Lake Oswego resident James Burdett Thayer’s obituary in The Sunday Oregonian mentioned that on May 4, 1945 his Army platoon discovered and liberated the Nazis’ Gunskirchen Lager concentration camp in Austria.

But there’s so much more to the story.

Major Cameron Coffman, Fort Thomas, Ky., Public Relations Officer of the 71st Division, visited Gunskirchen Lager on the afternoon of May 4, shortly after its liberation by American troops. The news release he wrote about Gunskirchen is gut-wrenching:

With the 71st Division of the Third Army in Austria, May 4, 1945: Nazism at its worst was unfolded in stark reality before Doughboys of the 71st Infantry Division today when they stumbled upon a carefully concealed concentration camp six kilometers north of Lambach, Austria, which held 18,000 persons who were not true “Aryan” or whose political opinions were contrary to Hitler’s “New Order”.

My days of reading about Hun atrocities were over. I visited that camp today. The living and dead evidence of horror and brutality beyond one’s imagination was there, lying and crawling and shuffling, in stinking, ankle-deep mud and human excrement. The sight and smell made your stomach do funny things like an egg-beater churning within. It was impossible to count the dead, but 200 emaciated corpses would be a very conservative estimate. For the most part they had died during the past two days, but there were many other rotting bodies inside the barracks beside living human beings who were too weak to move.

It is practically impossible to describe in decent or printable words the state of degradation in which the German guards had permitted the camp to fall. Located in a dense patch of pine trees, well-hidden from the main highway as well as from the air, the site was well-suited for the slimy, vermin-infested living conditions that existed there. To call the camp a pig sty would be doing injustice to a self-respecting pig. The sight was appalling, and the odor that reached you a hundred yards or so from the camp site was nauseating.

Traveling into the camp along a narrow wagon road was an experience in dodging the multitude of dazed men, women, and children fleeing from the horrors of this living hell. The natural impulse of these people after the Americans arrived was one of hysteria – a desire to escape — to leave that place forever behind them. The road was clogged with hundreds, but many did not get far. Dozens died before they had gone but a few hundred yards from their “hell-hole” prison, Americans soldiers cussed violently in disgust as their trucks roared past the grotesque figures in the ditches and shuffling feebly along the road.

As we entered the first building the sight that met our startled gaze was enough to bring forth a censorable exclamation from a sergeant who had seen the bloodiest fighting this war has offered. He spat disgustedly on the filthv dirt floor and left the building which was originally built for 300 but now housed approximately 3,000. Row upon row of living skeletons, jammed so closely together that it was impossible for some to turn over, even if they could have generated enough strength to do so, met our eyes. Those too weak to move deficated where they lay. The place was crawling with lice. A pair of feet, black in death, protruded from underneath a tattered blanket just six inches from a haggard old Jew who was resting on his elbow and feebly attempting to wave to us.

A little girl, doubled with the gnawing pains of starvation, cried pitifully for help. A dead man rotted beside her. An English-speaking Jew from Ohio hummed, “The Yanks Are Coming”, then broke out crying. A Jewish Rabbi tripped over a dead body as he scurried toward me with strength he must have been saving for the arrival of the American forces. He kissed the back of my gloved hand and clutched my sleeve with a talon-like grip as he lifted his face toward heaven. I could not understand what he said, but it was a prayer. I did not have to understand his spoken word.

Few of those remaining in the building could stand on their feet. The earth was dank and a chilled wind cut the smell of death and filth. Small fires of straw added to the revolting odors that filled the air. One man crawled over several prostrate bodies and patted the toe of my muddy combat boot in child-like manner.

Everywhere we turned the pathetic cry of “wasser” (water) met our ears. An English-speaking Czechoslovakian woman told us that they had received no food or water for five days. The appearances of the starving horde more than verified her statement. A lieutenant stooped to feed one creature a bit of chocolate. The man died in his arm. That lieutenant, formerly an officer in the Czech Army, fingered his pistol nervously as he eyed a group of German soldiers forcibly digging a grave outside. I also pumped a cartridge in my automatic. As I left him there were tears streaming down his face. His mother was last reported in a concentration camp “somewhere in Germany”.

