Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, Jan 2008

1. Tongass. The Bush administration published the latest iteration of their Tongass National Forest Management Plan late last week. In it, the administration designated three million acres of the 17 million acre forest open for logging. The rest have been removed so that cruise ship passengers won’t have to look at the “ugly scars” of clear cut logging in the forest. Indeed, the tourist industry has been a double edged sword up here, bringing in the money while pressuring the locals to shut down industries that rely on extracting and using natural and renewable resources. We may be getting to the point where tourist dollars are too expensive to chase. The Tongass comprises much of the Alaskan southeast, on the western border of British Columbia. Greens, st arting in the Clinton administration, all but destroyed a thriving logging industry over the last 15 years. The new management plan, while not the best solution is a solid step forward. The three million acres open for logging will allow sales of about 267 million board feet of timber to be sold and logged on a rotating basis yearly. The roadless forest opponents are already out complaining about the decision, as 82% of the forest locked up against logging is not a big enough win for them. From my standpoint, this is an acceptable st art, certainly not a finish. ADN, Sat.

2. Dust. Our local McClatchy fishwrapper, the Anchorage Daily News has swung hard left over the course of the last year as they elevated arch-environmentalist Matt Zency, who assisted the Clinton administration, local greens and the courts in destroying access, road construction and the logging industry in the Tongass National Forest as one of their lead editors. We have been treated to an increasing flow of breathless, doomsday front page editorials masquerading as news stories reporting of environmental issues on almost a daily basis. The ADN, formerly a democrat and union mouthpiece, is now all enviro-disaster, all the time. One such story last Monday worried about the excessive dust from the Red Dog Mine near Kivalina in far northwestern Alaska. The mine is owned and operated by a native corporation; is an open pit mine; and is one of the major producers of zinc in the world. The mine is connected to the sea by a 54-mile long haul road constructed by the mining company. When you grind a mountain to dust, you get dust. When you lay crushed rocks down on the tundra as a gravel road, and move the mountain from the mine to the shipping point, you get dust. This dust contains ground up mountains, which usually contain more metals than the resident plant life contains. Imagine the surprise of everyone involved when the feds find increased amounts of metals in the tundra plants adjacent to the haul road. The feds proclaimed the dust as pollution, designating the mine as the worst polluting business in the state, if not the country. Interesting designation, and should it stand, every single dirt road nationwide would be a source of pollution for the surrounding plant life. The writer interviewed all the usual suspects, including local villagers who claim to be worried about the dust. The EPA and the state DEC are now reviewing the results promising to take “appropriate” action. Environmentalists, long in opposition to any hard rock mining in this state, are busily writing their briefs, intending to use the high dust levels as a vehicle to get some black-robed, Clinton appointed, simpering twit sitting on a federal bench to order the mine shut down. I told you all that to tell you this. What is the claimed problem here? Ground up mountains. What else out there grinds up mountains? Glaciers!! And they do it naturally, with the dust going everywhere. Here in Anchorage, we sit some 50 miles or so south of the Matanuska Glacier. The closest town to the glacier and the ice field it flows from is Palmer. Palmer is famous (infamous) for high winds, which blow off the glacier much of the warmer times of the year. And when those winds blow, they pick up lots and lots of dust – ground up mountains – deposited by the glacier at its face. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever done a study of increased metallic content in local plants, lichens and mosses due to the glacial dust downwind from the Matanuska or any other Alaskan glacier. Once again, context is everything. Rather than being lauded for using the leftover rock from the mining operations to protect the tundra (the gravel road from the Red Dog mine to the Chuchki Sea), the Nana Corporation is being reviled for despoiling the pristine wilderness of lichens, mosses and permafrost. What rot.

3. Warming. Yet another day, yet another out of context scare story from the ADN. This one concerns a draft Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory Report being prepared by the rocket scientists at the state DEC. The headline on this story was: “State plays large role in world's warming. Per Capita: Alaska inventory finds jet flights, energy use to blame.” The front page, above the fold story describes in excruciating detail an inventory being prepared by the state of Alaska Dep artment of Environmental Conservation. The document takes human activity and applies estimates of carbon dioxide, methane and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. In other states, these sorts of estimates have been the precursors to state mandates to tax, cap or otherwise control the emissions. The problem with this inventory is that it neither considers natural greenhouse gas emissions nor puts their estimates into context with everything else that is going on in the natural world on a daily basis. More importantly, the inventory report does not include the effects of water vapor, responsible for upwards of 95% of the entire effect. Natural sources for carbon dioxide, methane and sulfur dioxide up here in Alaska include volcanic eruptions, forest fires – massive forest fires, and the decomposition of natural materials in bogs, muskeg and the tundra. It does not include the contribution of growing plants. In short, it little more than a political document, fatally flawed, and worth little more than the paper it will be printed upon. Finally, despite what the Goreists may claim, there is no scientific connection, causal relationship between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and episodes of global cooling or global warming. We are paying for this sort of junk science with our tax dollars.

