers as a sign of civil protest.

Ekas gave the finger to a deputy in July 2007 while driving near Clackamas Town Center, according to the lawsuit. With the deputy in pursuit, Ekas said he opened his sunroof and again extended a middle finger. The deputy turned on his flashing lights. Ekas stopped and was cited for an illegal lane change and improper display of license plates. He was acquitted of the charges.

Apparently Ekas has filed a lawsuit in the matter, and I really hope he wins it. The purpose of the police force is to “protect and serve.” It is not an uncommon feeling among our citizens that often times they do not fulfill those duties.

What it boils down to is the fact that Ekas has a right to free speech, even if it is a daily bird-flipping to a sheriff. I’m glad to see that self-important traffic cops got their panties in a fuss. It might help them to understand the law next time.

Stumbled across this totally great interview between Oregon head coach Chip Kelly and the Oregonian’s John Canzano. The conversation is ridiculous, mostly because I can’t tell if Canzano is an idiot or if he’s just trying to squeeze some information out of Kelly that he doesn’t want to give out.

Around minute 1:15 Canzano raises a concern to Kelly about whether or not LaMichael James is receiving “star treatment” referencing Kiki Alonso’s year-long suspension after getting a DUII recently. Canzano points out that LaMichael was in jail for 2 days and he hasn’t received an equal amount of discipline.

Kelly responded to Canzano that “I believe my player” leading me to think that at some point, both Alonso and James have had conversations with Kelly. The result of those conversations, or so it seems by Kelly’s responses, is that Alonso may have admitted to Kelly that yes, he was at fault, and that James has told Kelly that he is innocent. Of course, this is merely speculation, as Canzano asked Kelly directly whether or not Kelly was implying that James was innocent. “I’m not commenting on a specific situation,” said Kelly.

Kelly got pissed at Canzano saying, “When this whole thing shakes out, when all the facts are out, you put me on the air again. And you apologize [to me].” The rest of the conversation is totally hilarious, with Kelly arguing semantics of his quotes with Canzano, and Canzano pushing Kelly to ban LaMichael James, “On my program!”

The situation is rapidly becoming more and more ridiculous. Of course, the question is and always will be, why are our football players — seemingly all at once — deciding to get themselves into trouble? Since the parties are innocent until proven guilty, I won’t make overly broad statements, but it should be pointed out that if you are in a situation where you are accused of something like DUII or putting your hands on a woman (or really, anyone), you need to seriously reconsider your direction in life. At the least, there should be some kind of serious oversight by the Athletic Department and our Administration.