The state AG's office digging into one of the weekly scams at the Portland Development Commission? Unheard of.

That controversial raid on weatherization funds to benefit the Portland science museum is drawing some unfavorable scrutiny.

Whenever the City of Portland hosts a "design competition," it seems like another piece of the city's character is about to be sacrificed. Well, they're at it again. But this time, maybe the end product will be a bit more benign.

This time, Opie and the boys want to know how you can make inner-city high-density "courtyard" housing attractive to people with kids. Oh, and it has to be "sustainable," affordable, and "respect neighborhood character." Sound do-able? Maybe for families who don't need space, privacy, or quiet. If you think you've got the magic bullet, maybe you can win the prize.

YouTube seems a bit stuck at the moment. And there are a couple of YouTube "embeds" on the main page of this blog right now. Easy come, easy go! Please be patient.

Ole Chuck Schumer sure knows how to act like a Republican every now and then.

Can it?

The chief justice had a serious-sounding medical event today.

Wanna be a Multnomah County commish? Here's your chance. No "clean money" for you, however.

A reader points out that Ikea is sitting on land leased to it by the Port of Portland. Is there some mechanism whereby the store will pay property taxes, directly or indirectly? Or will it have freedom from taxes as an advantage over its taxpaying competitors?

Big banner headline today. "Smith... moderate," all on the same line, screaming across the top of the paper. Any doubt they'll endorse him for November '08?

A reader writes:

Perhaps you noticed that downtown is a bit torn up -- streets closed, traffic snarled, chaos galore. So it's clearly a perfect time to close three blocks of Sixth Avenue just south of Pioneer Courthouse Square for a few weeks for a massive Red Bull promotion! The city's not getting anything out of this, of course, other than the honor of taking part in the promotion. My favorite lunch cart vendor, who gave me the skinny on this, is none too pleased. I understand this is the doing of your favorite Commissioner, Sam Adams.

I try to avoid driving downtown at all, and either bike or take the bus in, but lately even walking around has been an activity fraught with peril and aggravation.

Anyway, I just thought you could add that anecdote to your catalogue of downtown woes.

I don't know what's more depressing -- these clowns writing it or the O publishing it.

One of the new Portland City Hall reporters for the O has wasted no time in starting blogging on the new beat. Amanda's already kissing up impressed.

And how sweet it is.

Here's another scam that a guy needs to watch out for.

We all know that George Bush needs a psychiatrist. Here's a volunteer.

... it's particularly maddening that your developer is making it impossible for you to get rid of it. All you SoWhat "urban pioneers," enjoy!

David the "Welches stolen truck" con man, who told police he was giving up his thieving ways, may not be playing on downtown streets any more. But a reader notes that he was seen this morning in North Portland:

Hey there. Just wanted to first say, good for you for bringing everyone's attention to this con artist. I just saw him in North Portland this morning talking to someone. No doubt giving him the usual story. I confronted him and let him know I knew who he was and so did many others. I doubt he has stopped his tricks yet.... Wanted to wish you luck on finding him. If you speak to detectives, let them know he has been spotted over here.

Looks like the constabulary out in the Gorge have been having an interesting summer.

I see that the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that Saif, the quasi-governmental (a.k.a. quasi-accountable) workers' compensation agency, is "private" enough to be sued for alleged violations of people's federal constitutional rights. As it should be.

Could this be a harbinger of where the court's going on the OHSU liability limit lawsuit? Only time will tell. The Legislature didn't do a darn thing with that one, as far as I can see. I'm sure the old boys and girls on the hill are hoping the court will let them off the hook without having to go groveling before the legislators in the upcoming special session.

The precise legal issues in the cases are different, but the moral and policy issues are the same. These vaguely defined pork pots that the Goldschmidt crew have created want things both ways -- public when you try to sue them, but private when you want to watch over what they're doing. The new Saif decision strikes a blow against that.

Paul Caron, a beloved professor at the law school at the University of Cincinnati, turns 50 years old today. Like me, Caron is a tax professor; also like me, he's way into the whole internet thing. Here he is on "vacation," working from the front porch of his in-laws' beach place, where the wi-fi reception's better:

In addition to winning prizes for his teaching, and drawing prestigious gigs as a consultant, Caron is an accomplished publisher of information about law in general, and tax law in particular. When not busy authoring a raft of articles and books, he serves as the series editor for a couple of lines of books by other writers -- one telling the stories of historic legal cases and the other teaching advanced courses in tax law. On the internet, he edits several electronic journals; perhaps more importantly, he owns and moderates a blog and an e-mail discussion group where professors and professionals get to compare notes on what's going on in the ever-changing tax system.

