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ACLU Challenging Mohamed Mohamud's Conviction
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon is trying to overturn the conviction of Mohamed Mohamud, the Beaverton man convicted in 2013 of attempting to bomb the holiday tree-lighting ceremony at Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square. Alongside Mohamud's public defenders, the ACLU of Oregon and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that the conviction resulted from evidence gathered in a federal warrantless-wiretapping program. They say the source of the evidence wasn't disclosed until after Mohamud's conviction and should be thrown out. "It has become increasingly apparent that the NSA and FBI have implemented the law in the broadest possible way, and that the rules that supposedly protect the privacy of innocent people in fact do the opposite," ACLU lawyer Patrick Toomey said in a statement. "Surveillance conducted under this statute is unconstitutional."
Bernie Sanders Wins the Democratic Nomination?
Bernie Bros have found a friend in the Oregon Secretary of State's Office. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) trounced Hillary Clinton in Oregon's May 17 primary, 56 percent to 42 percent. He didn't do as well in other states and thus will not win his party's nomination at the Democratic National Convention later this month in Philadelphia. But you'd never know Sanders' dream is over from the secretary of state's electronic campaign finance reporting system, ORESTAR. As of the morning of July 5, that system showed two party nominees for the Nov. 8, 2016, presidential election: Republican Donald J. Trump—and Sanders. Laura Terrill Patten, chief of staff to Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins, says Sanders won Oregon's nomination—temporarily: "Once the secretary of state receives the delegate pledge from the Democratic National Committee, then that candidate's name will be printed on the general election ballot."
Portland Too Expensive? There's Always Vegas
The July report from real estate website Zumper contains the typical bad news: Portland is the 15th-most expensive rental market in the nation. Median rent for a Portland one-bedroom apartment climbed 3.8 percent in June to $1,300 a month. That puts Portland in elite—if undesirable—company. The New York Times reported July 3 that zoning rules designed to protect "neighborhood character" are creating increasingly unequal tiers of American cities: places where only people with money and prospects can move, and other places where the less-moneyed can afford to go. As Harvard public policy professor Daniel Shoag told The Times: "We've switched from a world where everybody educated and uneducated was moving from poorer parts of the country to the richer parts of the country to a world where the higher-educated people move to San Francisco and lower-educated people move to Vegas." (The median rent in Las Vegas in June: $790 a month.) Read more here.
Willamette Week
