Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, Jan 2006

1. Augustine. The Augustine volcano awoke from relative quiet over the weekend with five large blasts on Saturday, sending ash airborne to the vicinity of 50,000’. Having cleared the vent, it settled into continuous eruption throughout the day Sunday with continuous ash production. There were a couple long blasts during the day. Most of the ash is below 20,000’ and drifting southbound toward Kodiak Island. Alaska and Era Airlines cancelled flights into and out of Kodiak over the weekend due to ash in the air. No ash is expected to reach Anchorage at this time.

2. Google. The leftists running Google capitulated to ChiCom government demands that their search engine block web sites of interest to anti-government dissidents, religious worshipers, and other subject areas not approved by government censors. Google, in turn has taken a lot of very well deserved heat over its decision to modify its search algorithm to meet these demands. It ought to bother those of us that have used Google in the past how easily they manage to modify their search algorithm to block things that the ChiCom government demands they block, for if they can block some things in order for them to do business in China, they can also block things that they are in political opposition with over here in the US. Big Lizards last Weds took Google to task for their loud, public refusal to cooperate with the Justice Dept. in a data-mining investigation on kids accessing porn sites via Google. Google made a large public splash and spent a good bit of time with self-congratulations in their refusal to assist the feds. One thing about the left is that they are predictable.

3. Sada. The NY Sun printed a story about Saddam’s number two Air Force officer, Georges Sada, who claims he knows where Saddam’s WMD went. Sada also made the rounds of the talk shows, including Hannity, early last week relating his story. He claims that Saddam decided the Americans were really going to attack and decided to get the WMD out of the country via shuttle flights into Syria and convoys into Syria. Saddam used a pair of converted a pair of Iraqi Airlines jets into cargo jets and flew 56 flights into Syria loaded with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and associated technology. The flights into Syria were flown under the guise of disaster relief for Syrians downstream from a collapsed dam. If the WMD are indeed in Syria, and Al Qaida attempts to attack Amman Jordan with truck loads of chemical munitions from Syria indicate that the Syrians made chemical munitions available to Al Qaida at some level, it becomes that much more important to overturn the Assad government so they can give up those weapons to the American military. This story parallels that of an Israeli general who also stated that he believes Saddam removed the WMD from Iraq before the war. Watch this one closely in the months to come.

4. Hamas. The suicidal Palestinians held an election and tossed out the corrupt terrorists of the Fatah p arty and elected the terrorists of Hamas to a majority of seats in their parliament. Hamas is founded on a promise to destroy Israel. The election is both good and bad news. The bad news first: Apparently the Palestinians are not interested in a peaceful resolution of their dispute with Israel, and have installed a p arty of self-described and unapologetic terrorists as their national government. The good news is that there is no longer any denial of exactly what they as a people are interested in. No longer will we see and hear in English how much the Palestinians want peace with Israel, while in Arabic they spew the most vile anti-Israeli diatribes, for the only peace Hamas wants is that following the annihilation of their enemy – and they are ready and willing to do whatever they can to reach that goal. Israel now has a real government on their border that can be decapitated should it choose to make war against Israel, which is a nicely clarifying event. For Hamas, their victory is somewhat like the dog that finally catches the car he has been chasing for years: Now that you’ve got it, what are you going to do with it? Fatah, Arafat’s p arty was tossed primarily for corruption and the failure to improve the lives of Palestinians. Can Hamas fill potholes? Can it provide water? Can it run a sewage system? Can it do anything at all if the West cuts off all funding for Palestine as long as they hold to their long-time goal of eliminating Israel? There are interesting times afoot for Hamas; interesting in the old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.”

5. Canada. The liberal Canadian government was tossed in elections last week, installing the first conservative government in decades. While conservatives won a majority of seats in Parliament, they will have to form a coalition government with another p arty, likely Bloc Quebecois, in order to govern. The former government, headed up by PM Paul M artin, spent a lot of time in recent years taking gratuitous pot shots at the US. Disputes included support (or lack thereof) in the Terror War, withdrawal at the last minute from an agreement to deploy and support a BMD system, fights over mad cow disease and beef imports, and a variety of in your face leftist social issues including homosexual marriage. The Liberals were also embroiled in the middle of a series of corruption scandals. The voters finally got tired of it all and tossed them. We will wish our neighbors to the north the best of luck with their new government.

