Reno Mayor Dan W. O’Conner was born in Ontario, Canada November 16th, 1837, and came to the states at the age of 12, via the Isthmus of Panama, engaging in mining in Grass Valley, California. He died Monday, November 27^th, 1905.

In 1862 he moved to Virginia City, Nevada. About 1864 he settled on a four hundred acre ranch near the present Vista Railroad Station. There, he built a set of buildings and improved the ranch.

O’Connor was one of Nevada’s oldest residents and one of the most respected citizens of Reno. He settled in the city while it was still considered a village and assisted materially in its growth and subsequently erected the O’Connor block.

“He was for years engaged in ranching and owned some of the best ranges in Washoe County. He was a man of wealth. As far as known he had no relatives,” reported the Sacramento Bee,” Mayor O’Connor was elected at the last city election by a large majority, and made one of the best Mayors Reno ever had.”

No known photographs of Mayor O’Connor exist.

The iron tug, Meteor, built-in 1876 at Wilmington, Delaware, by Harlan, Hollingsworth & Co.,  was then taken apart, shipped by rail to Carson City and hauled by horse teams to Lake Tahoe. The Meteor was owned by D.L Bliss, who launched it in September 1876.

It was propeller driven, eighty feet long and had a ten feet beam, at a cost of $18,000. At full speed she could do 19.5 knots, which is roughly 22 miles-per-hour.

Her initial purpose was to pull logs across Lake Tahoe. However, she ended up entertaining Presidents’ Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes as well as a host of other dignitaries.

With the highway encircling the lake completed, D.L.’s son, Will Bliss decided to sell the Meteor. Unfortunately, the vessel sat in a dry dock up at Tahoe City falling into disrepair and being vandalized, so Will purchased her back.

He ended up scuttling the boat off-shore from Glenbrook, in August 1940. The Meteor has yet to be found.

While the exact location is not specified, this is a view of the county road was completed by W. T. Bailey in May, 1894. The picture was taken looking south, jus’ north of Wilson Creek as evidenced by the dual sea-stacks of False Klamath Cove.

As a kid and living in Klamath between 1964 and 1979, DeMartin Hill was known as ‘Crescent City Hill.’ If somebody lived in Crescent City, they would have known it as ‘Klamath Hill.’

The U.S. Navy says a pilot died when a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18C crashed at a training complex east of Naval Air Station Fallon.  The crash happened in the late afternoon of March 1st.

After hours of searching in the mountainous terrain, they found the plane. Authorities says the plane was on loan to the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center for use as a training aircraft, and was performing a training flight when it went down.

The cause of the crash has not been determined. The plane was not carrying any weapons on the training flight.

The name of the pilot is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

UPDATE: Navy releases name of pilot — Captain Reid Nannen, 32, Hopedale, Illinois, Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 242, Marine Aircraft Group 12, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, III MEF, Okinawa

The wreck of the Katata, near the north side of the mouth of the Klamath River.  When it happened, is not known.

The dugout lashed to deck of the boat is a ‘lagoon dugout’ in contrast to the round-bottomed river canoes. Both the ‘lagoon’ and ‘ocean’ dugout had a lower prow and higher sides and more keel than a ‘river’ dugout.

The photographer is thought to be a Mr. Field, manager of the Klamath River Packing and Trading Company. The man in the picture has never been identified.

Jonathan Turley, professor of public interest law at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., warned Congress during a hearing Wednesday that America has reached a “constitutional tipping point” under the watch of President Barack Obama.

Here’s the conclusion to his statement before the Judicial Committee:

“The subject of this hearing is fraught with passions and politics. I do not wish to add to the hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding the current controversies. To be clear, I do not view President Obama as a dictator, but I do view him as a danger in his aggregation of executive power. It is not his motives but his means that I question. It is the danger described by Louis Brandeis in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States, where he warned that the “greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

It is my sincere hope that both parties will join in fulfilling their sworn duty to this branch and to the Constitution in putting aside petty or political differences to restore balance to our system. While this may be an exercise of hope over experience of a constitutional scholar, I know from personal experience that there are many constitutionalists on both sides of the aisle. Through the years, I have had many exchanges with Republican and Democratic members who reflected their deep understanding and love for our system. That common article of faith between members once transcended politics and I believe it can do so again. While strong institutional voices like that of Senator Harry Byrd (sic) [Reid] and others are now silent, I am hoping that new voices will be heard in these chambers. What is required is for members to recognize that there is a horizon for this country that extends beyond the term of the current president.

