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by Alex Gimarc Mon., Sept. 25, 2006 Interesting Items 9/25 – Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. Same Sex 1. Same Sex. The leftists comprising the Alaska state judiciary injected themselves into the gubernatorial race last week with a ruling against the state regarding benefits for same sex couples working for the state. As the homosexual rights folks used the judiciary to shove their view of the world down the collective throats of all Americans, states have responded by passing constitutional amendments defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. A few state supreme courts have ignored the very clear will of the people expressed in the passage of such amendments. Alaska is one of them. We passed ours in 1998. It took the state supreme court a mere seven years to complete ignore it with a ruling a year ago that twisted the wording and intent of the amendment to a requirement that the state provide benefits for same sex couples – essentially discriminating against opposite sex couples that are simply living together. The ruling told the state to create some rules implementing their unconstitutional decision. As expected, the state has been dragging its feet and the homosexual activists, backed by the ACLU went back to court to force the issue. Early last week, a state judge tossed out state rules requiring same sex couples to file an affidavit attesting to the long-term, committed nature of their relationship. The gays, the ACLU and the Hickel / Knowles appointed judge thought this was too burdensome and tossed the new rules. The issue of judges ought to be a huge winner for the conservative nominee this campaign, for who do we want deciding great issues here in Alaska – our elected representatives or unelected, unaccountable political appointees sitting on the state bench? AP, Weds. 2. Aborto Debate. Democrat candidate for Alaska Governor Tony Knowles scraped the scab off the abortion debate here in the state with a nicely timed anti-Palin polemic mailed to several thousand of his pro-choice supporters last week . From a political standpoint, it appears that Knowles has some problems with his supporters and may be in the midst of shoring up his base. Of course his cheerleaders in the Alaska media – the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) and Channel 2 here in Anchorage had their he arts all aflutter over the contents of the letter. The current governor, Frank Murkowski, is nominally pro-life and has been supportive of legislative efforts over the years to restrict abortion. The last large fight over the issue here in the state was in 1997-8 when the Alaska Legislature overrode Knowles vetoes of a ban to p artial birth abortion. The legislation passed, went into effect, and was tossed by a Alaska Superior Court Judge in 1998. Knowles has a lot to answer for with his veto. Palin can once again take out after out of touch and unaccountable judges sitting in the state judiciary, ignoring the state constitution and making law. She can also remind every single voter here in Alaska of the awful, awful thing Knowles, Planned Parenthood and the state courts are defending in their support of p artial birth abortion. She can then go on and simply celebrate life and support permanent, irrevocable, bulletproof adoptions for unwanted children here in Alaska. This one is a clear political winner. 3. Roadless. A Clinton appointee to the federal bench in 1998, Elizabeth Laporte reinstated Clinton’s Roadless Forest order last week using the excuse that the Bush administration had not performed the proper environmental impact study in overturning the ban. In doing so, this environmentalist-friendly Clinton appointee seems to be saying that anyone, anywhere can limit or restrict the use of federal lands without regard to congressional direction or intent, but to remove such a restriction requires the following administration to jump through every conceivable hoop the environmentalists and their cheerleaders in the federal judiciary want to force them to jump through. Laporte has made quite a name for herself as an environmentalist-friendly judge in recent years. She previously halted naval tests of new sonar until they completed environmental impact statements proving the new sonar wouldn’t harm the whales and dolphins. In 2001 she issued an injunction restricting activity in two California wilderness areas. If there ever was a judge in need of removal from the federal bench by congress, I would nominate this lady. Expect the roadless ban to be appealed and or modified by the Bush administration in future months. The roadless forests also touches us up here in Alaska, as it includes large tracts of the Tongass National Forest in Southesat Alaska. This is also a potential issue for the gubernatorial election in November, as former governor Tony Knowles (D) stood by and did nothing while his friends and supporters in the environmental community and the Clinton administration shut down logging over his two terms as governor destroying thousands of high-paying jobs in southeast Alaska. 