6. Steele. GOP candidate for US Senate from MD Michael Steele, who also happens to be conservative, black and the state’s Lt Governor, may be poised to take an open senate seat from the democrats in November. He is polling consistently ahead of both his Republican and democrat rivals in the upcoming primary elections. Democrats have seen him sufficiently threatening to send out their dirty tricks squad and st art dumpster diving for dirt to use against him. Two of Chuckie Schumer’s (D, NY) staffers were implicated in getting Steele’s credit history under false pretenses – which is a felony. Steele could have a very interesting run this summer and fall depending on who his democrat opponent is going to be. Former congressman and NAA(L)CP head Kwesi Mfume is running for the democrat nomination as a democrat. Should he get the nomination, he is expected to get over 80% of the black vote. Should the other guy get the democrat nomination, and Mfume is trailing in support and fundraising among democrat candidates, blacks are expected to stay home, handing Steele an easy victory. Today, Steele is well ahead among Republican candidates and expected to easily win the primary election. A MD State Circuit Court entered the election season nicely by tossing out the state’s ban against same-sex marriage. Democrats are going to try to delay any appeal or implementation until after the November elections. Expect this tactic not to work very well. According to Powerline Friday, MD democrats are responding to the threat posed by Steele’s candidacy the old fashioned way – by pushing legislation intended to give convicted felons the right to vote. Given the democrat majority in the legislature was able to override the governor’s veto on their anti-Walm art legislation, I would not be surprised if they manage to get this passed before election day in November.

7. Byrd. Finally, former KK Kleagle Robert Byrd (D, WV) announced that he was shocked, simply shocked at the terrible treatment that SCOTUS nominee Samuel Alito received at the hands of his democrat colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Byrd then went on to be one of only four democrats to vote to confirm the nomination. Did I also mention that Byrd is up for reelection this year in an increasingly conservative state, and that he is running against a well-funded conservative opponent?

1. Cantwell. The political war between leftist congress-critters from Washington State and the Alaska congressional delegation is expected to heat up nicely this coming year. Senator Maria Cantwell (D, WA) is up for reelection this year. She was initially elected as the Senator from King County, having lost most of the rest of the state to incumbent Slade Gorton in 2000. Cantwell carried only five counties, but won liberal King County in the Seattle area by over 150,000 votes. During her term in the senate, she has become an increasing irritating thorn in the side of Alaska and the development interests of this state, most notably strongly in opposition to opening ANWR and opposing the bridges in Anchorage and Ketchikan last session. She won those rounds. Well it turns out that Maria Cantwell (D, WA) also wants her own pork in the form of replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct, another bridge to nowhere, in the middle of Seattle. The viaduct was damaged in the 2001 quake and needs to be replaced or rebuilt. Washington State democrats raised gasoline taxes in the state to bring $2.2 billion to the table, but the preferred solution – a tunnel - is expected to cost anywhere from $3.1 - 4 billion – with the $1-2 billion difference to come directly from US taxpayers. Given that Alaska’s lone Congressman, Don Young (R) is Chairman of the House Transportation Committee and Cantwell has been in strong, vocal opposition to Alaska issues, I expect she will have a difficult time getting that money through congress this session. Cantwell, who is up for reelection in November is expected to turn Alaska’s senior Senator Ted Stevens (R) into a campaign prop to use against her Republican opponent. When she does, her Republican opponent simply needs to take to the airways and promise to work with their neighbor to the north, rather than tweaking them publicly to appease the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the greens in the SeaTac area. If they want federal money for their goodies, they need to get out of the way of other states, and not pick fights they cannot win. We will see how sm art of a politician her Republican opponent is going to be. Lew Williams, Anchorage Voice of the Times, Thurs.