Before our arrival conditions had been so crowded that all could not lie down to sleep at one time. Those with strength enough to stand took turns sleeping. The dead were buried in mass graves behind the so-called barracks, but the death rate became so high that unburied piles of dead remained with the living. Many of these unfortunates were using the corpses as pillows. I counted 27 in one heap in a dark pine grove in the camp area. It was not a pretty sight.

An unforgettable drama was enacted when a sergeant of our group of five raced out of one building, his face flaming with rage. The sergeant, a Jewish boy of Polish descent, had found three of his relatives lying in the filth of that barracks. They are sleeping tonight between white sheets for the first time in three years in one of the better homes in Lambach. Their diet of a daily cup of anemic soup has suddenly changed to eggs, milk, and bread. A Yank with an M-l rifle casually drops in at regular intervals to see how they are faring.

Military government and medical personnel of the 71st Division were busy at work before we left the camp two hours later attempting to bring relief to the chaos of suffering the fleeing Germans had left behind.

Extended supply lines made the food situation a major problem until ingenious doughboys discovered a German supply train nearby. Captain William R. Swope, Lexington, Ky., assisted by an excited Austrian girl brakeman, drove the train onto a siding near the camp. Physical force was necessary for order when the first food lines were organized as it was the first these hunger-sated persons had seen in many days.

A scene on the return trip to Lambach was a fitting climax to the horror we had left. Two “fugitives from hell” were ravenously tearing the entrails from a long-dead horse and gulping huge bites. Another sergeant, whose mother and father disappeared into a Nazi concentration camp three long years, ago, turned his head and in a tear-choked voice remarked:

“And Hitler wanted to rule the world.”

Oregon’s House Majority Leader, Democrat Jennifer Williamson has collected $159,060 in campaign donations as of Sept. 21, 2018 in advance of the Nov. 6 election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State.

Her opponent? Nobody.

A Center for Public Integrity analysis of National Institute on Money in Politics data shows that Williamson is one of at least 26 legislative leaders in statehouses across America who are raking in cash despite running unopposed this year.

“The safe legislators represent an attractive prospect for statehouse lobbyists and power-seekers: the sure bet,” the Center reported. “Contributions to these influential politicians can buy face time and favor with those who set state legislative agendas, experts say. The money also compounds their power: Legislative leaders use their pots of gold to buy presents to thank supporters, for example, or give to fellow lawmakers’ campaigns to reward them for voting with their party.”

Williamson’s larger contributors include:

• United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, CLC – $10,000
• Service Employees International Union Local 49 Committee on Political Education (4213) – $6,500
• Oregon Nurses Political Action Committee – $6,000
• Oregon Hospital Political Action Committee – $5,000
• Oregon Beverage PAC – $6,000
• Citizen Action for Political Education (33) – $5,250
• Oregon PERS Retirees PAC – $2,500
• Oregon Trial Lawyers Association PAC – $5,000
• Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America – $5,000
• Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde – $3,000
• Joint Council of Teamsters No. 37 Political Fund (80) – $5,000

How has Williamson been spending all that money?

The biggest chunk, $70,550.00 of $144,531.45 in total expenditures, went to Future PAC, House Builders. That’s the campaign arm of the Oregon House Democrats. In other words, Williamson’s committee simply served as a conduit to fund Future PAC.

Baily Dahlke, a Legislative Assistant in the House Democratic Office, was paid $5,743.18. Aer Lingus was paid $2,080.70 and Alaska Airlines $2,491.66. Lyft got $260.97 and Uber $273.16. Another $645.00 went to Dutch Bros. Several Democratic candidates got small amounts and a lot of the rest simply went to miscellaneous expenditures.

You can be sure more eager, opportunistic contributors will come forward before the election in hopes their early display of support will pay off and cement their relationship with a politician and a party they can count on.

A U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan in an insider attack by a member of the Afghan National Police on Sept. 3 was on his 13th deployment.

According to Task & Purpose, a military-focused news site, U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy A. Bolyard, 42, was the highest enlisted soldier in the 1st Squadron, 38th Cavalry Regiment, which deployed to Afghanistan with the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) in March. Bolyard had previously earned six Bronze Stars — two with valor devices.

Afghan military commander Gen. Abdul Raziq told Stars & Stripes that the attack began after gunfire “erupted from a police Humvee, hitting American servicemembers in the back.”