4. Ansari. The first female space tourist lifted off to the space station in a Soyuz early this last week. Anousesh Ansari is an immigrant from Iran, who became a multi-millionaire after setting up a telecommunications firm that was highly successful and that she sold. Her mission patches were the US flag on one shoulder and the Iranian flag on the other. Someone – either NASA or the State Dep artment – forced her to remove the Iranian flag from her space suit before launch. This demonstrates once again why we need to do a thorough housecleaning in Foggy Bottom, for nothing would be nicer for the Mullahs to contemplate than an Iranian-born woman becoming the first female space tourist. It would give the people of Iran something to celebrate and demonstrate yet again what is possible for Iranians to do when they operate in a free society. In kowtowing to the Mullahs, the State Dep artment, NASA and everyone else involved demonstrate cowardice in submitting to Iran, Islam, and the Mullahs governing Iran. Nice job, guys. 5. Bigelow. Robert Bigelow’s Bigelow Aerospace announced last week the first commercial manned space platform, with a goal of being in operation in orbit by 2012. Last July, they launched their first test article, a subscale inflatable module, complete with attitude control, power, communications and shielding. They intend to fly several more test articles before they launch their operational hardware. Bigelow announced the follow-on to the X-Prize late last year – a $50 million prize to the first company that can fly passengers into orbit, and then turn the vehicle and do it again within a week. The prize expires in 2010. Lockheed-M artin and Bigelow announced last week a study that would look into man-rating the Atlas V for passenger flight. The initial space platform will be capable of supporting a crew of three – which is a small number until you realize that it is precisely the same number of people that the ISS today normally supports and the same number of people that manned Skylab over 30 years ago. We appear to be on our way, for while Bigelow may be the first to provide habitable volume on orbit, he won’t be the last. Space.com, Sat. 6. Juden. Democrat activists, the Webb campaign in Virginia, their nutroots supporters on the web, and local reporters pulled one of the more despicable political stunts in recent memory – bringing George Allen’s (R, VA) mother’s original religious affiliation. The issue hit the public airways Tuesday with the following question from a local TV reporter-ette during a debate (PowerLine, Weds):
Allen responded angrily to the question and the questioner, for the very clear implication from the media, the leftists, the Webb campaign that is feeding off this, that having a Jewish family heritage is somehow something you need to explain away, apologize for, or otherwise be ashamed of. Democrats ought to be very, very careful about the growing infestation of anti-Semitism in their p arty and among their supporters. Had anyone on the right asked such a thing, they would have been instantly, completely and deservedly destroyed in the media. The Webb campaign was doing pretty good for a while, but this is no way to win an election – any election. 7. Nasrallah. Finally, the coward who heads up Hezbollah, Hasam Nasrallah came out from hiding under his rock in the Iranian Embassy in Beirut long enough to preside over a victory rally Friday. Unfortunately no Israeli UAV or flight of jets were overhead with ordinance at ready, for he survived long enough to deliver his rant and then left, to return back into hiding. Too bad. More later – - AG Interesting Items Interesting Items 9/18 – Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. PERS 1. PERS. Public employees at the state and local levels here in Alaska p articipate in the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS). This is a defined benefit program that is nearly 30 years old. Like all defined benefit programs in the government and private sectors, ours is hemorrhaging money – mainly due to uncontrolled health care costs. At the end of the Knowles administration four years ago, the uncovered obligation was around $4.4 billion. Today, it is around $6.9 billion. As the years have gone by, various legislatures have changed the flow of free money to retirees a bit by setting up new Tiers, each with a bit less in defined benefit, less health care promised, and more rules. Two years ago, the Alaska Legislature took an action to deal with the problem by setting up a revised program – essentially a 401K-style program for all new employees – Tier IV. This new Tier has been reviled by the union droids representing state employees, primarily because the 401K style retirement puts the money directly in the hands of the members rather than the union leadership. As a result, they have been making significant contributions to democrat and some Republican candidates for office over the last three election cycles to elect people that will roll this back. One of the other things that the enabling legislation did was remove a 5% cap on the dollar amounts that the state PERS board can ask local governments to reimburse the system. Last Monday, the PERS Board, in their first attempt to address the shortfall announced the FY2008 reimbursements for local governments. This was the first installment of a 25-year long plan to fix the system. It was a very large amount. It blew up local budgets statewide. The screams of pain were deafening. In response, Governor Murkowski recommended that the next legislature use a $1 billion of a state budget surplus (due to unexpectedly high oil prices this year) to meet the next two years of reimbursement increases. Note that the current system is economically unworkable until someone, somewhere, somehow addresses the explosive growth of medical costs. This sets up an interesting political discussion for the current gubernatorial campaign. On the one hand, we have former governor Knowles, who is beholden to the union droids, trial lawyers and greens that fund him. He was the guy in office when this problem really took off and did nothing then to fix it. Today, Knowles has already demanded the repeal of Tier IV – the only thing done in years to fix the