Thumbs up: Oregon legislature moves to expand bottle bill
The Oregon Legislature’s plans to expand the bottle bill advanced in the legislature this week, amid plans to pass it relatively quickly. The plan, as approved by the House Environment Committee this week, will expand the Oregon bottle deposit program to include juice, tea, coffee and sports drink containers, as well as conditionally increase the deposit from five cents to a dime over the course of the next decade. Approval of this legislation is likely to be a good thing: More bottle returns will hopefully mean more recycling, as well as more incentives for bottle manufacturers to reduce and manage their packaging waste. Oregon was a pioneer in deposit-recycling, or “bottle bill” legislation, and it is in that long tradition of Oregonian environmentalism that we hope this plan moves forward this year.
Thumbs down: Military jet photo op causes panic in New York City
Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House’s military office, orchestrated a photo opportunity in which one of the 747s used as Air Force One flew very low over parts of New Jersey and New York City, flanked by F-16s. The event caused outright panic in lower Manhattan, resulting in the evacuation of multiple office buildings and mobs of frightened New Yorkers running through the streets in a desperate bid to avoid what they thought was a terrorist attack. The photo opportunity was so poorly planned that neither New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg nor President Barack Obama had been alerted or consulted. Obama, who was not on the plane at the time, was furious that Air Force One, a symbol of our nation’s government and power, had been allowed to terrify our citizens for such a trivial reason.
Thumbs up: Obama plans to release additional torture memos
One of Obama’s main campaign promises was better government transparency. In further pursuit of this, his administration plans to release the additional memos in relation to the torture of enemy combatants mentioned by Dick Cheney last week. Finally seeing exactly what happened under the Bush administration will provide a good amount of closure to the American pubic, and would finally answer the question of whether torture actually took place, and whether measures should be enacted to bring administration officials to trial. Perhaps it could lead to a sort of exoneration as well, if it were determined that the actions under the administration really did contribute to U.S. security.
Thumbs down: Club Sports cancels men’s ultimate frisbee season
According to the Club Sports executive committee, the fact that Oregon’s men’s ultimate frisbee squad decided to get bottomless during about five minutes of scrimmage warrants the team being dissolved. Maybe instead they should just paint scarlet letters across their chests. Nudity is a part of life, and the puritanical ideal that we should be embarrassed about our naked bodies is anachronistic and just plain wrong. Furthermore, canceling the team’s season based on such a minor infraction – even with the past offenses of speeding and drinking the committee cited – is wildly hypocritical; the University would never dream of canceling the season of more high-profile sports teams, despite the varied legal trouble their athletes often find themselves in.
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