The recently disclosed financial meltdown at Special Olympics of Oregon shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the members of its board. If it did, they were either not paying attention or they were the victims of the endless capacity of people for self-delusion.

Margaret Hunt, CEO of the nonprofit from 2003 to May of this year, portrayed the organization’s current troubles as part of the normal ebb and flow of a typical nonprofit’s finances. “There are always ups and downs in the nonprofit world,” she told The Oregonian.

But the nonprofit’s financial filings going back to 2003 show that the only years its expenses exceeded its revenues from 2003-2013 were in 2007 and 2008. It covered a $525,979 deficit in 2007 with balances from 2006. In 2008, it faced a $666,361 deficit, but it recovered, restoring its net assets or fund balances to 1,484,764 by 2013.

The following year, however, was a fiscal fiasco, with expenses exceeding revenue by $506,464, necessitating another dip into its net assets to cover the overspending. Some recovery came in 2015, when revenues increased by about $1 million, but 2016 brought another revenue dip of about $700,000, resulting in $325,280 of expenses over revenues.

Britt Carlson Oase, appointed Special Olympics Oregon’s CEO in June, attributed the financial problems to a mismatch between the program spending and charitable giving. In other words, the nonprofit spent more than it took in.

Things got even worse in 2017, Oase told The Oregonian earlier this month. Few details are available, however, because Special Olympics has not yet filed its 2017 financial report to the Internal Revenue Service and the organization has not made public a 2017 financial report by its CPA, GaryMcGee & Co. LLP.

The nonprofit’s tenuous position was evident, however in the CPA’s 2016 report.

The 2016 financial statements reported a net operating loss of $131,850 and a decline in total net assets of $269,156. This followed operating losses in 2014 and 2015, and a decline in new grant and contribution commitments in 2016.

As a result, the organization’s cumulative unrestricted net asset deficit increased from negative $1,172,950 in 2015 to negative $1,304,800 at December 31, 2016.

In addition, during 2016, outstanding trade payables, money the nonprofit owed to suppliers for goods or services, grew by $328,082, and cash balances declined to $58,360, representing only 5 days of operating outflows.

As of the end of 2016, current liabilities were greater than current assets by $282,346 and after the 2016 report, out-standing trade payables increased to more than $1.0 million.

According to the CPA’s annual report for 2016, the organization had outstanding borrowings of $651,232 on its line of credit, which increased to $1 million as of September 30, 2017.

In other words, even if Special Olympics Oregon had pulled off a decent 2017, it would have been in trouble.

The CPA’s report said that as of October 31, 2017, Special Olympics of Oregon did not expect to be in compliance with certain financial covenants under the credit agreement. “If unable to continue to obtain amendments from the Lender that waive compliance with these financial covenants, the Lender could place the organization in default under the terms of the Credit Agreement,” the report said. A default “may severely or completely constrain the organization’s ability to continue to operate its business…”

Pretty alarming stuff.

“We have reached an important point where the end (of the Vietnam War) begins to come into view.” – General William C. Westmoreland speaking to the National Press Club November 21, 1967.

 “We stand together for a new and better future for Afghanistan — a future free from terror, war, and want.”- President George W. Bush and Chairman Hamid Karzai, January 28, 2002

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” – President George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

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Chief Warrant Officer 3 Taylor J. Galvin, a married father of two, died Monday from injuries he received in a helicopter crash in Iraq on on his ninth, yes ninth, combat deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Galvin, 34, was an MH-60M Black Hawk helicopter pilot assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky – the same unit that reportedly flew Navy SEALs into Pakistan for the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden according to Task & Purpose, a news site for veterans.

Since joining the Army in 2003, Galvin had deployed twice in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, three times in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, and four times as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, according to a news release from his unit.

“God Bless the Fallen and their Families,” said one online commenter.

“17 years and counting, and nothing to show for all this blood, money, disabilities and loss,” said another.

And the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are just part of America’s never-ending wars.

