Salem-News.com Government articles

Water Stations To Open in Salem and Turner

There are several sites to fill up your containers with good water.

(SALEM, Ore.) - Free drinking water will be available at multiple locations throughout Marion and Polk counties tonight. The water distribution operation is a cooperative effort between Marion County, City of Salem, and the Oregon Military Department.

Once they begin, the sites will operate around the clock until further notice. All bulk water distribution locations are pull-through. Residents must bring their own containers. There is a 5 gallon limit per vehicle.

SALEM: Water Advisory for Vulnerable Populations remains in Effect Until Further Notice

News Release from City of Salem

(SALEM, Ore.) - Based on test results received today, the City of Salem will be maintaining the Vulnerable Population Water Advisory until further notice.

Tap water is safe for consumption for healthy children over the age of six and healthy adults. Further information regarding water distribution and assistance will be released shortly in a separate update.

Praise for Passage of Oregon Bill to Implement Comprehensive Rape Kit Reform

Oregon SB 1571 addresses the embarrassing backlog of untested rape kits.

(NEW YORK) - DNA evidence is an invaluable investigative tool. When tested, rape kit evidence can identify an unknown assailant, confirm the presence of a known suspect, affirm the survivor's account of the attack, connect the suspect to other crime scenes, and exonerate the wrongly convicted.

Yet too often the decision is made not to test these kits. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits sitting in police and crime lab storage facilities across the country. We don’t yet know the extent of the backlog in Oregon. But we are soon to find out.

Realities Behind the Iran Nuclear Agreement

Iran is not an aggressor nation, having invaded no other country for over 200 years.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - In a stratified society, the tiny fraction who comprise the ruling class must control perceptions of the much larger fraction under their control.

To do so they must tightly manage the conduits of information and its interpretation through endlessly repeated story lines that alternately generate and relieve public anxiety. Motivated by anxiety and reinforced by its reduction, we are herded along the path chosen by the rulers with only fleeting glimpses of reality.

Senate Passes Reforms to NSA Programs, Including End Secret Law Legislation

Reforms should help protect American citizens' privacy.

(WASHINGTON, DC) - Today, the U.S. Senate passed the USA Freedom Act, legislation that will enact reforms to sweeping NSA spying programs for the first time since those programs were put in place more than a decade ago.

The legislation includes a provision modeled on Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley’s “no secret law” bill that would put an end to secret interpretations of law made by the FISA Court.

Fully Disclose 9/11 Report

"Omission is the most powerful form of a lie." - George Orwell

(Saint James, MO.) - Dear Editor:
The real issue we Americans should pay attention to in upcoming weeks is the on-going effort yet again underway in Congress that is being driven by various politicians of both political parties to disclose the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 Report that still remain classified. At the very least, doing so might provide some form of closure and relief for the families of 9/11 victims.

Further, the full disclosure may possibly open the door for more robust probing into what really happened on 9/11 and why.

Did Israel Offer ISIS $10 Million to Free Steven Sotloff?

Scarcely anyone ought reasonably indulge themselves in feelings of confidence about their own personal security.

(Ein el Helwe Palestinian camp) - Though details are not yet fully known to this observer, reliable sources who have contact with DAASH report that the Islamic State rejected frantic Mossad efforts to buy the release of American journalist Steven Joel Sotloff.

This much is credited with a fair amount of certainty. Steven Sotloff, born and raised in Florida, checked into Room 303 of the Hotel Istanbul in the small border town of Kilis in southern Turkey. Three days later while heading to the border to take the Kilis-Aleppos highway south into Syria, Mr. Sotloff and his "fixer" were abducted at a check point manned by unknown jihadists.

John Yoo and The Senate Torture Report

John Choon Yoo, aka John Yoo, authored the Torture Memos used to justify torture of human beings by the Bush Administration.

(SAN FRANCISCO) - Professor John Yoo stepped away from his lectern at the UC Berkeley School of Law to send an e-mail to the San Francisco Chronicle criticizing the forthcoming Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) torture report saying that if "torture was used and it didn't work, she [Senator Dianne Feinstein] is flat wrong." Yoo claimed the report failed to maintain "bipartisanship" that "will undermine its conclusions."

I suspect that this is a preemptive attack by Yoo as the release of the Senate torture report will probably place Yoo on the hotseat again. The SSCI Torture report has been approved for public release. However, the SSCI and the CIA are fighting over the CIA's substantial redactions to the torture report summary.

Federal Judge in Oregon Rules No Fly Lists Unconstitutional

The decision hands a major victory to the 13 plaintiffs - four of them veterans of the U.S. military.

(PORTLAND, Ore. ) - The U.S. government's no-fly list banning people accused of links to terrorism from commercial flights violates their constitutional rights because it gives them no meaningful way to contest that decision, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

The Real Sacrificial Lamb

"The ultimate sacrifice we are offering [is] Palestine. Not to God, but to our enemies."

(LONDON) - At this time of year, all able-bodied Muslims are expected to travel to Mekka and perform one of the most revered pillars of Islam, Al Hajj (The pilgrimage). Before they celebrate EID AL-ADHA they are required to offer a sacrifice of a lamb in memory of Ibrahim and his son, Ismail.

Although the biblical story differs slightly from the Quoran, saying that the son to be sacrificed was not the first born, Ishamel, but Abraham’s second son, Isaac, the message is the same. The Angel of God stops Ibrahim/Abraham at the last moment saying, “now I know you fear God.” Ibrahim/Abraham releases his son, sees a ram caught in the bushes and sacrifices the ram instead.