Kroger's story that Beau's credibility is too damaged to hold up in court is just ridiculous - especially going up against that beacon of integrity Sam Adams. Cash envelopes, coaching sessions with Sam's people. These aren't dots to connect - they're overlapping circles.

If a bar served drinks as watered down as Kroger's final report, it would be closed.

If Kroger had made two more drafts, we would be getting ready to give Sam the Medal of Freedom.

If the restroom at city hall stunk as bad as this investigation, the health board would shut it down.

Ahh, the famous restroom at city hall. Wouldn't it be ironic if it turns out to be the place where Kroger flushed his own career down the toilet?

It just goes to show you the Mafia is nothing compared the Don's that run City Hall.

Kroger may have successfully gone after organized crime, but has been castrated by the political power structure in this state.

It's hard to castrate a man that doesn't have any.

He must have been a lawyer in the Marines. He certainly doesn't act like a Marine, more like a law librarian.

Kind of makes me miss ol' what's his name.

So Kroger made a 20 year old kid the bad guy in an official state report and went easy on Adams.

Who has the onus of maintaining credibility here, a barely legal gay male trying to fit in with his peers and be accepted by prominent members of the community, OR the main who ran on a platform of transparency and credibility to become the spokesman for the city?

Kroger is just another example of the powerful picking on the weak instead of the powerful so his ascension up the political ladder remains unimpeded.

I wish people would do their damn homework and stop voting off of lawn signs. We could have had Walter Brown, former Lewis & Clark professor and Green Party candidate, for attorney general. I doubt we'd be getting this type of grey wash for our tax dollars.

A parallel lesson here is the unwavering support of Adams by BlueOregon types who are so deranged that they continue to think Adams is good for the city and his recall will be divisive and destructive. Many are clinging to their same initial defenses of Adams as if the guy hasn't demonstrated a plethora of sorry defects.
In doing so these loyalist apologists reveal their own shortcomings and dangle their credibility as pinatas to be shattered by the level headed folks who have no obstacles to seeing Creepy as the wholly defective person he is.

What? No search warrants? These unfolding affairs keep getting worse. At least now we know what everybody expects from the Oregon inquisition!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tym0MObFpTI

"Our chief weapons are fear, surprise, and an almost fanatical devotion to...."

Btw, this does not bode well for upcoming criminal investigation by this AG's office -- likely to take sledgehammers to thumbtacks the next few times.

Joe and Jane Lunchbucket better beware: your ham sandwiches are very vulnerable now.

Maybe Kroger should change the title of his address at the City Club of Portland tomorrow from "Upholding the Law: An Address with Oregon Attorney General John Kroger" to "Holding Up the Law."

Ben
For the foreseeable future, Blue dogs will out number other folks in the upper left coast.

This is almost too creepy to even mention, but...

Throughout the whole Adams ordeal I've thought the support he was/is getting from his apologist, special interest groups and individuals was bizarre in the way they regarded him as beyond fault and metaphorically the "savior" of the city. Their claims of homophobia and all place the blame for any perception of wrongdoing on the vindictive public, not the perpetrator. He's been made out to be so much larger than life, and beyond reproach by them. Almost messianic. Now we have Pontius Kroger basically washing his hands of the matter and turning to the crowd to decide Adams's fate. It's like this very twisted passion play. And if the recall is successful, I can only imagine the outcry by his apologists: "Sam died for your sins!" I know it's sick, but I can't escape the thought of his glorification by the whackos who give him unconditional support. I feel like I'm blaspheming just making the parallel, but you wanna bet someone writes a stage play based on it? Storm?

Oregon mediocrity once again, slouching quickly toward pathetic and unacceptable.

PDX Native,
Not a problem. Comparing Sam Adams to Jesus Christ? I don't think anyone's going to be offended by that.

That's how he came off in the Kroger report.

And here I've been resisting the urge to compare the Paulsons moving West to the Corleone family leaving New York for Vegas in the first Godfather movie.

You know how they establish a foothold with casinos? What's a bigger gamble than soccer? And then they start exerting influence over the local politicians. That part checks out.

One difference: The Mafia families never took America for as much money as Wall Street did.

Ennui fever -- catch it! It's fan-tastic!!

There's actually a simple explanation of Mr. Kroger's report. I read his conclusions as follows:
1. He does not believe that Mayor Adams can be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (a very high legal standard) in a criminal prosecution for the sexual acts.
2. He does believe that the voters of Portland should have the evidence on which he relied in forming his opinion.
3. Election laws are the province of Secretary of State Kate Brown, who now has the results of his investigation and can do what she wants with them.

Monty Python's Life of Brian - final scene
"Always look on the bright side of life"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1loyjm4SOa0

I think Ted's comment above is exactly right. And Kroger's inaction also serves as a reminder that there is a reason predators like Adams have in instinct for disadvantaged or marginalized kids: their low-rank and life of problems brings built-in credibility problems in case things get messy.

To me, it looks the Adam's lawyers were hampering the investigation and he wants us to know about it. There are some really,really nasty, but prominent, lawyers in this town about whom OSB will not entertain a complaint because they are "important".

THE FIRST RECALL (apologies to WB YEATS)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere irony is loosed upon the world,
The money-buys-influence tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of democracy is drowned;
The best are full of cynicism, while the worst
Are full of their own excrement.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the First Recall is at hand.
The First Recall! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Troubles my sight: a waste of Portland;
A shape with public body and the head of a hydra,
Its thoughts blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow will, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant populace.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That one hundred twenty plus years of corrupt city history
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking scandal,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards the ballot box to be born?

Kroger made a defensible decision, because he had a very narrow can-we-prosecute? question to answer, that Adams' credibility was not the main issue. But Jack's point is that it's an extremely chicken-s**t move to exonerate Adams in the official report, but then circulate early drafts of the document making his credibility a main issue.

The interesting thing here is the decision to release the drafts. Who made that call? Whoever it was royally screwed over both Sam Adams and John Kroger. Since the decision was made in the AG's office, it suggests there is a lot of insider politics going on. Someone in the AG's office decided to do something that they must have known would make AG John Kroger look really, really bad.

Tony Green? Unlikely. One of the old guard from Hardy Myer's day, trying to teach Kroger a lesson?

Anyone know what's really going on here?

If Kroger didn't authorize it, I strongly doubt that it would have happened.