Last weekend, posting on his TaxProf Blog about another writer's work, Caron took a personal turn and explained why he blogs: "My goal with this blog and companion email discussion group is to enhance the feeling of community among tax academics, practitioners, and government officials. My hope is that the tax world is a more interconnected place as a result of these efforts."

Without question, it is.

Caron's written some other things recently as well. We blogged about one of them here. He may be a tax nerd, but he is one with a huge heart.

So best wishes to Paul as he celebrates this major odometer turn. Just think -- by the time he hits the next milestone this big, he will be eligible to receive distributions from an entity described by Section 4974(c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, without incurring the additional tax specified in Section 72(t) thereof. Have a great day, friend.

Now that Farhad "Fred" Monem, the Oregon prison food bribery dude, has waltzed away and gone on the lam after six months of playing footsie with federal authorities, state Attorney General Hardy Myers (a.k.a. Hardly Matters) has woken up and gotten around to filing a lawsuit against him for racketeering.

That's pitiful. If I were Myers, I would be hiding my face in my PERS account and not calling attention to my appallingly bad performance in this and so many other cases of official corruption in the Beaver State.

The Seattle psychologist with the hidden camera in the ladies' room of his office -- a big player in the Catholic priest sex abuse scandals up that way -- has taken his own life.

That's what this post would have us believe.

Portland police tell KGW they have confronted David, the "Welches stolen truck" con man, and told him he had better cease his fraudulent activities on the city's streets. Apparently he has told them he was going home and changing his ways.

I hope they didn't actually buy that. But at least, their talking to him is a start.

Keep your eyes peeled, readers. I'm sure he'll be back in business soon.

A reader writes:

The last couple of weeks downtown I've seen the transit security using Segways... not just a couple, but numerous. Wondering where the cash came for those... and why? Downtown is all torn up... there are makeshift bridges across 5th and 6th where they are putting in the tracks... and the temporary transit mall and Max stops are much too crowded during peak commute times to be scooting in and out of people. I saw one guy yesterday just flying down the sidewalk in front of Tiffany's. Do they apprehend riders??

The Attorney General of the United States? Or the director of the FBI?

Doesn't matter much. The Chimp will pardon whichever one it is.

These are the new code words being bandied about by the only hope for the Republican Party: the Cheney-Bush Fear Machine. Mike "Katrina" Chertoff and other suits of the G.O.P. persuasion keep talking about these premonitions they've been having of a spectacular "terist" attack in the United States before the year is up. Of course, this gets everybody's tin foil helmets on, and you can read the wingnuts on both sides pretty easily with a simple Google search.

I will say this: I do not trust anything called "homeland security" for a New York second -- the time it takes to implode an office building.

There's a hysterical piece on the Oregonian website (or whatever the heck it is) about Portland's SoWhat District. "Early growing pains" is what the spin doctors at the O are calling the emerging situation.

That's an interesting way to put it. Suddenly the gullible folks who decided to locate their businesses in SoWhat are discovering that there's nowhere for anybody to park, and that the street "system" is laughable compared to the traffic burden it's now being expected to bear. "Parking seems to have been an afterthought," the one retailer says. "That really surprised us."

Wrong, buddy. It was a non-thought. Everybody's supposed to "go by streetcar!" You must have missed that meeting.

Too funny.

Then one of the architecture dandies on the city Design Commission starts mouthing off about how the poodle poop park down there isn't being built fast enough:

Michael McCulloch, a member of the Portland Design Commission, which enforces city height regulations in the urban renewal area... thinks the Bureau of Parks & Recreation has waited too long to plan improvements for a two-acre grassy patch to be known as South Waterfront Neighborhood Park.

But I digress. As for the timetable on the park, let's see... the city forked over $7 million in cold cash to condemn those two acres -- seven freakin' million. Then somebody had to pay to (a) get rid of the tenants who had storage lockers there; (b) knock down the storage facility; (c) clean up toxic waste in the ground, and (d) plant the grass that's currently there for the SoWhat hotties' lhasa apsos to relieve themselves on. Nobody's ever reported what all those additional, post-acquisition costs came to exactly, but let's be conservative and say $2 million.

That's $9 million of public money spent on that little neighborhood park, and counting. Of that, $1 million was raided on an emergency basis from the parks bureau's budget, and at last report there was another $800,000 slated to be steered away from the city's other worthy park projects for the SoWhat patch of green. If you and your pals have to wait a little while longer for us to burn another multi-million-dollar bundle so that you can turn that lot into another Randy Gragg fantasy moonscape, that's life. Pipe down about it.

Meanwhile, remember those hot condo sales? "We sold the whole tower out in a day!" yada yada. Well, that's all history now. Old Homer Williams was crying the blues about it in Tuesday's O, under some fake cheery headline or other:

Williams says they sold 30 to 50 condos a month when they started. "That wasn't sustainable," he says. "A lot of it was investors, speculators."