Only a few years after the United States and its allies had won WWII,  the U.S. began supporting the French with military assistance in their war against the Viet Minh in Vietnam. On May 1, 1950, President Truman approved the allocation of $10 million to the Department of Defense to cover the early shipment of urgently needed military assistance items to Indochina, thus taking the first crucial decision regarding U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

According to the infamous Pentagon Papers, the rationale of the decision was provided by the U.S. view that the Soviet-controlled expansion of communism both in Asia and in Europe required, in the interests of U.S. national security, a counter in Indochina.

In March of 1965,  the first U.S. ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam landed at Danang. One of those Marines, Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo, later wrote a classic Vietnam War memoir, A Rumor of War.

U.S. military actions seem to have persisted every year thereafter.

As of Oct. 2017, the US military was conducting counterterror activities in 76 countries, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.

Why is America perpetually at war?

Perhaps, with no military draft to spur civilian concern, we’ve begun to accept war as part of the natural condition.

As West Point graduate and historian Andrew J. Bacevich, who lost a son in Vietnam, put it, “Once, the avoidance of war figured as a national priority. On those occasions when war proved unavoidable, the idea was to end the conflict as expeditiously as possible on favorable terms. These precepts no longer apply. With war transformed into a perpetual endeavor, expectations have changed. In Washington, war has become tolerable, an enterprise to be managed rather than terminated as quickly as possible.”

Never-ending war as a “tolerable” condition. How bleak.

 

 

 

A lawyer for Gov. Kate Brown’s campaign sent a letter to 10 Oregon television stations on Monday claiming that an ad titled “Scary”,  issued by Priority Oregon, a business-oriented nonprofit, contains an allegation that “is a clear, unambiguous false statement of fact.”

If the governor is looking for false statements in political commercials, she should be looking at her own.

A campaign committee calling itself Defend Oregon’s Values is identified as the purchaser of a current television ad  attacking Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler. The ad aims to convince Oregonians that Buehler would be a threat to abortion rights.

If you look up Defend Oregon’s values on the Oregon Secretary of State’s website you find it is a committee established by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 49. But if you look deeper you find that the committee  is actually an arm of Gov. Kate Brown’s campaign. According to the state Elections Division, the group is a “candidate-controlled committee” working on Brown’s behalf.

Its financial report shows that the committee was initially seeded with a July 13, 2018 contribution of $100,000, all of it from the Kate Brown Committee. Three days later, on July 16, the committee paid $96,000 to Targeted Platform Media LLC of Annapolis, MD for broadcast advertising on television and radio.

So Defend Oregon’s values is hardly an independent committee. But who would know that without digging deeper?

So much for truth in advertising.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) should be ashamed of themselves.

In their effort to defeat the nomination of Oregon federal prosecutor Ryan Bounds for the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Wyden and Merkley misrepresented the facts, relied on questionable accusations by a left-leaning judicial advocacy group, engaged in the kind of character assassination that is sadly predictable in Washington and obscured their motivations.

In September 2017, President Trump nominated Bounds, who grew up in Hermiston, OR, to fill a vacancy on the markedly liberal 9^thCircuit.

That the nomination was made without the advice and consent of Wyden and Merkley hinted at a difficult road ahead. But it was a “Snapshot” report issued in February 2018 by the Alliance for Justice that provided fuel for the arguments used by Oregon’s senators. Without hesitation, they weaponized the report.

But the Alliance was no neutral observer. The Alliance is a group of 130 organizations focused on legal issues to advance progressive causes. In the 1980s, it mounted campaigns against President Ronald Reagan’s appointees to the federal courts and was a key player in a successful scorched-earth attack against D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Bork, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by Reagan. The Alliance is currently a player in the fight against Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

The Alliance’s report was a vehement broadside against Bounds, with particular criticism of some of his writings. “…while Bounds has few public writings, those he does have are deeply disturbing,” the report said. “Particularly noteworthy are several articles Bounds wrote for The Stanford Review while a college student. He expressed hostility toward multiculturalism and diversity, often using derogatory language. Throughout these writings, Bounds displayed a strong intolerance for issues or positions he deemed liberal or progressive.”

Merkley and Wyden jumped on the opportunity to use the Alliance report against Bounds in a barrage of allegations full of sound and fury, but blissfully free of substance. In a joint statement, they asserted, “…Ryan Bounds failed to disclose inflammatory writings revealing his archaic and alarming views about sexual assault, the rights of workers, people of color, and the LGBTQ community.”