2. Sawmill. Green obstructionists and their sympathizers in the US Forest Service ran yet another sawmill out of business in Southeast Alaska last week. Pacific Log & Lumber, near Ketchikan pulled the plug of 23 high paying jobs when the Forest Service would not make promised lumber available for contract logging in a sufficiently timely manner for the company to stay in business. The company sits in the middle of the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest and was waiting for an announced 16 million board feet timber sale that had been subject to a series of delays by the Forest Service and greens threatening lawsuits. Eventually the private company cannot cut enough lumber to sell, and has to close up shop. This closing has illustrated yet again that the Forest Service, as currently populated by Clintonoid greens, is neither a predictable nor an honorable business p artner. They cannot be trusted. And the greens who work through the courts via a series of anti-logging lawsuits are successfully destroying profitable American businesses while increasing the danger of massive forest fires throughout the west for years to come. Things are so bad that in some p arts of the west, that sawmills are importing logs from Canada because the supply is predictable and the suppliers will behave in an honorable, businesslike manner. Anchorage Daily News, Weds.

3. Predator. Given the near-instantaneous screams of pain and outrage by Al Qaida sympathizers in the media to the Predator strike in northern Pakistan a week ago, it appeared we hit some very important targets. As the week rolled on, the initial stories about hitting a family gathering of jewelers changed a bit. At week’s end, the strike had killed 4-5 top Al Qaida commanders, including their top bomb maker. As of this writing, there are a few carefully staged riots in the Pakistani streets to protest the attack. Larger riots that began immediately after the attack vaporized upon reports that Al Qaida was in the buildings destroyed. There was some early speculation that Ayman al-Zawahiri, second in command of Al Qaida was at the dinner. Best guess today is that he dropped out at the last minute. Pakistani intelligence was reported to be on site gathering blood and tissue samples (DNA analysis) shortly after the dust settled and Al Qaida removed the bodies of the dead. We have samples of Zawahiri’s DNA from his brother in Egypt and that analysis is proceeding. It appears that this was a good strike; that the locals were playing with fire by hosting a dinner; that we are st arting to get some pretty decent intel about Al Qaida leadership movements and locations; and that perhaps they know it – which will make our job killing them a bit harder and their increasingly short and miserable lives much more paranoid and uncomfortable. Finally a comment on the coverage of the strike from Al Qaida sympathizers in the (formerly) mainstream media and the democrat p arty: The first reports that had the strike missing Zawahiri and killing only innocent villagers was met with great celebration and derision from the anti-war, pro-terrorist left. The rest of us (mostly) sat silently while the intel community developed their bomb damage assessment. The left p artied at our failure. Is there any clearer demonstration of who they support in this war ? Things got so bad that the infamous NYT published a carefully staged photo from the village showing a blue projectile, sad faced teenager and old man. The caption stated that the photo was of an unexploded missile fired from the predator. The staging stated that we target kids and old people. The blogosphere instantly analyzed the photo and found that it was a photo of a live 155 or 152 mm artillery shell, complete with yellow stripe indicating it was live, with a fuze on top, and rifling around the bottom end. 90 pound artillery rounds aren’t normally fired from Predators. Perhaps we have a new tactic. Or more likely, the anti-war, anti-military leftists took the opportunity to publish a photo carefully staged and distributed by Al Qaida sympathizers in Pakistan without checking out any facts with the Pentagon (who have people in their employ that will talk nonstop for weeks on the glories of modern artillery).

4. Haleigh. We have yet another Schiavo-like case unfolding in MA, where the state Dep artment of Social Services successfully petitioned the state Supreme Court for removal of the feeding tube and breathing assistance for a comatose 11-year old girl. The young girl, Haleigh Poutre was hospitalized last fall with brain stem damage, multiple bruises and broken bones. Apparently her foster parents had gone most of the way toward beating her to death. The state DSS decided that her life was no longer worth living, and would not recover, so they sued to remove her feeding tube and life support. They were opposed by the father, who had committed the beatings and would have been liable for a murder charge had the girl died. The hospital turned off life support a couple days after the ruling and the girl st arted breathing on her own. She also showed some signs of increased brain function and the hospital decided not to remove her feeing tube. Given a little time, the Boston media, bloggers like Michelle Malkin, and the pro-life community st arted asking how she got into her present condition. It appears that the MA DSS was derelict in their follow-up of Haliegh and her foster parents. Malkin posts over excerpts from a court-appointed guardian for Haliegh that document 10 injuries over a two-year span of time. DSS bought the foster parents’ claim that the girl had done this to herself. At best, they are criminally negligent. At worst, DSS wanted to pull the plug on her to cover their sorry, incompetent bureaucratic carcasses for malfeasance. As the days and weeks roll on by, more and more people in MA are questioning how the bureaucracy managed to miss this slow, brutal murder of a young girl and demand both answers and heads. It is also worth noting that the second round of an application of the principle of state-sponsored death via court-ordered dehydration and starvation is triggered by an attempt by a state dep artment to cover their respective backsides because they missed a girl getting slowly beaten to death. In this case, a Higher Power intervened and the girl is showing some signs of improvement. Terri Schiavo wasn’t the first to be murdered by the courts. She won’t be the last. Hopefully she will be the one that wakes the rest of us up to the absolute evil of this sort of state-sponsored murder. We would be well advised to never let it happen again.