problem. He is running around the state, busily pandering to everyone that will listen, promising free money for as long and as far as he can throw it. His plan to fix the rising costs and obligations of state medical care is to nationalize it – universal health care, or Hillary-Care – the one thing that will not only make medical care here in Alaska all but unavailable to everyone, but it will also make it unaffordable for everyone. Knowles, the democrats, the lawyers, and the union droids think they will be able to dip directly into the Permanent Fund to cover these obligations. And should they not be able to get to that free money via legislation, I am sure they plan on going through the courts to steal from the Permanent Fund. On the other hand, we have former Wasilla Mayor, Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee, who is running as a conservative. Palin has a real opportunity here to address the outstanding problem posed by unfunded PERS medical costs. The first thing she ought to do is to promise that the State of Alaska will fulfill its obligations to current retirees. The second thing she needs to do is to freeze payments from PERS to retirees to current dollar amounts – no more cost of living increases until the outstanding obligation is closed. Next she needs to work with the Alaska congressional delegation for enabling legislation that will allow the State of Alaska to set up Medical Savings Accounts (or something similar) that are completely tax free at the federal level, with no limits on individual donations, with a state match of donations up to whatever dollar amount the legislature thinks is appropriate, that are fully portable, that are fully transferable – tax free – after death. Require all Tier IV employees to enter into the MSA program. Allow Tiers I-III employees and retirees to opt into them should they choose to do so. The only limitation on MSAs ought to be their use for health needs including but not limited to long-term care and insurance. The Palin campaign can go a long way to putting a responsible government back into place should they opt into the MSA structure. Unions will hate it, for it removes a form of control they have over their membership. She should also go after trial lawyers in an attempt to control get rich quick lawsuits against doctors, hospitals and other medical service providers. If she gets this under way and makes any progress at all, she will go a long way toward controlling the upward push on medical costs. This is an opportunity to do something good and something real, and it will go a long way toward defining and defeating Knowles and his supporters. 2. Hacking. Apparently campaign operatives working in the Phil Angelides (D) campaign for California governor poked around inside the state computer network a week or two ago. They found an audio clip belonging to Governor Schwarzenegger speaking glowing about hot Latina blood and released it to the LA Times in an attempt to embarrass him and paint him as a racist. The lady he was speaking about is a Latino Republican member of the State Assembly and describes herself that way, and wasn’t offended at all. She is proud of it. The purveyors of Political Correctness and multiculturalism tried very hard to create a scandal with the audio clip for a day or two until people st arted asking where they got the audio clip from and how it came into their hands. It turns out that a computer in the Governor’s system was hacked by democrat operatives working for the campaign. The state computer system was not well secured so the breach was fairly easy. The excuse we are getting out of the democrats and their apologists is that Schwarzenegger didn’t lock down the state system well enough, and because it was wide open, it is not their fault that they entered the system and downloaded whatever they found. This logic is the functional equivalent of someone walking into an unlocked house and taking whatever they want to take because the door wasn’t locked. Stealing is still stealing. Thievery is still thievery. And it appears that the democrats are the ones doing the deed on a regular basis. Lesson here for other campaigns is to always secure and encrypt your stuff. Be especially careful with laptops, as they can be stolen, exploited and data read. Be careful with your people, as they are typically young and / or volunteers and either inexperienced or untrained in data security practices. Spend the money to run a secure operation. If the democrats are already doing this in California in a campaign they have little chance of winning, imagine what they will be doing in October in other campaigns they actually do have a chance of winning. As an aside, apparently this action has triggered a federal and state investigation into the hacking as it violates both state and federal law. Captain’s Qu arters, Weds. 3. Airstrike. The New York Post Weds ran a photo, complete with aiming reticle, of over 150 Taliban massed for a funeral in Afghanistan. The photo was from a UAV overhead. CENTCOM Rules of Engagement (thank you, JAGs) apparently don’t allow us to attack the enemy when they are in a cemetery. The photo was apparently leaked by frustrated CENTCOM intelligence personnel who were not allowed to attack the massed Taliban. CENTCOM refused to comment and is now investigating the leak. The photo hit the blogs and talk radio Weds. Combat Rules of Engagement (ROE) are normally written and enforced by staff Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) – military lawyers. It appears that even the lawyers in uniform don’t have the stomach for this fight either. Malkin, Weds. More later – - AG Interesting Items Interesting