"No Presidents"

There's some Portland protest news this morning.

First, the anarchist faction of the protester set decided that yesterday would be a good time to act out their rejection of all political parties and government in general. They went to both the state and county Democratic Party headquarters buildings in northeast Portland, broke some windows, and spray-painted the buildings with their profound slogans. They did the state headquarters during the day and the county headquarters at night.

The cops caught up with the nighttime gang (it looked like about three dozen people) and arrested three of them for criminal mischief.

The O version is here; the police version, here. One Twitter journalist got some footage of the nighttime action here.

Meanwhile, the governor declared that the worst is over, and yesterday she broke up the "Unified Command" that was policing the streets last week. That's too bad, because as we saw, even with an increased riot cop presence, the more extreme protesters seem to find new lines to cross all the time.

On Friday night the police got to the protester gathering point and pre-emptively stopped the violence from getting started. There was even some protester-police conversation. That showed some promise, but turning things back over to the Portland police may be a sign that we're heading back in the other direction.

Anyway, at this point, it is all so tiresome and counter-productive. If I were the district attorney or the judge, that would be some very expensive acting-out.