1. Augustine. Augustine, an active volcano around 300 miles SW of Anchorage erupted three days this last, dusting areas west of the volcano with ash. There were two small eruptions Wednesday morning early, four eruptions Friday and a single one early Saturday morning. Prevailing winds are easterly, and the ash dusted Homer, 80 miles east and slightly north of Augustine, and Prince William Sound, f arther east. Augustine is one of nearly 41 historically active volcanoes in Alaska. It last erupted in 1986 and 1976. Eruptions out of this p articular volcano typically take place over a period of a couple weeks and are not normally catastrophic in nature – in other words, they do not normally produce large volumes of ash or pyroclastic flows, and do not last for a p articularly long time. At this time, we are not expecting Anchorage to get dusted, but many are purchasing new air filters for their vehicles and getting breathing masks (like painters use) just in case. Augustine is also one of the most monitored volcanoes in the state, with active seismometers, a webcam on the island, and other instrumentation. The webcam sits two miles from the vent and is updated every 30 minutes. The Alaska Volcano observatory (AVO) has an excellent web site that you can drill down to an Augustine activity page. Here’s the URL: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/ As of this writing, the mountain has been relatively quiet for over 30 hours. The USGS vulcanologists have not been able to visit the mountain for a couple days due to weather and are unable to tell whether the eruptions are subsiding or we are in a lull waiting for a larger one.

2. Wal-M art. MD State Senate democrats by a 31-17 vote overrode a veto by Governor Bob Erlich (R) on a bill that requires Wal-M art to spend a minimum of 8% of their payroll on health care for their employees. If they fail to do so, the difference will be deposited into the state’s Medicare fund. The legislation was backed by the unions, pushed by their democrat enablers, and written in such a way that Wal-M art was the single private employer in the state targeted. The legislation only applies to companies that employ over 10,000 people and spend less than 8% of their payroll on health care. Wal-M art, employing 17,000 in MD is the only company in the state that meets those criteria. Unions in 30 other states stand ready to push similar legislation through state legislatures. As with most (if not all) union-sponsored legislation, this bill prohibits Wal-M art from trying innovative solutions to employee health care such as setting up Medical Savings Accounts by removing the economic incentive to innovate. In doing this, the unions and the politicians they have purchased tie their membership to a health care system that is increasingly expensive and unresponsive, removing individual choice, and providing instead a very expensive, low functioning government mandated system, one that will eventually become too expensive to provide.

3. Santorum. Republican Senator Rick Santorum (R, PA) is running for reelection this year. His race is hotly contested, and the democrats have managed to field a pro-life opponent, the son of former pro-life Governor Bob Casey (the PA Governor refused permission to address the Democrat National Convention in 1992). Santorum is one of the Good Guys, a social and fiscal conservative from the NE. Unfortunately, PA is swinging “blue,” and p arts of the state that have supported him in past years are not nearly as strongly conservative as they once were. He may not survive the elections this year, which will be unfortunate. Expect democrats to gleefully point to Santorum’s p articipation in the effort to save the life of Terri Schiavo as the reason for a loss if indeed they do win. Conservatives, on the other hand will point to Santorum’s support for Arlen Specter (R, PA) in a hotly fought race against conservative challenger Pat Toomey in 2004. This angered many conservatives who may choose not to turn out to support Santorum this year. It is still early and the leftists certainly are able to overplay their hand between now and Election Day, but at this time, it doesn’t look good for one of the good guys in the senate.

