Snuggle Time!
It’s Valentine’s Day week, and we thought we’d add a little snuggling and smooching to our regular Morning Baby feature. We’ve learned that viewing adorable baby animals online actually boosts your productivity at work, so if you’re noticing that productivity doubles this week, we’re really on to something!
‘Crock of Shit Gate’ Latest Developments
The legislature is in full swing, things are heating up in Juneau, and the emails are flying. But one recent email in particular has painted the office of boorish lout, Speaker of the House Mike Chenault, in a particularly boorish, loutish, light. Go figure. Picture if you will, the lovely and hard-working Sheri Pierce, City Clerk for Valdez ,Alaska, sitting in her office one morning. She’s clerking away for her fine city, fires up the computer, takes a sip of coffee, and sees something in the in-box. Look, it’s an email from Rep. Mike Chenault! She clicks on the email,…
GOP Opens Can of Education Worms
If you’ve been in Alaska long, you’ve noticed changes. Oh, I don’t mean buildings toppling into the sea or the permafrost forgetting what “perma” means. We seem less tolerant of each other the easier life here becomes. But with the news coming out of Juneau, we may be back on a track to tolerance. Some of the current legislative proposals could really expand Alaska’s cultural and religious diversity! It’s exciting! Republican Rep. Wes Keller has proposed changing Alaska’s Constitution to allow public money to fund private schools. I’m guessing Rep. Keller hasn’t read the notes of Alaska’s constitutional convention delegates’…
FOX Punks Self with Same-sex Couple
Oh, Fox News. In a video about how nobody will be happy until we admit that the sexes are not equal, and “traditional” gender roles in marriage, Fox News went to the internet and nabbed a gorgeous photo of a gorgeous couple taking their traditional vows atop New York’s Empire State Building. One problem. The happy couple just happens to be two women. Lela McArthur and Stephanie Figarelle from Anchorage, Alaska won a contest last year for their dream wedding, and got married last Valentine’s Day at the famous landmark, on the first day that gay marriage became legal in…
Sullivan’s War on Unions
Inspired, no doubt, by the biggest asshat governor in the nation, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, our own smaller version, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan has fired the first shot across the bow of the working men and women of Alaska. Alaska has the second highest union density of any state in the country, topped only by New York. But that seems to be irrelevant to Sullivan who may have his sights on a US Senate run in 2014. Sullivan trails Senator Mark Begich in a Public Policy Poll done at the end of January by only 6 points (47/41). If that’s…
Alaskans Gone Wild – Say No to Frankenfish!
(Insert Jaws theme here) The Frankenfish is coming! Unless we all speak up… The push to introduce a genetically-modified, farmed Atlantic-Pacific-Salmon-Eel hybrid into the marketplace continues, but we have time to stop it. Alaska’s entire congressional delegation is all on our side on this one, so no excuse to call it a “partisan political issue.” This is about Alaska’s greatest sustainable treasure, our wild and wonderful salmon. The FDA has already issued a draft Environmental Assessment with a finding that genetically modified Atlantic salmon caused no significant environmental impact. Really? Sorry, FDA. Alaskans are smarter than that. We know that contamination…
EXCLUSIVE: FBI Informant Tells All – Part 3
We last left Bill Fulton working undercover for the FBI. After he was asked to make contact with militia leader Schaeffer Cox, now convicted on weapons charges and conspiracy to commit murder, Fulton recalled a disturbing meeting. He was in Fairbanks, attending a sale and fundraising event hosted by his own Anchorage military supply store and security company Drop Zone, and held at Far North Tactical, a similar store in Fairbanks, owned by his friend Aaron Bennett who had his own militia group in the area. Fulton’s initial conversation with Cox led him to believe that Cox had “gone crazy.”…
Gov Kills Palin’s Climate Change Sub-Cabinet
Here’s another reason why Sarah Palin was a better governor than Sean Parnell. (SPOILER ALERT: He killed an entire sub-cabinet, and never bothered to tell the public) Remember that special group Palin created to address the warming of Alaska due to climate change, and the threats this poses to Alaska’s coastal communities? It’s easy to forget, but it was 2007 when the Palin administration created that group, after she expressed her concern over the unwelcome changes that global warming was bringing to the state. They even had an “Immediate Action Plan” for the most at-risk from sea level rise, loss…
Parnell Dumps Citizens’ Initiative Overboard
This just in from the Alaska Democratic Party. Republicans overthrowing the will of the people to serve their own self-interest and that of their corporate donors? I’m shocked. Shocked, I say. Today House Republicans passed Gov. Parnell’s bill to allow discharge of sewage and untreated wastewater in Alaska waters, repealing a provision of the 2006 citizen initiative that protected Alaskans’ health and state fisheries. Parnell’s bill would allow the release approximately 1,064,448,000 gallons of sewage and wastewater into Alaska state waters every year. Republicans rejected Democratic amendments which would have required disclosure of the location of sewage discharges and protected…
Government Funding for Mat-Su Madrassa?
That’s what the Christian Conservatives are pushing for this legislative session, even if they’re too obtuse to know it. Chalk up another one to the Constitutionalists of Convenience – you know, conservatives who squawk and flap about libruls and leftists who want to “shred the Constitution,” and then turn around and fire up the shredding machine for the very document they purport to love. The fair-weather founding father fans now have their sights on one of the hallmarks of the Alaska Constitution – public education. The Alaska Constitution specifically prohibits using public money to fund religious schools. It’s quite clear….