Last night we blasted the O's editors for what we called "burying" today's James Chasse story. But it has been called to our attention that in the print version of today's paper (which we had not seen last night), the story gets the most prominent play possible:

That being the case, it's wrong to say that the story was "buried." Running it on a national holiday at the start of the three-day weekend, however, significantly diminished its impact. It should have been held for Monday.

Another bizarre chapter in a crazy story. Does this mean she has to give the baby back to its real mother?

What is really going on with her? Did the Letterman thing push her over the edge? Perhaps she is giving up her political career to take on the care of the recently orphaned Bubbles the chimp. She looks like she hasn't been eating.

UPDATE, 2:43 p.m.: Pentagon sources report increased activity by Russian troops in Siberia. Speculation is that with America's watchdog distracted by personal issues, Putin may seize the opportunity and stage an invasion.

An alert reader comes across evidence that the Portland city government was making stadium renovation promises to the "major league" (by U.S. standards) soccer league more than 18 months ago. At that time, the commissioner of the league told some folks up in Vancouver (the real Vancouver) so:

"Two of the many cities that Vancouver is competing with for an expansion franchise are Portland and Montreal," said Garber. "Both of those cities are in the mix because they have stadium plans in place. It's hard to imagine Vancouver being part of MLS without a proper stadium."

In 2001, Portland reversed the trend, opening a downtown streetcar line with brand new rolling stock, intent on using this mode of transportation to encourage transit-oriented development. The results have been impressive: $3.5 billion in new construction, 10,000 residential units, more than 5,000,000 square feet of office and hotel space. Politicians and transportation experts have flocked to Portland to see the results, and cities across the country are now pondering systems of their own.

Ask us about the amputations that are taking place in our bus service. Ask us about how much of those 5 million square feet are empty. Ask us how much tax abatement, sweetheart loans, $1 real estate transactions, and other giveaways were needed to bring about those "results." Then, and only then, should you go by streetcar.

And that broke his ribs on the night the Portland cops let him die. Even the medical examiner who helped whitewash the murder now admits it under oath.

There's a special place in hell for news editors who deliberately bury important stories on the eve of a holiday weekend. This is an example of why Sandy Rowe and Peter Bhatia of the O should be worried about that.

UPDATE, 7/3, 3:10 p.m.: The story was not, in fact, buried in the Friday morning print edition of the paper. See followup here.

And in his place comes a gal recently departed from the Portland Development Commission after more than 20 years. She was the "senior development manager" of the SoWhat District -- Linchpin City! It appears that Goldschmidt Party control of the Convention Center has been restored.

Right now they're showing the Mariners-Yankees game on cable TV (channel 34 on our service) with crowd audio, but no announcers. I'm sure it's a replay -- it's 12:30 in the morning in New York, and the game on the tube is only in the third inning -- but it's worth watching. They've even got the announcers muted on the commercials -- don't know how they managed that. A whole different way to tune in to a game.

UPDATE, 11:15 p.m.: I stayed glued to the set until the end. Closest thing to going to the game in person. Awesome!

The City of Portland will, too, eventually. Get a sneak preview of our future here.

It's Earl the Pearl in a normal tie.

Former Trail Blazer and lifetime Jail Blazer Zach Randolph has apparently been traded again -- this time from the Knicks Clippers to the Grizzlies.

This guy's a little behind on his $435,000 of education debt.

An alert reader writes:

PDX has been choked down to one runway for the last several weeks. Well, 1¼ if you count the Dash-8s using the cross-wind runway to fly to Seattle every half hour.

Have there been any delays? Have airlines had to cut flights? The place doesn't look like it's all that choked. Maybe we can get away with just one.

Photo courtesy Miles Hochstein / Portland Ground.

As the Portland City Council rolls like lemmings toward a no-bid deal with Little Lord Paulson on the conversion of PGE Park to a soccer-only stadium, nobody's seen any plans, or even descriptions, of what the work is going to entail, or what the finished product is going to look like. It's been announced that anyone who thinks the project ought to be put out to bid has only until next Wednesday to say so. But how can anyone make a meaningful argument about that when, despite months of discussion, not a single drawing or set of specifications has been made public?

And how can the city commissioners have any confidence in the $33 million projected price tag for the renovation, if they aren't going to be given a reasonably detailed idea of what the work entails? Just one of the many mysteries about what's going on in that smoke-filled room.

The City of Portland's building permit bureau (whatever foolish name it goes by these days) is laying off dozens of people. But it still has resources to publish this thing. Meanwhile, as the water bills continue to rise, we still have staff time and bandwidth for this.

Are we spending too much time on public relations and not enough on public services?

Hedo Turkoglu, a highly talented pro basketball player, originally from Turkey, may wind up playing for the Blazers next year. He'll be in town today to check things out.