4. Iran. The situation with Iran continued to heat up last week, as the Iranians removed the UN seals from their nuclear facilities and resumed their work on nuclear weapons. As the situation stands today, the Europeans appeasement technique of dealing with the problem has failed. Russians are supporting the Iranians because the Iranians are paying Russia nuclear scientists large sums of money, who in turn send that money home to Russia (not unlike what we see with more than a few Mexican workers here in the US). The Iranians are st arting to work with Venezuela’s Castro wannabee Hugo Chavez. Some speculate that they are setting the stage to supply missiles and nukes to Chavez, which will put Iranian nukes within range of the US. The Israelis and Americans are likely refining their war plans, designed to overthrow the government of Iran and remove the threat militarily. Finally, the Mullahs quietly watch their hand-picked president outs himself as a certified nutcase by talking about how he has been sent to prepare the way for the return of the Twelfth Imam, in Islam’s version of the Apocalypse. It is not a healthy thing for those of us interested in living, eating and breathing, raising kids and grandkids for committed apocalyptics to have their hot little hands on the nuclear button. MAD worked against the Soviets because at some level, the people with their hands on the nuclear button wanted to remain alive. These guys simply don’t care, and that is a problem.

5. Alito. The Senate Judiciary Committee held their hearings on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the SCOTUS. Once again, the nominee was superbly prepared and ran rings around his democrat inquisitors. Kennedy, Biden, Durbin and Schumer all came across as inconsequential buffoon, interested in the sounds of their own voices more than the responses from the nominee. The great PR moment for the democrats was when they managed to chase Alito’s wife from the room crying by a series of outright lies and innuendo about Alito. Schumer afterwards compounded the PR disaster by telling a reporter that being a SCOTUS Justice is such an important position that the nominees ought to expect tough questions asked. He didn’t address character assassination however. So much for the P arty of Sensitivity. What we saw last week was that Borking no longer works. You can only call people monsters so many times in a row before the general public gets the idea that in your world, everyone the president appoints is a monster – which they don’t believe. You can only cry wolf so many times before people stop listening. This is what has happened to the democrats. The alternative media was able to respond to every single attempted smear of Alito with breathtaking speed and accuracy. Things went so poorly for the democrats that Biden suggested the hearings be called off for future nominees. Democrats are now trying to delay the vote on Alito’s confirmation by a week to deny Bush an applause line during the State of Union speech next week. So far, Republicans who remember democrat antics last year in the Senate are not budging from holding the votes as scheduled.

1. Syria
2. Iran
3. CFR
4. McCain
5. Abramoff
6. FISA
7. Florida Supremes
8. Subsistence

1. Syria. It appears that all Hell is about to break loose in Syria, with the dep arture of a former Vice President and the head of Syria’s intelligence apparatus fleeing to Paris, where the former is openly calling for the ouster of Syrian President Bashir Assad. The former VP, Abdul Halim Khaddam last week accused Assad of complicity in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri. This VP publicly broke with the Baathist regime in Syria last summer and was rewarded with criminal charges after being ousted from the p arty. He is now in Paris telling the UN, who is investigating Hariri’s murder, that Assad ordered it. He is also calling for open demonstrations and the overthrow of Assad’s government. To my knowledge, he has not openly called for the elimination of the Baathists in Syria, which may be anything from an effort to not prod the larger threat to a desire to become the top Baathist in Syria. We won’t know for a while. Paraphrased from Captain’s Qu arters, Fri.

