SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

YOU MEAN, WE HAVE A MOMENT OF TRUTH? – FROM FOX:    Portland, Oregon, city leaders used a "hands off" approach Aug. 22 when groups of armed protesters clashed in the city – but on Wednesday Mayor Ted Wheeler admitted it was "not the right strategy."  "It is clear, based on the public outcry, on the media outcry, on the national front, that that strategy was not the right strategy," Wheeler said during a Portland City Council meeting, according to The Associated Press.  "I think we can all acknowledge that," he added. "I take full responsibility for it."  He said Portland was still "trying to find the right recipe" for handling riots – seeking a solution somewhere between an "overwhelming police presence" and restrained law enforcement, the AP reported.  State lawmakers representing the northeast section of the city spoke out against the decision to keep police from intervening in the clash between crowds from the political left and right.  Local residents also claimed they felt "terrorized and abandoned" as rioters in helmets and gas masks – and some armed with baseball bats and chemical guns – confronted each other.  A spokesperson for the Portland Police Bureau said authorities monitored the clash from an airplane, the AP reported.  Gee, even the fashionably left mayor of Moscow on the Pacific concedes that those crazy right-wing nuts might have been accurate – you have to confront violence and snuff it out.   Psychiatry rarely does the trick.

September 10,  2010