You Better Be Prepared For This Post

Maybe you should take the lead, readers:

"Ore. court says Scouts must release abuse files; Lists compile 20 years of suspected child molesters" by Nigel Duara  |  Associated Press, June 15, 2012

PORTLAND, Ore. - The Oregon Supreme Court approved the release of 20,000 pages of so-called perversion files Thursday compiled by the Boy Scouts of America on suspected child molesters within the organization for more than 20 years, giving the public its first chance to review the records.

The files, gathered from 1965 to 1985, came to light when they were used as evidence in a landmark Oregon lawsuit in 2010. A jury awarded a record $18.5 million to a man who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the early 1980s, ruling that the Scouts failed to protect him.

The case drew attention to the organization’s efforts to keep child molesters out of its leadership ranks....

The 20,000 pages - representing files on 1,200 people - are part of a larger trove of confidential documents the Boy Scouts began compiling decades ago. The New York Times reported the Scouts had 2,910 “cards’’ on men who were unfit to supervise boys by 1935.

Scout executives had no written guidelines on the subject until 1972, when a memo urged them to keep such files confidential “because of misunderstandings which could develop if it were widely distributed.’’  

First the priests, then the camp counselors, now the scoutmasters.

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Hey, as long as no one gets into fight.

Related: Board member opposes Scouts’ ban on gays
 
A crack in the anti-gay wall at the Boy Scouts 

So what do you want to be when you grow up, scout? 

"Ore. man confirmed to have plague" Associated Press, June 16, 2012

PORTLAND, Ore. - Health officials have confirmed that an Oregon man has the plague after he was bitten while trying to take a dead rodent from the mouth of a stray cat.

The unidentified Prineville resident was in critical condition Friday at a hospital in Bend. He contracted a blood-borne version of the disease that wiped out at least one-third of Europe in the 14th century - that one, the bubonic plague, affects lymph nodes.   

So WTF is this, a cover story for some virus the globe-kickers intend to release to cull the herd? 

There is an average of seven human plague cases in the United States each year. The plague bacteria cycles through rodent populations without killing them off; in urban areas, it is transmitted back and forth from rats to fleas in what is called “enzootic cycle.’’

Once a coin flip with death, the plague is now easier to handle for humans in the United States. The national mortality rate stood at 66 percent before World War II, but advances in antibiotics dropped that rate to its present 16 percent.

Central Oregon health officials don’t blame the cat.

“The reality is that, in rural areas, part of the role of cats is to keep the rodent population controlled around our homes and barns’’ said Karen Yeargain of the Crook County Health Department.  

I knew I was a cat guy for a reason.

The illness of the Prineville man, who is in his 50s, marks the fifth case of plague in Oregon since 1995. State public health veterinarian Dr. Emilio DeBess said the man was infected when he was bitten by the stray his family befriended. The cat died and its body is being sent to the CDC for testing.

DeBess has collected blood samples from two dogs and another cat that lives with the man’s family. DeBess also collected blood samples from neighbors’ pets and from animals in the local shelter to determine whether the area has a plague problem.

More than a dozen people who were in contact with the sick man have been notified and are receiving preventive antibiotics.

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Also see: The Globe's Oregon Backwash

Stinks like Brazil.