News  Rest easy, City Club of Portland. Mayor Sam Adams never tires of giving a State of the City speech. We note this on the eve of the mayor's annual speech this Friday, Feb. 18 only because we asked Adams in this week's cover story if he ever felt like telling City Club "screw it" when officials asked him to do the traditional speech.You'd think Adams might at least consider skipping it one time ...   More

News One of the unknowns in the upcoming decision by Portland's City Council whether to rejoin the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force is how Mayor Sam Adams will vote. Adams, along with commissioners Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish, has not indicated which way they are leaning. Commissioner Randy Leonard opposes rejoining the JTTF, and Commissioner Dan Saltzman supports the idea of rejoining the JTTF, which ...   More

News  In advance of Mayor Sam Adams' annual State of the City speech this Friday, reporter Beth Slovic and I sat down with the mayor for an hourlong interview that will run in tomorrow's WW.We asked the mayor in our Feb. 4 interview what he thought was the biggest public misconception of him and what media outlet provided the fairest coverage of him. He didn't much feel like answering either question, ...   More

News With the newly Republican-controlled Congress set to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal budget, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) has joined with NPR and local PBS stations in warning those cuts could drastically affect public broadcasting.At a time when public broadcasting has come under attack from the right wing for alleged liberal bias, Blumenauer argues that rural Oregonians ...   More

Arts & Books The creator of innovative San Francisco plant nursery Flora Grubb Gardens came to Portland last weekend to share tales from the frontier of micro-gardening, vertical gardening and even gardening (albeit unintentional) for the urban nudist community.The foliage fashionista's city gardens must contend--or let's say co-exist--with bikes, beer bottles and all the bacchanalia San Francisco can throw at ...   More

News George Takei, who since his days as "Mr. Sulu" on Star Trek in the 1960s, has gone on to become a noted activist for gay rights, is coming to Portland later this month.The 73-year-old Japanese-American actor, who spent part of his childhood in internment camps in the United States, will speak at a Feb. 20 event sponsored by the Portland Japanese American Citizens League. The event, "Fighting ...   More

News If and when supporters of same-sex marriage rights in Oregon bring a measure to the state ballot, they might consider enlisting Barbara Bush for the campaign.Not the former First Lady Barbara Bush who's married to former President George H.W. Bush. The ex-First Lady's granddaughter, as in the Barbara Bush who's the daughter of ex-President George W. Bush. The younger Barbara Bush is in this video below ...   More

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News It's accused of hospitalizing nine freshmen from Central Washington University. Gangsters from New York City allegedly forced a gay man to chug it while he was being tortured. And it tastes almost as nasty as its reputation. It's the alcoholic energy drink Four Loko. And its pervasive presence in the news lately has resulted in warnings and proposed bans from across the nation—including ...   More