The media and liberal organizations embraced the ensuing conflict, highlighting the Alliance’s report, but not its biases, and rarely offering the public online links to the report itself. The Oregonian, the New York Times and other publications and organizations referred repeatedly to Bounds’ “inflammatory” writings.

Asserting that Bounds had “expressed his disdain for multicultural values and organizations” while at Stanford University, the report cited excerpts from Stanford Review articles Bounds had written taking to task some aspects of of multiculturalism for undermining social cohesion.

“During my years in our Multicultural Garden of Eden, I have often marveled at the odd strategies that some of the more strident racial factions of the student body employ in their attempts to ‘heighten consciousness,’ ‘build tolerance,’ ‘promote diversity,’ and otherwise convince us to partake of that fruit which promises to open our eyes to a PC version of the knowledge of good and evil,” an excerpt from a February 1995 article by  Bounds read.

Bounds expressed the opinion that  groups organized around racial identity exhibit “the fundamental behaviors of group think,” have no tolerance for individualism and are too fixated on their “sensitivity”, that  “threatens to corrupt our scholastic experience and tear our student community asunder.”

Bounds may have expressed himself clumsily (he was, after all, a brash undergraduate student at the time), but his opinions then are widely shared today, particularly among conservatives. Today’s critics argue that an overemphasis on multiculturalism undermines national unity, encourages separatism over assimilation and isolates ethnic groups within the body politic.

Kenan Malik, a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times, addressed the issue in a Foreign Affairs article, “The Failure of Multiculturalism.” Multiculturalists “seek to institutionalize diversity by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes – into a singular, homogeneous Muslim community, for example – and defining their needs and rights accordingly,” he wrote. “Such policies, in other words, have helped create the very divisions they were meant to manage.”

Similarly, Victor Davis Hanson,a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, recently argued in the National Review  that an overemphasis on multiculturalism is “dividing up the country according to tribal grievances,” rather than making the nation stronger by encouraging a common culture.

Claire Fagin, former President of the University of Pennsylvania, elaborated. “We are moving into a very, very hyphenated world: It’s Asian-American, African-American . . . it’s so contrary to everything I grew up with . . . when everyone fought to just be American. For many of us who stress pluralism, these are not easy times.”

The Alliance report also took Bounds to task for writing a Commentary  in the Oct. 1994 Stanford Review  “… arguing that campus sexual assault and rape victims should have to satisfy the stringent “beyond reasonable doubt” standard. The report twisted this to mean Bounds “…supports making it more difficult to hold perpetrators of campus sexual assault accountable.”

Merkley jumped on this allegation. “Is the person fit (to serve on the Circuit Court) who says that there’s nothing wrong with a university failing to properly punish an alleged rapist?” he said on the Senate floor.

In fact, what Bounds argued against was a relaxation of the burden of proof required in prosecuting alleged violations of the University’s Fundamental Standard, especially in cases of sexual assault. In making his case, he expressed the views of many legal scholars who today argue that campus tribunals operating under university procedures do not adequately protect student rights, resulting in students losing their right to due process.

In other words, Bounds’ views 24 years ago were ahead of his time and hardly worthy of condemnation today.

Even worse, in a particularly egregious overreach, Wyden suggested a connection between Bounds and the Nazis.

Bounds  “…essentially compared tolerance and diversity to Nazi practices” in his writings, Wyden said to Willamette Week.  “…my late great Uncle Max was one of the last to be gassed in Auschwitz, and the idea that comparing tolerance to the Nazis is just so offensive that this is somebody who was not fit to be on an important court. A judge ought to be held to a higher standard.”

Nazis! Auschwitz! This crossed the dividing line between civil discourse and hysterical vitriol.

Wyden was presumably castigating Bounds for writing, “I am mystified because these tactics (by racial factions at Stanford) seem always to contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance, and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookburning.”

Merkley piled on, asking in remarks on the Senate floor, “Is the individual fit when the individual says that promoting diversity contributes more to restricting consciousness and aggravating intolerance than a Nazi bookburning?”

But that’s not really what Bounds said. Bounds was saying that some of the divisive tactics adopted by campus groups were more harmful to the school’s sense of community than the censoring of beliefs and ideas represented by the hateful burning of works decreed by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to be “un-German”.