Items 9/11 – Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. Gulf Oil 1. Gulf Oil. Chevron and several p artners announced a substantial oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. After a series of exploratory wells drilled in over 7,000 feet of water nearly 200 miles off the coast of Louisiana, the oil companies think they have another find the size of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in hand. Development of these wells, which are extremely deep, one well being over 25,000 feet deep, is hugely expensive, perhaps more expensive than current wells outside the Arctic, by a factor of 30. But the volume of oil available makes the economics work out nicely. This is a significant find, and if developed, should equal the yearly volume that we get from Saudi Arabia. Should we ever get the opportunity to develop oil in ANWR on the Alaska North Slope, we will bring in yet another volume of oil equal to that of Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Add oil exploration and development ongoing in NPR-A, to the west of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, and you go a long way toward making this nation energy independent in a very short period of time. Additionally, when you st art drilling and producing significant oil here in the US, you instantly st art cutting off money into the Middle Eastern kleptocracies that are funneling oil money into the hands of Wahabbis, their sympathizers, and those that aid and abet terrorists intent on killing us. All in all, not a bad outcome at all. WSJ, Tues. 2. NPR-A. Environmentalists fighting oil lease sales in NPR-A won a temporary victory in federal court when a judge in Anchorage issued an opinion that the state and feds were in violation of the Endangered Species Act because they hadn’t considered the cumulative impact of oil drilling and production in the are. Note that this area, the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, was set aside by the Navy in the 1920s as a future source of oil for military activities. Oil seeps are thick in the area, as they were in Prudhoe Bay, leading the oil exploration and development guys to believe that there is significant oil underlying it. There is even one local lake in the area named Oil Lake. I expect the name came from the pristine water in the lake. Not! 3. Haliegh. Michelle Malkin posted a follow-up to the health and recovery of Haleigh Poultre, the 11 year old child abuse victim in Massachusetts. To recap her story, she was a little girl who had been beat by her father to the point where she was removed from the family, hospitalized, pronounced profoundly brain damaged and in an unrecoverable vegetative state. As this happened shortly after the Schiavo murder by the State of Florida’s Courts, the Dep artment of Social Services proceeded to take the same action against her that the Florida Courts and pro-death people in Florida did to Terry Schiavo. An outcry ensued, and her biological mother and grandmother managed to publicly embarrass DSS to the point where they were unable to pull the plug. Since then, the little girl’s condition has improved to the point where she is eating and drinking a bit, speaking a few words and seems to be (slowly) on the road to recovery. This recovery has triggered the bureaucratic CYA response from DSS, who last week terminated visitation rights for the two family members. Malkin ends the article from last Sunday with the following: “Keep Haleigh in your thoughts and prayers. There is a powerful institutional motive for covering up Haleigh's progress. Don't forget her.” 4. Cantwell. Former Hillary gal-pal Maria Cantwell (D, WA) is in a tight race for reelection in Washington state. She was initially elected entirely on the strength of votes from the Seattle-Tacoma area, and has been referred to as the Senator from king County. Her opponent, Mike McGavick was closing the gap nicely until he announced a 1993 DWI in Maryland. While the Cantwell campaign didn’t use the revelation directly, all her supporters, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did and he slipped in the polls. Now the revelation is on the other foot as Cantwell has apparently steered $11 million of federal spending to companies represented by a firm owned and operated by a campaign advisor that she owes $15-50,000 in old loans. On its face, this appears to be a straight payback – earmarks to an unpaid member of her campaign whom she is in debt to. We will see if the local media goes into thundering denunciations of this news like they did McGavick’s DWI and note that she is not fit for office either. I expect they won’t, as she is both a democrat and a leftist. Captain’s Qu arters, Fri. 5. Menedez. Democrat Senator Robert Menedez (D, NJ), appointed to the US Senate by John Corzine after Corzine was elected NJ Governor is up to his ears in financial scandal, as the feds launched a probe into his personal finances. The probe is into rental deal between Menedez when he was a Congressman and the North Hudson Community Action Corporation. The feds subpoenaed records about a house formerly owned by Menedez that is now owned by the corporation. Observers are wondering if this was a similar transaction to the one that finally took out Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R, CA). As this is NJ, bloggers are also wondering if state democrats will pull the same stunt they did in 2002, removing embattled incumbent US Senator Robert Toricelli (D, NJ) long after the legal substitution date. They then went to the leftists sitting on the NJ Supreme Court and asked that they be allowed to replace the Torch with Frank Lautenberg. The court happily tossed out