If you bump into him, you'll know. He's 6 feet 10 inches tall. In the NBA, this makes you a "small" forward.

My friend and fellow pie judge Dwight Jaynes, who's my go-to guy on pro hoops matters such as these, is skeptical that the Portland team and Hedo would make a good fit for each other. If he came here, several current Blazer players would likely be sent packing.

Word has it that Turkoglu likes to eat pizza before games. Let's hope that if he decides to sample the local fare, the team steers him to one of the better joints. Some Portland pizza is enough to make the guy sign with Toronto.

Get this: The Vatican thinks that American nuns are getting too worldly. So now here comes an investigation that will no doubt try to force them back into convents and habits.

I wish the nuns would start their own church. I'd go.

You wonder why our government is broke? The people we elect to govern us have a hard time managing money.

Both seem to have too much time on their hands.

Up in Washington State, there have been plenty of tickets issued, and lives saved.

Radio Gretchen pens a fine appreciation here.

When the fix is in with Fireman Randy, it stays in. Now that the Paulson stadiums boondoggle has dropped from one stadium to two, we've been wondering whether the City of Portland would continue to try to make the development a no-bid contract. When there were plans for two gigantic wastes of money instead of just one, the city said that the unique position the Paulson family was in as owner of the two tenant sports franchises was part of the justification for not putting the deal out for bid.

This morning, the city announced that even though there's only going to be one stadium project now, with only one of the Paulsons' two teams occupying the finished project, it will still be a no-bid deal:

The award of a Predevelopment Agreement to Peregrine should be exempted from competition requirements of state law and City Code on a sole-source basis because Peregrine is the only entity that holds the MLS franchise and is the only entity that will renovate the MLS Stadium and is the only entity other than the City that will incur predevelopment costs. To the City’s knowledge, no other entity exists that is willing to split predevelopment costs with the City.

The award of an Operating Agreement to Peregrine should be exempted from competition requirements of state law and City Code on a sole-source basis because Peregrine is the only entity that holds the MLS franchise. In addition, the current Operating Agreement is held by Shortstop LLC. Shortstop LLC and Peregrine operate under similar management and Shortstop is agreeable to a revision of the Operating Agreement and with the assumption of Peregrine in its place therefore making a smooth transition to Peregrine’s new management. In addition, Peregrine would not be interested in making a contribution toward renovation or public improvement costs if it could not also operate PGE Park. Thus, while there are potentially other companies that could operate PGE Park, there is no other entity that will operate and also make a contribution toward construction costs at PGE Park.

Of course, they time the release of this document to coincide with Fourth of July weekend; if you want to challenge what they're doing, you get to not have your holiday. The deadline for protesting is next Wednesday. The creeps.

Hey, Commissioner Fritz! Is this good government? Just asking.

It's making the national news. This story indicates that people may be going to Washougal instead.

Is the guy who's posing as mayor of Portland still talking about a Convention Center hotel? If he is, he's verifiably out of his mind.

It is hard to believe, but 2009 is just about on the wane. Given the big odometer turn for the millennium, the decade change that's about to come with 2010 has been sneaking up on us.

Found in the fish tank today: another 30 or so baby guppies:

The grownups must be Catholic or Mormon.

We now clearly have too many of these little folks on our hands. Free to good homes!

Word is that the space, next to Duniway Park at the foot of Terwilliger Boulevard, is being taken over by a private Seattle-based fitness outfit. We've blogged about our issues with the Metro Y folks here before; it is not surprising that they're having to fold.

I'm not the world's best person to ask when it comes to the status of legislation in Salem, but if I'm reading this correctly, the Paulson stadiums tax bill -- the one that would subvert income taxes on soccer players' salaries to pay for yet another remodel of PGE Park -- died in committee in the state Senate.

If so, good.

We've had a couple of folks asking about the banner currently sitting at the top of this blog. Here is the original photo, which we goofed around with using Photoshop. It was taken by a friend of ours last week with an iPhone from the eco-roof of the Multnomah County Building at Grand and Hawthorne in Portland. The place is open to the public.

We just completed an annual ritual -- lecturing to folks who are preparing to take the summer Oregon bar exam -- for another year. Sixty hours of tax law talk boiled down into four -- or just a little over four. Three times a summer, and up and down the valley.

Now that we've got the usual customers caught up, maybe we ought to head into overtime and give this guy a call. He looks as though he could use some brush-up work.

Some big grocery stores out in Gresham are proposing to shift their deposit bottle return operations away from their store locations and over to a centralized redemption center. The retail chains in Oregon have performed miserably in this arena over the last two decades, getting worse every year. No wonder -- there's nothing in it for them, while the politically powerful beer distributors apparently make out like bandits on the current system.

