Corvallis

Thanks to its high percentage of resident college graduates, Corvallis was chosen by Forbes.com for inclusion on its list of The Smartest Cities in America. The Oregonian's blog mentions that while Portland has picked up "greenest city" honors in numerous publications, as well as "most livable" and "largest population of creative class hipsters outside of Brooklyn," Eugene has not been on any lists, lately. Eugene does host the Olympic Trials this year, we think that's worthy of note. But, somehow, Portland scored the Davis Cup, once again bettering us. Dammit!

The Davis Cup

We heard U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley was going to be floating down the Willamette River this week and wrote about it in advance in this week's EW. But is seems some anti-war activists were more interested in pushing their cause than in hearing about Hooley's proposed legislation to direct fed bucks to river towns for various improvement programs. One anonymous Corvallis protester left us a message saying he was "very offended that she would not even discuss the central issue of our times."

OK, but Hooley's a poor target for protesters. She opposed the war back in 2002. She voted for the vetoed emergency spending bill last spring that included a timetable for withdrawal. More recently she has supported legislation that calls for withdrawal, and bans permanent military bases in Iraq.

Let's not belittle her efforts to spend some federal money on local projects that improve our environment and our connections to the Willamette River.