2. Iran. This year will prove to be a most dangerous year for Iran and its neighbors. While the Mullahs and their hand-picked whacko president publicly call for the extermination of Israel and all its inhabitants, they also continue a six year long program of nuclear weapons development to make it so. They are also busily constructing IRBMs to carry the weapons on into Tel Aviv. At the same time, they are running just ahead of a popular revolt against their oppressive, Sharia-based government. Israel, on the other hand, knows the threat, and has constructed and purchased weapons to meet that threat. They have successfully tested an anti-missile system, the Arrow. They have purchased several hundred bunker busters from the US. They have in stock somewhere just under a 100 nuclear weapons, and should be more than able to defend themselves. The Mullahs are cunning and creative killers. They have learned the lesson Israel gave Saddam well, after the 1981 airstrike wiped out Iraq’s single nuclear weapons manufacturing facility. The Mullahs have dispersed, buried and hardened their nuclear facilities, and an attacker will never be sure that they have eliminated them all in a series of strikes. Big Lizards Blog writer Dafydd ab Hugh has been speculating about a decapitation strike against Iran, taking out the Mullahs running the country in a single strike, and opening the door for a popular revolt. This may indeed be worth considering, though as we saw in 2003 going after Saddam in a series of precisely targeted airstrikes, actually hitting the bad guys while they are on the run is a lot harder than talking about it. Finally, Limbaugh Friday discussed some commentary out of James Risen’s anti-Bush book. Apparently Risen discovered a CIA operation in 2000 against Iran that was supposed to give the Iranians a non-functional trigger for their nuclear device, fooling them into using it and delaying their successful weapons test by years. The news here is that the Clinton administration and the intelligence community six years ago had decided that the Iranians were actively building a bomb and set an operation in place to shut it down. The operation was easily uncovered by the Iranians, as the trigger was based on Russian technology and the Russians were helping them. It also may have been uncovered because Iran has penetrated our intelligence apparatus here in the US much like the Soviets had done in the 1980s.

3. CFR. Last Thursday Limbaugh discussed how John McCain ( RINO, AZ) nicely protected his own funding sources in the writing of McCain-Feingold via an exemption for tribal donations. McCain has been a loyal backer of Native American and tribal issues, receiving over twice the amount of tribal donations than any other politician listed. McCain’s exemption allows tribes to donate up to $500,000 when other non-tribal entities are limited to a maximum of $25,000. The tribes are essentially unlimited in campaign donations, and have used their newly found advantage to dump just a boatload of money into the political system since CFR was passed. McCain wants to get the money out of politics, except for the money his supporters get to donate. That money is acceptable. McCain’s cover has been blown and he ends up being simply another self-serving politician who takes care of himself while pontificating about corruption in politics. And his self-serving solution to political corruption opened the door for some real lowlifes like Jack Abramoff who have figured out how to take the free tribal money and parlay it into political heft for a couple congresses. McCain-Feingold is a very bad piece of legislation, perhaps the worst that President Bush signed. It needs to be repealed at the earliest opportunity and replaced with a simple campaign finance reform with no limits on monetary contributions and a simple requirement to report any and all donations within 24 hours to the general public.

4. McCain. John McCain, ( RINO, AZ) was on a road trip last week, traveling to Antarctica with three of his close friends in the Senate – Susan Collins, (R, MA) and John Sununu (R, NH). A newspaper article in an NZ paper referred to the trip (which passed thru NZ on the way south) as the March of the RINOs. Expect a new conference following the trip on the ravages of global warming to the Southern Hemisphere. Of course, they choose local summer to visit Antarctica, which ought to be reasonably warm (comparatively).

5. Abramoff. Leftists and their media sycophants are desperately trying to turn the Abramoff scandal into a purely Republican affair. Unfortunately for them, Abramoff was an equal opportunity trader in influence. Numbers of potential congressional targets for prosecutors range from 6-60, and the recipients of donations appear to be nearly equally divided in number, though Captain’s Qu arters blog ran the numbers and found that about twice the dollar amount went to Republicans. Remember that Abramoff is doing all this with tribal dollars, all donated to the political process via McCain’s intentional CFR loophole. Abramoff was able to find McCain’s loophole, get his hands on a bunch of money, spread that money far and wide, buying and wielding influence that those free campaign dollars represented to the politicians. A bunch of people p articipated. I am not real keen on the proposed reform of lobbying rules proposed by the Stupid P arty leadership in the House. For decades, everything the politicians have done to the laws governing campaigns have only made the problems worse, empowered more subterfuge, and sown the seeds of more sneaky, underhanded, backroom dealings. It is long past time to pass some real campaign reform, which will in turn impact – and hopefully fix – the problems caused by congress and the FEC over the last half century. The reform? It’s real simple. All you need to do is to eliminate all limitations on donations, eliminate all rules on advertising, all rules on campaigns. Let both sides have at it hammer and tong. The only rule ought to be a requirement for (relatively) immediate and complete disclosure of contributions and contributors – say, within 24 hours of banking the check or taking the in-kind contribution of manpower, expertise, equipment and / or support. Let the marketplace decide who has been bought and paid for. Let the voters decide for themselves. Let the truth out and trust the people of America to do the right thing. Along with this you will end up with a move of power and influence out of Washington DC. The voters can hasten that move by supporting candidates that will force the size, power, scope, and majesty of the government at all levels into successively smaller and smaller shoeboxes. A small government won’t have enough going on to feed the school of sharks masquerading as lobbyists. This ought to be a conservative goal for the next half century.

