His name was Bruce Ivins, and it's reported that he was about to prosecuted for the crimes.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could be confident that we're going to learn the truth about this now? Alas, in this country nowadays, it's hard to be.

UPDATE, 8/1, 12:07 a.m.: If he did it, this story from 2004 is pretty creepy. Here's a 2006 story that's also pretty chilling. The government agency that did the first investigation into the attacks was something called USAMRIID, where Ivins worked.

Here's another brick in the wall. Look at what one smart observer said six years ago. And Greenpeace of all people appears to have called it right away.

Field burning is back in action in the Spud State. A touchy-feely truce, of sorts, has between declared, for now, between the farmers who make more money taking the easy way out of their waste problems and the segment of the population that enjoys breathing. They'll be back at each other's throats within a couple of years, we're sure.

One bright light: The field burning permit process has been taken away from the state Ag Department and placed where it belongs, in the DEQ. Oregon should have done that a long, long time ago. Still could, if the people in the Legislature had any guts. Ha! Ha! That's funny.

When you read that the Usual Suspects are about to start a big hotel project on the edge of the Pearl, you have got to hope that there is no public money involved. Because you couldn't pick a stupider time to build a hotel than now.

The newspaper business continues to collapse, with big chunks falling off this week. The Newhouse newspapers have announced that large numbers of staff people will have to take buyouts, or else. Apparently, or else what has not been announced in all cases, but today at the Newark Star-Ledger, they said they would sell the paper unless the news staff was cut by a third. No doubt a similar threat hangs over the O and all other Newhouse papers. (They also announced this week that they're closing their bureau in Washington, D.C.)

Meanwhile, there's serious trouble a-brewing at the Portland Tribune, where the paper version's been cut to a weekly and marching orders have been issued to pump out more material daily on the internet, but with fewer resources. Confirmation of some prominent personnel changes is reportedly just around the corner. (Indeed, the big one was made official this afternoon, but there is likely at least one more in the works.)

My first real job in this world was as a reporter for a Newhouse newspaper in New Jersey, The Jersey Journal (still there, but probably doomed now). I learned more about writing, and life in the real world, in that three-year period than at any other time in my life. It was during that time that I decided to get out to the West Coast, to see what was there, and to go to law school. The original plan was to stay media-connected -- either as a lawyer for journalists or as a journalist covering law. That program faded, but I never lost my affection for the men and women who deliver information to the public. As much as I may disagree with their editorial positions from time to time, it pains me to see them out of their jobs.

Who killed their industry? Bill Gates started it with his infernal computer in people's houses. Whoever got this World Wide Web thing going accelerated the process. After a while, the public decided it could get information delivered to their desks for "free" -- so long, of course, as they paid their monthly tribute to Comcast, Qwest, or AT&T. Paid newspaper readership has been on a steady decline after that change in attitude. Kids today are simply never going to subscribe to a newspaper.

But Craigslist was probably the real death knell. Without the huge nickel-and-dime revenue that the papers got from people selling houses, cars, and garage sale junk, and from people looking for employees or employment, suddenly you can't keep the lights on at a newspaper.

Other industries have it coming. Higher education is holding out, but it won't be able to do so forever. It may come after my career, but a lot of graduate school is going to be on the internet, like it or not.

This week, it's the newspaper folks hearing the bad news. My heart goes out to them and their families as they figure out what they are going to do next.

If you think those green bike boxes on Portland streets are strange, check out what's happening in Holland. (Slightly NSFW material possible on part of the page.)

I’ll tell you this much: the next time you slam your hand on the hood of my car (with Baby G present) while I’m trying to pull out of Trader Joe’s (after an awkward conversation with Austin) because I pulled out of the driveway during rush-hour because it was the only way to enter traffic, I will hunt you down and use every tactic I learned in my girl-power self-defense class to beat the living s**t out of you.

GOD, that felt good!

Let's see, lying about your weight-loss surgery gets you fired -- but killing a guy while violating department rules gets you a 30-day suspension. That's the Portland police!

They say that Comcast is reading blogs these days, and so here's my little question for the big, bad boys of the emerging bandwidth cartel: Before you start maintenance work on your system, which is going to screw up all your customers' internet access in a given area for several hours, would it kill you to send them an e-mail a few hours ahead of time so that they could plan accordingly?

In exchange for the customers', say, $160 a month, is that asking too much?