Bounds was most certainly not equating tolerance with Nazism. Accusations that he was were a political cheap shot that illustrate the depths to which politicians will sink in this hyper-partisan time.

Wyden and Merkley celebrated when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell abruptly withdrew Bounds’ name on July 19, 2018 after a Republican Senator, Tim Scott (R-NC), indicated he wouldn’t vote for Bounds.

Though Wyden and Merkley tried to sound high-minded in their victory, their real elation was that they had set the stage for possibly delaying a vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to  a seat on the Supreme Court until after the midterms (when the Democrats hope to take control) or defeating the nomination based on some as yet undiscovered material.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has already said Bounds withdrawal makes it clear the Senate should have access to all the records associated with Kavanaugh’s lengthy career in Washington before voting on his nomination.

“If Republicans agreed that Bounds is not qualified because of what he wrote in college, how could they possibly argue that material from Brett Kavanaugh’s time in the White House and as a political operative aren’t relevant?” Feinstein said in a statement        released the same day as McConnell’s announcement.

Before Bounds’ withdrawal, Wyden told Willamette Week  that Senators are honorable people. “We don’t reward people who mislead,” he said.

Apparently they do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ballot Measure 105, which would throw out Oregon’s Sanctuary law, doesn’t have a prayer in November, right?

Certainly not in Democrat-led Oregon with its progressive bastions of Multnomah, Lane and Benton Counties and the large overwhelmingly liberal population of Portland.

Don’t be so sure.

Beneath the surface of highly visible and noisy liberal activism there’s considerable concern among the general public about illegal immigration and its ties to a breakdown in respect for the law.

Even many diehard liberals, though supportive of legal immigration, are showing frustration with illegal immigration and with those advocating open borders and the abolition of ICE.

Many are becoming not just uncomfortable with illegal immigration, but hostile to it, seeing as as inimical to an ordered society.

If there was ever a consensus among liberals that welcoming all immigrants, legal and illegal, was the right and moral thing to do, that consensus has shattered.

In a March 2018 Gallup poll, for example, 58 percent of respondents, including 48 percent of Democrats, said they were worried about illegal immigration. This level of concern is typical of what Gallup has measured over the past 18 years, apart from a window between 2006 and 2011 when roughly two-thirds of Americans expressed worry.

That may be one reason why Measure 105’s opponents have come together as Oregonians United Against Profiling, avoiding any reference to illegal immigrants, undocumented immigrants or illegal aliens.

An early sign of public discomfort with illegal immigrants in Oregon came in 2014. That was when, despite a slew of organizations and public figures urging a yes vote, voters overwhelmingly overturned a state lawthat would have given state issued photo ID in the form of driver cards“without requiring a person to provide proof of legal presence in the United States.”

Public impatience with the ICE protest camp adjacent to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in South Waterfront was also a sign of liberal weariness with immigration activists.

While Portland liberals might once have been expected to embrace the protesters, it became clear as the protest continued that support for the camp was dwindling, particularly among residents and business owners in the South Waterfront area. Liberals there didn’t want their upscale neighborhood trashed by hostile, obscenity-spewing, pathway-blocking, unruly protesters either. Even Mayor Wheeler, who initially took a hands-off stance, buckled to public pressure to close down the camp.

Liberal tolerance in Oregon, particularly in Portland, is also being tested by problems associated with escalating homelessness.

When Officer Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association, wrote in a July 16 Facebook post, “Our city has become a cesspool,”the public response was largely supportive.

In a KGW News poll asking if viewers agreed with Turner, 94 percent of respondents said yes. Even many online commenters on Portland media sites agreed. “I am a liberal, but am with police on this one,” said a Willamette Week commenter. “Undermining their hard work is counterproductive and hurts us all.”

Awareness if shifting public attitudes on illegal immigrants may have contributed to today’s statement by Knute Buehler, Republican candidate for governor, that he supports Measure 105.

“I see it as way to remove barriers between local and state law enforcement communicating and cooperating with federal officials to keep Oregonians safe. It’s regrettable that this measure is even needed.”

All this tells me the defeat of Measure 105 is far from a sure thing.