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The
The INDEPENDENT, December 7, 2011
INDEPENDENT
Published on the first and third Wednesdays of each month
by The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St.,
Vernonia, OR 97064. Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410.
Deadline is noon the Friday before each issue.
Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net
Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net
Printed on recycled paper with vegetable based dyes
Opinion
Governor John Kitzhaber shares his thoughts on
Capital Punishment:
“Under Article V, section 14, of the Oregon Constitu-
tion, I am exercising my authority as Governor to issue
a temporary reprieve in the case of Gary Haugen for
the duration of my term in office. I want to share with
Oregonians how and why I came to that decision.
“Oregon has a long and turbulent history with capital
punishment. Our state constitution originally had no
provision for the death penalty. Enacted by statute in
1864, the death penalty was repealed by voters in
1914, restored in 1920, outlawed again by voters in
1964, re-enacted in 1978, deemed unconstitutional by
the Oregon Supreme Court in 1981 and again reinstat-
ed in 1984.
“It has been carried out just twice in last 49 years in
Oregon. Both were during my first administration as
Governor, one in 1996 and the other in 1997. I allowed
those sentences to be carried out despite my person-
al opposition to the death penalty. I was torn between
my personal convictions about the morality of capital
punishment and my oath to uphold the Oregon consti-
tution.
“They were the most agonizing and difficult deci-
sions I have made as Governor and I have revisited
and questioned them over and over again during the
past 14 years. I do not believe that those executions
made us safer; and certainly they did not make us no-
bler as a society. And I simply cannot participate once
again in something I believe to be morally wrong.
“Let me be clear, I had no sympathy or compassion
for the criminals or for anyone who commits the most
heinous of acts – taking the life of another person.
The families and friends of victims deserve certainty
that justice will be carried out on behalf of the loved
ones who have been taken from them in such a cruel
fashion.
“But the nature of their crimes was not different from
other murderers, some of whom are sentenced to
death but never executed and others who are sen-
tenced to life in prison. What distinguished those two
death row inmates during my first term was that they
volunteered to die.
“Oregonians have a fundamental belief in fairness
and justice – in swift and certain justice. The death
penalty as practiced in Oregon is neither fair nor just;
and it is not swift or certain. It is not applied equally to
all. It is a perversion of justice that the single best indi-
Please see page 14
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
The last week of deer
season finally saw the
bucks getting all rutted
up and many went home
with hunters. The 10th
deer I saw this year was
finally a buck, but a 300-
yard shot, a 20 mph
cross wind and poor luck
contributed to the mak-
ings of tag soup for me this year. The fact is, if it
had not been for the last week of deer season,
many sports people would have gone home
empty handed.
Vernonia was invaded by thousands just be-
fore the beginning of the second elk season on
the 19th, yet very few people here in town even
knew that this event occurred. So what were
these thousands? Coho salmon. I happened to
guess right and had the time to observe the fish
swimming over the concrete apron down at
Dewey Pool (the summer time swimming hole in
town). I was quite amazed to watch scores of
fish scooting half out of the water as they
crossed the shallow area caused by the con-
crete. In one-and-a-half hours I counted 115 fish.
The next day I counted 19 fish in 10 minutes, so
this run of fish was going strong for several, if
not more, days. I also had a report of fish trying
to jump into a little culvert on a tributary so small
you could jump over it during the recent high wa-
ter event. The Coho should have no problem go-
ing wherever they wanted to this year.
Elk season this year for the rifle hunters has,
so far (fourth day of the second season), sound-
ed on the light side in regards to harvest. First
season hunters didn’t report a good harvest, and
elk were hard to find. Of course I was doing
some of my own elk scouting while I was deer
hunting, and noticed the elk were hanging pretty
tight this year. Warm weather probably had a lot
to do with this, since the elk could get all the for-
age they needed in the thick reprod where they
were hiding. I saw only one legal bull in the Sad-
dle Mt. unit during the 11 days that I hunted deer,
but I know there were more out there. My sea-
son ended on the second day of the season,
when a herd of about 20 elk walked right under-
neath me in a patch of big timber. The last ani-
mal through was a little raghorn bull and my old
.270 made short work of him. The bull did give
me a scare when I walked up to him and all that
was showing was a spike with an eye guard, but
another look revealed 4pts, which I thought I had
seen when I first looked him over.
My good friend Jim King, and I, have been
swapping back and forth, helping pack in bulls.
Jim’s bull this year, for me, was from the ditch to
the back of a pickup, since Jim and his son Mar-
shall had already done the heavy work the
evening before. Now that is what we call an easy
pack! So, after shooting my bull, I left Jim a mes-
sage that I had a bull down, soon I had a call
back that he was coming to give me a hand. I
had hiked back to my pickup and got the elk
bags, pack board and axe, and had my
hindquarter ready to go, then Jim showed up
Please see page 18