Routinely pulling the plug on people without warning is, as the kids say, craptastic -- or in your case, Comcraptic. [Posted via a wireless signal stolen from a neighbor who is smart enough to get internet service from someone else.]

Even on a very bad day, the O got the story.

A dedicated servant leaves us in the morning. Under the City of Portland's new refuse rules, the 95-gallon roll cart that we have used for many years to hold yard debris will be taken away, having been replaced by a smaller cart that arrived earlier this month. We called our garbage hauler to see if we could keep the bigger one, but apparently that's verboten. If we can't fit everything into the new cart, we'll have to put the rest out as an "extra." We have the perfect can for that purpose, but still, we'll miss the rugged old big boy. His lime green replacement is a wimp by comparison.

Remnants of so many great growing seasons wound up in that bin. Some cast-off Christmas branches and Halloween pumpkins, too. Plus, it's the last remnant of the excellent Dave's Sanitary from up in the 'Couv, the hauler we had when we first moved into this house; the route was sold when Dave retired a while back. His son still drives the route for the new owners, the Heibergs, but it was always cool to have a yard debris cart with "Dave's" on the side.

The one bright spot in the story is the superb reception we got when we called Heiberg earlier today to ask about the resolution of the duplicate carts. It must have been Heiberg himself who answered, but whoever he was was friendly, patient, and knowledgeable, not only about what's allowed and not allowed under the new city regime but also about our account in particular. As maddening as all the city's garbage and recycling gyrations have become this year, it's nice to know that the small business that's doing all the heavy lifting is on the ball and eager to help.

Apparently a series of direct breaches of bureau rules that result in a death is worth only 30 days off in Portland. The arbitrator appears to have bought the offending officer's version of the events in its entirety. Congratulations to the cop on his all-important "six figures."

They'll be lining up for this thrillfest.

It's easy for Al Gore to talk about making sacrifices to save the planet -- he's rich enough that he doesn't have to worry.

A few things are becoming pretty clear about the City of Portland's order evicting Peterson's convenience store in the SmartPark garage across from the Galleria. One is that the mayor is hellbent on getting them out of there. The downtown business "leaders" (you know, the Pioneer Courthouse Square ice skating rink people) are, too. Commissioner Saltzman is trying to work out a deal where they can stay. The downtown neighborhood association wants to keep the place open. Fireman Randy is passing the buck to the mayor.

As good a time as any, I guess, to consult with our readers:

The Blazer draft pick just got shipped by Denver to the Knicks, and then waived.

The State of Oregon has more than $1 billion invested with this guy, who's now throwing a flimsy-looking life preserver to Merrill Lynch.

Next up for financially struggling San Diego: a Gerding Edlen City Hall shangri-la. Linchpin, baby.

Leave it to Fox News to stir things up, but even "progressive" folk will admit that "death with dignity" can lead to some wicked ethical problems, particularly in times when health care is expensive and money is tight.

The one they busted, at least.

... but it's not the only white elephant around. The Clark County Amphitheater over in the 'Couv is turning out to be a dud, too. The mainstream media accounts of the latest developments in this disaster story are here, here, and here. Bean boils it down here, and the hardcore local politics of it is blogged about here.

Another "public-private partnership," down the tubes. Although private money built the place, the county took title to it and immediately borrowed against the rent to build some other stuff. Now the rent's been cut, and it looks as though the taxpayers will be left holding the bag.

I think part of the problem is that the outfit running the place is called Quincunx. As with the venue itself, let's not even go there.

According to the kids at the Merc, Portland commish Dan "Big Pipe" Saltzman is doing some "due diligence" before letting stand the impending eviction of Peterson's convenience store from the SmartPark garage across from the Galleria. He'd better be both diligent and quick, because the place is slated to be boarded up just over two weeks from now.

An interesting wrinkle in the story is the back-and-forth between the Merc and city spokesperson Mary Volm, the gal who was allegedly whacked off her motor scooter earlier this month after thumping some guy's limo in a road rage incident.

Amazing. "The guy who's running against Merkley" is just one of many members of the GOP who are staying away from the party's convention -- presumably, to avoid having anything rub off Bush and onto them.

Let's hope it's much too late to avoid that.

Last week, we noted that our homemade internet music radio station had been hacked and was pumping out music that we had never heard of -- including some pretty scary death metal, in Polish! (I am not making that up.)