existing state law and allowed the democrats to put Lautenberg on the ballot. If state democrats try to do this again, Lautenberg may become the first democrat to hold two senate seats simultaneously (tongue firmly in cheek). Still, state democrats are sitting on a real mess, and they have successfully broken state law in the past to keep their people in congress. Expect them to react the same way this time around. Hugh Hewitt, Fri. 6. McCaskill. Democrat nominee for US Senate in Missouri, running against incumbent Jim Talent (R) went into moonbat mode last week with the observation that "George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black." (Quotation courtesy of Hugh Hewitt, Fri.). The race is currently in a statistical dead heat, so she needs to get her troops fired up, especially in the St. Louis area where voter fraud in the black neighborhoods was major factor in the last few senatorial elections. Appears she is appealing to the nuttery in those neighborhoods to turn out the vote in November. 7. Path to 9/11. Finally, national democrats were in high dudgeon last week over ABC’s miniseries the Path to 9/11. The outcry grew increasingly more frantic as the week wore on, with very real written threats by congressional democrats in both Houses of Congress to pull ABC’s broadcast licenses. Clinton himself and his lawyers contacted the Chairman of Disney, who owns ABC to strong-arm him into pulling the program. ABC refused. However, they did edit out (they thought) some of the more damning portions. Democrats badly overplayed their hands on this one, especially with the threats to pull broadcast licenses. After all the caterwauling they have done over the years about the Bush administration censoring this and that, what is their very first response to broadcast of something that will put them in poor light? They demand a broadcast be censored or the broadcaster will lose their license. Nice. Additionally, with all the noise they made about the program, they provided more word of mouth advertisement for the program than ABC or Disney ran, jacking up the viewer ship far larger than it would have been. Finally, the devastating p art of the program was not specific scenes, but the overall cavalier, unserious way the Clinton administration was depicted as it attempted to deal with the terrorist war Bin Laden had declared against us in 1998. Our enemies were also depicted as absolute evil, cowards hiding in the shadows plotting to kill the innocent. The program was seriously flawed, but serves as a reminder of what our enemies are all about and what democrats did and didn’t do about them when they last had the chance. More later – - AG Interesting Items Interesting Items 9/04 – Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. FBI Raid 1. FBI Raid. FBI agents raided the offices of 11 state legislators (mostly Republicans), the offices of Veco (an oil services contractor) and spoke to the officers of CIRI (Cook Inlet Regional Corporation – a native corporation) last week. According to the Anchorage Daily News (our in-town left-wing fishwrapper), the raids were intended to develop information about campaign donations in return for legislative support for the oil industry. The fact that this is taking place 60 days before the general election is highly suspicious, for it knocks out a substantial player (Veco) who does not have a local reputation for corruption from this years’ campaign. The four primary officers of Veco have donated substantial money into local politics – both democrat and Republican candidates - for over a decade. One of the local talk show hosts did the math and figured it was individually just over $14,000 yearly. Under the current state campaign laws, corporations cannot donate directly to candidates. So far the feds are keeping very quiet about the target of their investigations. However, given that the left wingers want to do everything possible to get (Phony) Tony Knowles back into the governor’s seat, some are wondering if this was a political hit intended to lay the foundation for Knowles election via creating the appearance of rampant corruption among both the oil industry and Republicans statewide. An alternate theory is that the raids were intended to derail work toward approval of the contract for the natural gas pipeline – which it has. We don’t know how much stroke the leftists still have in the Dep artment of Justice, but the question is being asked and the timing is highly suspicious. 2. Reformers. The political implications of over two dozen raids into the offices of Veco, 11 state legislators (mostly Republican) and a native corporation are interesting to consider. The well funded Knowles campaign (union and out of state environmentalist money) hit the airwaves first with a laughable claim that electing him would bring integrity and honesty back into state government. Knowles got a free ride from a sympathetic media in the state for eight solid years, and little was reported. Conversely, the Knowles holdovers left in state government after Murkowski was elected created scandal after scandal out of everything that Murkowski tried to do for his four years in office. Surprisingly, nobody was indicted or went to jail for anything. One Commissioner paid a fine for sending private e-mails out over the state network, a charge he could have won in court. But that was it. The Republican candidate, Sarah Palin has run on a platform promising to clean up the mess in state government, something which will nicely distance her from the potential festivities should things get ugly. Expect the local media to do everything humanly possible to tie this one firmly around the collective necks of state Republicans as they assist Knowles in his run for office. 