6. FISA. We now have the specter of two FISA judges leaking their opinions to reporters before any trials come before them. Two of the FISA court judges last week spoke to the Washington Post on condition on anonymity, and opined that they were not properly briefed by the Bush administration, and demanded a full briefing on the NSA wiretapping effort. Andrew McC arthy in National Review Online Thurs. ripped into them as having committed the basest form of judicial malfeasance, when they wondered out loud to the reporter that the warrants they signed could be put into question by defense lawyers on the basis of the existence of the NASA program. Defense attorneys could potentially use those warrants as a vehicle to litigate away all evidence gathered under the warrants. Apparently these two judges are more than willing to help them. McC arthy ripped them for commenting on cases before they were to come before the court for adjudication. He noted that this violates all cannons of judicial ethics at all levels and demanded that the two judges be brought before congressional committees to explain themselves – which probably won’t happen. These self-anointed fools have no constitutional role in war making. For that matter, outside of writing the checks, either does congress. These people need to be removed from the federal bench at the earliest opportunity.

7. Florida Supremes. The Florida Supreme Court on a 5-2 ruling tossed out a statewide voucher program last week. The program tossed one of three voucher programs in operation in Florida, and it did the deed in such a manner as to eventually shut all three down completely. The excuse the Fla. Supremes used was the notion that the voucher program would undermine public education and the public schools system required by the state constitution. The two judges that dissented wrote that there was nothing in the state constitution prohibiting the state from offering alternatives to public schools. Expect the state legislature to get involved with this one, perhaps to the point of passing a constitutional amendment specifically making vouchers legal. The Fla. Supremes sidestepped the question of separation of church and state used by leftists to keep kids out of private schools with religious affiliations, so this excuse remains on the table when the next lawsuit is brought. As expected, the newspapers, democrats, union droids and their sycophants all supported the decisions. Conservatives, Republicans and parents with kids in failing and unresponsive schools all were disgusted by the decision and the logic leading to it. Miami Herald, Fri.

8. Subsistence. Finally, the Federal Subsistence Board here in Alaska is expected sometime January to hand down a decision that will allow local native separatists on the Kenai peninsula south of Anchorage to st art putting nets in the water and take trophy rainbow trout for purposes of subsistence. This outrage will quickly decimate one of the truly great trophy rainbow fisheries on this continent. The only thing the Federal Subsistence Board bases its decision upon is the “customary and traditional” use of the resource. Subsistence fishing has been banned on the Kenai since 1952, and most of the locals fill their freezers with red and king salmon quite easily under the state-managed personal use and sport fisheries. The Board also is considering requests to allow subsistence fishing for steelhead (oceangoing rainbow trout) in the nearby Kasilof River. Subsistence is one of the real political disasters locally, allowing unrestricted fishing of species that do not exist in sufficient numbers for sport fishing. Subsistence is also an excellent vehicle for unscrupulous leftist politicians (are there any other type of leftist politicians out there?) to play Alaska Natives against whites. A rural preference for subsistence is a violation of the notion of equal treatment under the law. It is a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. It is a violation of all the Civil Rights Acts. It affirms the religion of Alaska Natives via federal law while giving no similar affirmation to religion of anyone else. It is a bad idea whose time has passed decades if not generations ago and should be immediately repealed before local beneficiaries – the Alaska Natives - strip the fish from the streams like their brethren have done in Washington state and Oregon under similar preferential treatment.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuv alleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http:/ /home.gci.net /~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/

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