Critics are understandably looking at the new proposal with a high degree of skepticism. One of the complaints is that a redemption center would require customers to make an additional stop beyond their grocery shopping stop, and that will discourage recycling.

I don't know about that. If given the opportunity to drive to a reasonably clean, well functioning redemption center with two halfway intelligent workers on hand, I'd gladly take it. That would be a vast improvement over the current situation at the bigger grocery stores in our neighborhood. That is, filthy, slow, ever-malfunctioning return processing machines, usually with no one around to service them, and an endless wait for some sullen, clueless teenager to come around and get them going when they stop, which nowadays is every time you show up.

The Gresham experiment is worth trying.

The increase in America's "savings" rate apparently just means that people are paying off old debts while the retail economy shrivels up.

It all depends on how you count, but the latest news from Oregon's schools is not good.

The big guy's foot may be shot.

The Portland "creative class" people have their own website now. As one might expect, it's fairly obnoxious. It's got a definite "Randy Gragg tries to be funny" vibe.

I will miss Michael Jackson, but not this much.

I'm all for doing the right thing by the environment, but the "green" hype has gone far beyond the pale:

Construction, wholesale and retail trade and administrative and waste services were the industries that had the most green jobs, about 47 percent of the total, according to the report.

The five occupations with the most green jobs were carpenters, farm workers, truck drivers, hazardous materials removal workers and landscaping and groundskeepers.

It's good that reports such as these come out, and that the public gets to dissect them. It's just a matter of time before the average person sees the absurdity of all the greenwash.

Multnomah and Washington Counties are among the Top 10 worst locales in the country for airborne risk of cancer, according to this list. The official data on which the article is based can be found here.

So secret that it wasn't even on Wikipedia.

They close one neighborhood's police precinct, then steal another one's parking.

Go by streetcar!

It appears that Putin is getting Russia out of the legal gambling business.

The weekend that started off so well on Saturday just kept rolling through Sunday. The kids and I caught the end of the soccer game on the tube, and then I headed out to do battle with our tall, prolific rose trellis. It took forever to shape it up, but excellent tunes got me through some hot and squinty ladder work. Quincy Jones's Jook Joint, Cream's Disraeli Gears, the Stones's More Hot Rocks, and some fine KMHD jazz, including an hour of the opening night at the new jazz facility at Lincoln Center. Everything from Tony Bennett to "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing in the Shadows)?"

The beautiful reward for an afternoon at hard labor awaited at the dinner table. The Mrs., who humors me way more than I deserve, succumbed to my suggestion that we make salmon with a fresh raspberry-balsamic sauce. I pulled a couple of recipes off the intertubes and did the grilling, at least, but the rest was her responsibility. The meal turned out spectacular, aided considerably by a fine Oregon pinot noir that I recently received as a thank-you. Life is indeed good. But I doubt that I'll be able to raise my arms above my shoulders again for a couple of days. My hedge clippers and I are hitting that Ben-Gay vintage.

Sometimes I think the government of this town has a grotesquely distorted concept of what a "park" is. They've charged for parking down at Willamette Park in the past, but every day, all year long? Come on, Nick Fish -- shape that bureau up and tell them to knock it off with this kind of shinola. Parks are for people to enjoy. They don't make money! Live with it.

Time from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, to my birth: 35 years.

Time from my birth to present: 55 years.

Yesterday our family savored many of the great things that summertime has to offer. Berries and cherries from the farmers' market, and good neighbors to share them with because we always buy too many. Garage sale bargains, both practical and playful, along with some free stuff thrown in to punctuate a fine deal. The last hour of Jonathan Schwartz's radio show on the internet -- a Richard Rodgers tribute, today being the 107th anniversary of his birth. A splendid nap as the day's Wimbledon wound down. A slather of sunscreens from various bottles and tubes, and some time with the rose bushes and the lawn. The favorite iced tea making its seasonal debut. Trying to figure out what the cats had killed and were eating in the backyard. (There was an empty snail shell -- will a cat eat a snail?) Swim time at Grant Pool. Out to a couple of first-rate markets for fish and taco fixin's. A breezy evening run along Alameda Ridge. A return to our beautiful, old abode. Excellent food and wine in abundance. The summer daylight never wanting to quit. Goodnight hugs all around. Good air, good health. A leisurely flip through last Sunday's Times Magazine. Some time noodling around on the 'net.

We didn't hit the lottery, but in a lot of ways, it was better than that.

Here's an interesting story -- told by a former Portlander, I believe.

Then hand over your tweets.

Our elected officials in Salem are talking about phasing this backward practice out entirely. It would be a breath of fresh air, literally, and long overdue.

Did Beau Breedlove Google before he was 18?

Oil speculators.

The City of Portland and the ambulance company are next to pay up.

As best we can tell, the police who killed this man are still out there, on duty; they have never been disciplined.