3. IRS Ruling. Two weeks ago, a federal appeals court wrote an opinion that redefined income for tax purposes – putting a limit on what the IRS could tax. This is a profound change should it withstand appeal. The case concerned a lady who had won a judgment that included compensation for physical distress (not taxed) and emotional distress (taxed). Her lawyers argued that compensation for non-physical injury ought not to be taxed as it makes one whole rather than better off (income). The court bought this argument. Should this logic stand up, it will render unrealized capital gains in things like retirement accounts completely tax free, as it is compensation for loss of immediate satisfaction. The writer, Bruce B artlett in Town Hall last Tuesday, believes this will eventually lead us to a pure consumption tax. As such, it is a very big deal. 4. Wolf Kill. Environmental supporters of democrat candidate (Phony) Tony Knowles returned to state court last week in their ongoing attempt to shut down hunting for wolf and bear in Alaska. They filed suit against the State Game Board in an effort to shut down the predator control program in central Alaska. We have been around this merry go round many, many times before in court – winning some and losing some. But there seems to be no penalty for the greens to go to court at the time after time after time on the same subject. Predator control is hugely important, for the excess populations of wolf and bear in Alaska wipe out moose and caribou populations – mostly by decimating the young. There is a Game Management Unit across Cook Inlet from Anchorage that has only 15 of every hundred young moose surviving their first year of life due to large numbers of bear. We have a real problem with excess wolf and bear in this state, which is why we are trying to cut their numbers significantly. The greens and the democrat politicians they contribute to don’t like this a lot. Anchorage Daily News, Weds. 5. MCRI Ruling. The opposition to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) engaged in a bit of judge shopping in their attempt to remove the initiative from the November ballot. They found a friendly federal judge in Detroit who wrote an outrageous opinion last week that gave them everything they wanted. The judge in a two day, non-jury trial, completely bought into the notion that blacks who signed the petition that put the initiative on the ballot were simply too stupid to read it, and because they were blacks, simply couldn’t possibly agree with the initiative, and therefore, massive fraud must have been committed in gathering the signatures. The initiative opposition – By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) - got the signatures from the initiative, contacted a bunch of the signers that lived in black neighborhoods in Michigan, and made a series of high-pressure phone calls to them strongly encouraging them to recant their support and agree to BAMN’s position that signatures by blacks on this initiative were impossible. They got enough to recant so that they could pursue their lawsuit against the initiative. The supposed fraud committed did not remove a sufficient number of names to get the initiative tossed off the ballot, but should provide grounds for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to remove it from the ballot on appeal. The opinion further goes on to smear the backers of the initiative. As expected, the judge was a Clinton appointee, Arthur J. Tarnow. If his logic stands up, this will allow federal judges to intervene in any and all elections, ballot initiatives, signature gathering efforts – essentially taking control of elections away from the people and their elected officials and putting it squarely in the hands of the federal judiciary. This opinion dare not stand. Opinion Journal, Thurs. 6. Hold. Bloggers outed Senator Ted Stevens (R, AK) and Robert Byrd (Kleagle, WV) as two who put secret holds on Senator Tom Coburn’s (R, OK) legislation to create a national database of federal spending – the pork database. For porkmeisters like Stevens and Byrd, this is a very bad thing indeed, so they stopped it for a bit and hid out while they did the deed. They were eventually outed by the work of industrious bloggers and were in the process of releasing the bill for action. As an Alaskan, I am not a bit upset with Stevens removing several pounds of flesh from his opponents in the Senate. I believe it is long past time that he inflicted some serious payback to those who continue to lock up natural resources in this state, prohibit drilling in ANWR, and oppose road and bridge construction while quietly obtaining roads and bridges and other federal goodies for their own states. As a conservative, I believe his action is misdirected, for he ought to be making his case for pork in an open environment – where everyone knows who is getting which pork. And if it is all out there in the light of day for the general public to see and investigate, there will be less overall spending, which is a very good thing. One final note on this one: In a conversation with Stevens’ office here in Anchorage, I was told that the reason for the hold was that the costs of implementation of this bill were unknown and at issue. Apparently the bill puts the responsibility for reporting what is received on the recipients of the cash rather than the feds who dole it out, making it yet another unfunded mandate on small and other businesses by the feds. Haven’t verified this as yet. More later – - AG "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."
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