Anyway, the problem appears to have rectified itself over the last couple of days, and we are now cautiously, optimistically pronouncing the station safe for your listening pleasure. It is available here.

We've been blogging for more than a year now about the wretched condo bunker that's slated to go in at NE 15th and Hancock in Portland. The final bureaucratic showdown on the project is coming up in less than two weeks, and the operator of the historic inn next door now has a web page up seeking to rally the opposition.

Watch the warm welcome Critical Mass receives from the New York City police.

Hot off the presses from a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.

It's bar exam day across this fair land of ours. On the East Coast, the agony has just begun; here out west, there's another hour or two of angst before the questions are opened and the long-awaited answering starts.

It's been 30 years since we underwent the ordeal ourselves. We still believe in the law, and in lawyers. Taking the test today are some people who will, during their careers, change the world for the better. Good luck to them.

It's all over the local media today that Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard can't work with Police Chief Rosie Sizer. The situation appears to call into question Mayor-elect Sam Adams's previously announced plan to put Leonard in charge of the Police Bureau. Assuming that the frosty relationship between Leonard and Sizer does not improve, what should Adams do?

Twenty-six of them owe the IRS a ton of dough in back taxes and penalties over their 2001 donations of stock in their anesthesiology practice to OHSU. The Tax Court's decision, released last week, is subject to appeal, but the trial judge who heard the case was seriously unimpressed with the values that the docs claimed for their stock.

Here's Portland journalism at its finest.

Good thing we got our licks in before the spandex gang in Seattle upstaged us. But remember, the Oregonian says everything's fine.

Today's story of a 74-year-old nude sunbather at Rooster Rock State Park who allegedly attacked a guy just for showing up with his clothes on and his kids and noisy dogs in tow, reminds me of the time that the Mrs. and I headed out there for some nakedity of our own. I don't know what we were expecting, but what we found was a small group of really creepy old guys, in the buff, lurking in the weeds and staring into space like zombies. We decided to move over to where there were normal people with bathing suits on.

Today all the media jump on one of the big downsides of the City of Portland's much-touted "public-private partnerships": Nobody on the "public" side is keeping any sort of watch over the "private" side to see that they're living up to their end of the "partnership" agreement. Even if the handouts to the real estate sharpies are for a good purpose (usually a dubious proposition), no one in government knows or cares whether the taxpayers are being swindled. Nick "the Sardine" Fish says he's going to jump in and start up some sort of accountability, millions of dollars later. Coverage is here, here, and here.

The level of discourse in the reader comments at the Portland Tribune has sunk sufficiently low that they've instituted a new comment moderation system over there. You have to include a valid e-mail address with your comment or it won't show up. (The e-mail address isn't published, but in order to have the comment posted, you have to let the Trib have a working address for you.)

Comments on a website are a tricky thing. After a while, the attitudes and positions of the commenters can be confused with those of the site host -- particularly if the commenters hammer the same points home over and over, week after week. The tenor of many of the comments that have been posted lately on the Trib site didn't speak well of the Trib. I applaud the management's efforts to clean things up, at least a bit.

I've been feeling some comment angst myself lately. As much as I love the readership of this blog, every now and again I notice that I'm reading the same comments from the same people. In the past I've dealt with this by instituting comment-free weeks, where I turned comments off entirely to try to get a fresh start, but that seems kind of drastic. This week, I'm going to try something else -- moderating comments aggressively so that the repetitive points that commenters make don't appear.

If you are a new commenter, you are especially welcome this week. If you are a regular poster commenting this week, be sure to say something new, or at least figure out a new way to say what you've said here before. If your comment disappears, it's my way of telling you to give it a rest. Or find a friend who agrees with you to come over and say it in your place.

As a long-range matter, perhaps we should assign numbers to various posts made repetitively by regular commenters, so that they can save us all some time, and me some bandwidth, by simply posting the numbers rather than republishing the old points.

A couple of months ago, we did something we don't usually do -- pulled the car over and made a cell phone call trying to win concert tickets in a radio station contest. Mirabile dictu, we won! Caller no. 5, baby. It was the Lyle Lovett show at Edgefield last night, sponsored by KINK. Our luck continued to run strong as we landed our highest-end babysitter at the last possible moment, and so on out to Troutdale we drove.

Lovett played for 2½ hours with his