Now, Williams says they sell three to four a month. Given the slowdown, Williams says the next riverfront condo tower likely won't start construction until late 2008. Williams says he isn't worried about the slowdown. He expects the market inventory to level out in the next six months or so. But right now, Williams says of condos: "You wouldn't want any more."

SoWhat doesn't have "growing pains." SoWhat is a pain, you know where. And no surprise in these quarters, the pain is growing every day.

The junior U.S. senator from Oregon introduced a bill the other day that would give tribal governments essentially the same power that states have to issue bonds (i.e., borrow money), the interest on which would be exempt from federal income taxation when collected by the bondholders (lenders). The measure's been shipped over to the Senate Finance Committee, where both he and the senior senator from Oregon are members.

The measure is co-sponsored by the chair of that committee, Max Baucus (D-Montana), and the same measure has been introduced in the House by Xavier Becerra, who also doesn't sound too Republican to me. That old Gordon sure is a smoothie.

Maybe "courts" is the wrong word, since many Oregon tribes have already endorsed him without even knowing who his opponent might be. "Pays back," perhaps?

I took a cheap shot at Blazer Darius Miles today. Given his antics over the years, it's not totally undeserved.

But then someone told me something about him that I didn't know. Click this and scroll down. Maybe he's not such a bad guy to have around after all. In any event, this ain't the time to beat on him. My apologies.

At least not if you didn't tie yourself up or anything...

Blazer fans: Don't get those playoff hopes up too high just yet. Word has it that Darius Miles is still very much with the team. If he's around the locker room and on the bench, he may have Greg Oden and LaMarcus Aldridge shot in a strip club parking lot by Christmas.

A reader writes:

Have you parked in the garage near the airport recently? I was there yesterday and each spot has a sensor installed above it with two lights -- red for occupied, green for empty. And each row has a readout at the end of how many spaces are available in each. Seems like a lot of money for the Port to spend on this gadget. Can't people be smart enough to know how to navigate a parking garage anymore?

We checked with the Port, and we are assured that those lights were actually installed for free by Bechtel in exchange for development rights on the Ikea lot. The original plan was for the lights to be strung on condo buildings in the "urban village" during the holidays, but of course the tragedy of 9/11 ruined all that.

An interesting but often overlooked feature is that the lights are programmed to blink continuously for 30 seconds as each batch of meatballs becomes available.

The installation in the airport garage is part of an ongoing pilot project. If the system works there, similar lights will soon be installed over each pothole in the City of Portland, alerting motorists as to whether there is already a vehicle fallen into the hole.

I wish I were making this up. It looks as though two of the Chimp's best people are going to be held in contempt of Congress. But he doesn't care, because he'll just have Rove order Gonzales to order the U.S. attorney in D.C. not to pursue the charges.

He's doing such a great job, I think they ought to cut our leader some slack.

You know all that money the City of Portland has borrowed to build all the pretty infrastructure in the Pearl and SoWhat districts? It's all going to be paid out of increased property taxes as values keep rising.

Right?

And if there's a problem with that, we'll figure out something.

Thanks to Kyle Iboshi at KGW, Margie Boulé at the O, and especially the readers of this blog, we now know more about Portland's "Welches stolen truck" con man than we ever dreamed of knowing.

It turns out that our visions of a wily scam artist who's amassing a fortune out of his clever sob story do not entirely match the reality. Indeed, except for his unusual tactics and stunning skills, it's a sadly familiar tale. As told by more than one reader, it goes like this:

The con man's name is David. He's an Oregon native in his early 40s. He has a very common last name, which isn't really important unless you're a police officer or a mental health worker who wants to get involved -- and if you are, just e-mail us and we'll give it to you. David is a personable, intelligent man who had a legitimate life going for a while.

Then, according to our readers, he got into drugs and trashed everything. Nowadays apparently he's homeless, at least in the summer, and he goes in and out of rehab when it gets too cold to sleep under a bridge. He'd rather con than work. Much of the cash he gets from rubes like me on Portland streets, they say, goes for drugs.

There's lots more, but why go into it? The real question now is, "So what? Homeless guy with a drug habit, stealing to get what he craves. That ain't much of a story." And there ain't much that The System is going to be able to do to help a guy like that, especially if he doesn't want help.

In this case, though, it's such a waste. Such a waste.

Last week, we wanted this guy locked up, and the key thrown away. Given the silence we're hearing from the authorities about his case, we seriously doubt that anything like that is going to happen. Nor is our slipshod mental health "system" likely to be of much avail. The next chapter? We wish we knew.

The story probably isn't go