The only thing that joins us is our common faith in a system that has weathered wars, depression, and civil unrest. The current passivity of Congress represents a crisis of faith for members willing to see a president assume legislative powers in exchange for insular policy gains. The short-term, insular victories achieved by this President will come at a prohibitive cost if the current imbalance is not corrected. Constitutional authority is easy to lose in the transient shifts of politics. It is far more difficult to regain. If a passion for the Constitution does not motivate members, perhaps a sense of self-preservation will be enough to unify members. President Obama will not be our last president. However, these acquired powers will be passed to his successors. When that occurs, members may loathe the day that they remained silent as the power of government shifted so radically to the Chief Executive. The powerful personality that engendered this loyalty will be gone, but the powers will remain.

We are now at the constitutional tipping point for our system. If balance is to be reestablished, it must begin before this President leaves office and that will likely require every possible means to reassert legislative authority. No one in our system can “go it alone” — not Congress, not the courts, and not the President. We are stuck with each other in a system of shared powers — for better or worse. We may deadlock or even despise each other. The Framers clearly foresaw such periods. They lived in such a period. Whatever problems we are facing today in politics, they are problems of our own making. They should not be used to take from future generations a system that has safeguarded our freedoms for over 250 years.”

It appears both the House and Senate are okay with becoming obsolete along with the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law and our civil liberties and I fear the day streets across the U.S. begin looking like Kiev’s Independence Square.

In August 2006, Fred Brown, columnist and retired Capitol bureau chief of the ‘Denver Post’ was the co-chairman of the ‘Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee.’ Supposedly, Brown was instrumental in shaping the group’s “Code of Ethics” which has become the industry standard.

I say ‘supposedly,’ because I have not researched this statement — and I don’t intend to.

“What you describe is clearly an unethical practice,” said Brown about my personal blog, which was hammered by a University of Nevada, Reno journalism panel because I wrote about many of the subjects I reported on while working at the Sparks Tribune.

Their main concern was the fact that I published on my personal blog, a Republican candidate’s letter of complaint sent to the paper’s editor and publisher, saying I was being unfair to him because his Democratic opponent was always quoted in my stories on their race. I took the GOP candidate to task over his inability to return my calls by the deadline set by the paper.

Somehow, all that got skipped as the trashing literally continued to make headlines around the world, including the UK, Germany and Denmark. Enough about that – what I really want to point-out is how selective the national media has become.

Case in point, on one hand our national media is pounding Uganda because it has outlawed homosexuality, making it a crime punishable by life in prison.  However, the same media decidedly ignored comments made by a Russian soap opera star who says ‘homosexuals should be burnt alive in ovens (sound like the holocaust to me,) nor do they report how homosexuals are treated in Muslim countries, where they may executed via stoning, hanging, or beheading, based on sexual-preferences.

And as this continues, the same media refuses to report on how the ‘Coalition of African-American Pastors’ are calling for the impeachment of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The preachers say Holder has violated his oath of office by trying “to coerce states to fall in line with the same-sex ‘marriage’ agenda.”

You certainly don’t see Brown and his ilk or a UNR panel condemning the national media for its ‘double-standard,’ when it comes to telling the entire news story – and you never will.

What in the hell is wrong with our society? One side tolerating that which the other side would not tolerate — that’s what’s wrong!

This is what came up on one of my television channels: “Paid programming. Black Shopping Channel is an urban television shopping channel that sells the innovative products of small business owners across America.”

If it read ‘White Shopping Channel…,” it would be considered racist. Instead because I am pointing this out – I’ll be the one labeled ‘racist.’

Sadly, society is turning itself inside out.

Despite this, the Obama Administration plans on putting monitors in the newsrooms of local media outlets throughout the nation. If this happens, it could mean the end of free speech and freedom of the press for Americans.

Selected are eight categories of “critical information” such as the “environment” and “economic opportunities,” that it believes local newscasters should cover.  Station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters will have to tell the government about their “news philosophy” and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.

Among the questions the Federal Communications Commission could be asking journalists: “Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your [viewers, listeners or readers] that was rejected by management?” And “What was the reason given for the decision?”

Called the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” the FCC has a field test in Columbia, S.C., scheduled to begin this spring. Participation is voluntary, but remember, radio and TV stations would be out of business without a FCC license, which has to be renewed every eight years.

Meanwhile the ‘2014 World Press Freedom Index,’ puts the U.S. at 46, right behind Romania and down from last years ranking of 32.  Is it any wonder?