Spanning the State: "That's Where This Debate is Taking Us" by: nothstine Sun Jun 14, 2009 at 16:48:07 PM PDT

[Update: Missing link restored.  (Thanks, Carla!)] For the inventive mind, it's a rare tragedy that can't be put to some use.   Thus comes State Sen. Bruce Starr (whose inventiveness is already a matter of record), with a plan: In the wake of an attack on a woman who died along with her unborn child, a state lawmaker wants Oregon to join 36 states and the federal government in making it a crime to harm a fetus. Republican Sen. Bruce Starr said Tuesday he is drafting a bill that would create a crime of assault on an unborn child and expand criminal homicide to include the death of an unborn child. On Friday, Heather Snively was found dead in the crawl space of a home, and her fetus had been cut from her womb. A woman has been charged with murder in Snively's death. Under Oregon law, an infant must have drawn a breath to meet the legal threshold for murder charges to be brought. The district attorney is reviewing autopsy results on the infant in last week's attack to determine whether he was born alive. "I believe that in the eyes of Oregonians, the killer of Heather Snively deserves to be tried not just for the death of Heather, but for the death of her son," Starr said in a statement. "New life deserves all the protection the law will provide." Abortion rights [sic] have claimed fetal homicide laws are often a backdoor way to determine that life legally begins at conception and can pit a mother's rights against those of her unborn child. Heather Snively's horrible death, plus the grotesque story surrounding it--the murderous attack during which her fetus was cut from her body--create a powerful and understandable feeling that somebody ought to do something.   Which is what supporters of measures like the one Starr is proposing are counting on. As Sen. Diane Feinstein argued before the passing of a similar law at the federal level in 2004: Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and others said they believed that once that definition was written into federal law it would ultimately be used as an argument to overturn existing laws protecting abortion rights. ''This will be the first strike against all abortion in the United States of America,'' Ms. Feinstein said. She said a federal statute declaring that life begins at conception could ultimately lead to a court finding that ''embryonic stem cell research becomes murder and abortion in the first trimester becomes murder as well.'' ''That's where this debate is taking us,'' Ms. Feinstein said, ''that's the reason for this bill.'' For many dismayed Oregonians, crimes like the murder of Heather Snively (and a handful of similar horrors in recent years) will seem to call for some symbolic response to the tragedy.  (If Starr hasn't already named his proposal the "Heather and John Stephen Law"--that was the name they had chosen for the unborn child--then it's only a matter of time.) But the effects of a law such as Starr contemplates won't stop with a comforting gesture to an outraged community:  Come for the gratifying symbolism, stay for the continued whittling away of women's right to control their own bodies. Let's Span the State. [More after the jump.]

nothstine :: Spanning the State: "That's Where This Debate is Taking Us"

--------------- The times, they are a-changin'.  Even a few years ago, Big Tobacco had legislative clout on a par with the gun lobby and the AARP.  Today, not so much: At about the same time that tobacco-state Republicans found themselves unable to filibuster a bill to finally give the FDA control over tobacco, the Oregon legislature moved to increase tax on  "wet snuff" (you'd think that name alone would be enough to curb sales, but apparently not) and to make it harder for minors to get access to cigarettes.   --------------- Get rid of standing water and stock up on DEET: It's mosquito season in Central Oregon. The Four Rivers Vector Control District has already noticed an increase in mosquito-related calls compared with last year. Manager Chad Stubblefield says crews have made three trips already to the Little Deschutes River to treat hatches because fluctuating river levels make for good mosquito hatching as the river rises and falls. --------------- Shocked--Shocked! In still more evidence that the Republican Party has lost the knack for functioning as a legislative minority, Oregon's House Republicans calling for an ethics investigation into a bit of legislative horse-trading that saw Democratic point-men Dave Hunt and Peter Buckley promise Republican Greg Smith funding for two items important to Smith's district in exchange for his Yea-vote on last week's tax bill.  Nothing unethical there. In a twist out of "Absence of Malice," Smith demanded--and got--the terms of the deal in writing, and that letter became public. Nothing unethical there, either--odd, yes, but not unethical. The tip-off is that the Repubs are only attempting to raise the charges against Democrats Hunt and Buckley for violating the public trust--not against their straying colleague Smith, who was obviously a willing participant in the arrangement.   To employ a shaky analogy, that would be like the vice squad busting the johns and letting the hooker walk. Trust, schmust. What has Republicans upset is simply the Democratic leadership making the GOP look bad by being better at cutting deals and locking down votes than they are--which, last time I checked, isn't unethical either. --------------- We have met the enemy, and he is KBR. KBR, the defense contractor spun off from uber-defense contractor Halliburton and best remembered by many as the contractor whose shoddy electrical wiring led to  several deaths by electrocution of American soldiers in Iraq, is back in the news--this time the Oregon news: Five current and former Oregon Army National Guard soldiers filed suit Monday against a war contractor that they say knowingly exposed them to a cancer-causing chemical in Iraq. The suit alleges that managers from Kellogg, Brown & Root, or KBR, of Houston knew before the Oregon Guard arrived at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant in May 2003 that the site was contaminated by hexavalent chromium, a highly toxic and long-identified carcinogen. The plaintiffs allege the company either failed to do the required testing a month before the Guard arrived or destroyed the records to conceal the contamination. KBR also discounted soldiers' and civilians' bloody noses and other symptoms of exposure as sand allergies. --------------- In the decade ending in 2007, according to a Pew research study:   [J]obs in Oregon's clean energy economy grew at a rate of 50.7 percent between 1998 and 2007 while state job growth overall was 7.5 percent. The study defines "clean energy jobs" as "jobs in clean energy; energy efficiency; environmentally friendly production; conservation and pollution mitigation; and training and support." --------------- Oregon pump prices continued their steady climb this week, rising almost 9¢ this week  to $2.776/gal. Lowest pump price: $2.58/gal at the Safeway, 700 US-101 & 7th St., in Florence. Highest pump price: $2.95/gal from those lovable rogues at the HP Car Wash, 700 US-101 & 7th St., in Eugene. --------------- As the effects of unemployment continue to ripple through the economy, they've reached another point along the shore here in Oregon: The number of Oregon properties with foreclosure filings jumped 89.8 percent since May 2008, giving Oregon the 12th-highest foreclosure rate in the country, according to new data from RealtyTrac. The state posted 3,067 foreclosure filings - including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions - in May, down 20.7 percent from April's total, according to RealtyTrac's monthly Foreclosure Market Report. One in every 525 Oregon homes received a foreclosure filing in May. --------------- There's a new development in the continuing story of the hapless Klamath River salmon population The Oregon House approved a bill Friday to impose a surcharge on PacifiCorp customers to pay for removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River to help restore salmon runs. The legislation supports a tentative agreement among farmers, fishermen, tribes and others to settle a lengthy water struggle in the Klamath Basin. Under the measure, up to $200 million would be collected from customers of PacifiCorp, the utility that owns the dams. The company estimates the average residential customer would pay an extra $1.50 a month over 10 years. Removing the four dams is widely seen as a key to restoring dwindling West Coast salmon runs, although passage of the Oregon legislation doesn't assure that the dams will come down. That will require further state and federal action. However, backers of the bill called it a crucial step that spells out the terms by which Oregonians would pay for it. The luck of the Klamath Basin salmon seems to be turning around a little since Gordon Smith and Dick Cheney left office. --------------- Tune in to the (Thom Hartmann Show on KPOJ AM620 tomorrow morning between 7.30am and 8.00am to hear Carl, Christine,and Paul match wits with TJ on the weekly Spanning the State Challenge!   ---------------

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