4. Conoco. One of the major oil producers on the Alaska North Slope, Conoco Philips, announced an agreement with TransCanada, an agreement to jointly build and operate an oil pipeline that will deliver Canadian crude to refineries in Illinois and Texas. The deal is important, as TransCanada is the company selected by the Palin administration to construct the Alaska natural gas pipeline. TransCanada has no access to Alaskan natural gas needed to fill the pipeline. Conoco Philips has a substantial portfolio of North Slope natural gas. The fact that the two companies are now dealing on an oil pipeline is a very good sign, and may portend a future arrangement on the Alaskan natural gas pipeline. Who knows, this thing may work out after all.

5. Franken. Former Saturday Night Live writer Al Franken announced himself as a candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Norm Coleman (R, MN) earlier this year. Last week, he had his own macaca moment, in which he verbally went after a conservative college student attending one of his campaign events. Franken was boorish, nasty and demeaning, and pursued the verbal assault on the kid long enough for people at the event to get pretty uncomfortable. Unlike former US Senator from Virginia George Allen, Franken does not have the Washington Post to use the event and his actions at it to blast away at him for months before the election. The Washington Post beat up Allen on a daily basis following his macaca moment. The Minneapolis St art Tribune, yet another McClatchy leftist newspaper, brushed it off as nothing at all. Franken is a leftist troll with a nasty streak. The more he gets away with this sort of thing at campaign events, the nastier he will get. Should Minnesota choose to put him in the senate this November, senate democrats will have a bookend set of jerks between him and Jim Webb (D, VA) to entertain us for the next four years.

1. Economy
2. Thermostats
3. Bridge Collapse
4. Abortions
5. Chicago Lawyer
6. Documents

1. Economy. When the NYSE falls 900 points in three weeks something is afoot. Perhaps the anticipation of congress back in session. Last week had the economy step up to the front as a campaign issue. The candidates did the predictable things with the democrats talking about extending unemployment benefits and handing out more food stamps and the Republicans st arting to talk about tax cuts for businesses. The drive-bys were in full voice demanding a stimulus package out of congress. President Bush obliged with a package of $145 billion in tax cuts for small and other businesses. At best, they will get nothing done this year and the markets will correct themselves. A real cynic might observe that it has taken the new democrat congress a mere year to st art deflating the economy. If I were running for office against a democrat or RINO I would seriously consider making that case. But both sides have had a hand in this, as nobody – but nobody is properly addressing the energy situation which is one of the big movers behind higher prices. The Bush administration and congress have pushed corn-based ethanol as a solution to the oil shortage. This in turn has driven up prices across the board for foods. Democrats and their cronies in the regulatory sector, the trial lawyers and the greens have all but halted new construction of coal fired electric plants, with over twenty being cancelled last year. Although there are over 33 licenses for new nuclear power plants in process, nobody has turned a spade of dirt in the construction of a new plant. There was a statistic out of Laura Ingraham Friday had the US now importing 13% of our gasoline. This means that we no longer have the refining capacity – all due to licensing, regulatory, greens and trial lawyer obstructionism – to produce our own fuel. Finally, there is no effort by anyone in the congressional majority to produce more oil or natural gas; no effort to drill new wells; no effort to open more lands to exploration; no action to make it easier for the energy producers to bring more product to market. They are too busy banning the light bulb and writing new regulations vehicle MPG. If you want to stimulate the economy, perhaps a five-year holiday from environmental lawsuits, and a streamlining of the regulatory gauntlet would be in order. Sadly, not a single presidential candidate on either side of the political divide outside of Fred Thompson is talking about this.

2. Thermostats. The latest idea out of California is an attempt for the State of California to take control of the thermostat in your home. Of course this is just an “emergency” measure, intended to only be used when energy gets tight. However, in California due to overregulation, trial lawyers, greens, and democrat politicians in charge of the legislature for many a year, nothing gets built and there will always be an energy shortage. The proposal out of the California Energy Commission requires all new construction to install new thermostats that have an FM radio link to the state that will allow the state of California to set temperatures on those thermostats to whatever they want to set it to when energy gets tight. Older homes and businesses will be retrofit with the new thermostats as time goes on should the proposal pass. This is the Nanny State at its very worst. Should Californians put up with this, they will have jumped off the deep end far enough so as to all but unrecoverable. CNS News, 1/11.

3. Bridge Collapse. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August was used by Big Government types to bash the Bush administration, call for more spending on mass transit, and used as an excuse to jack up federal taxes on gasoline to fund more federal spending on infrastructure. Pontification by leftists and big government types was deafening. We now have the structural analysis of the collapse and find that the design itself was flawed and the bridge doomed from the st art. There was a period of time after WWII that bridge designs used lighter structural members. This was one of those bridge designs. That period did not last very long, as there were some immediate problems with structurally unsound new bridges. The Minneapolis Bridge had connector plates called gusset plates that ended up only half as thick as they should have been. And once the first plate failed, the rest of the plates unzipped as they were unable to stop the body of the bridge in motion. It unzipped just like the structure in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center unzipped as the top of the building st arted moving downward. Lesson here is obvious and already known – do good designs. The political lesson is also obvious: Regardless of what happens, the leftist reaction will be to raise taxes and increase spending. CQ, Weds.

4. Abortions. There is Good News out of the abortion wars: Abortions here in the US are down 25% from their post-Roe high in the 1990s. At their high, one in three pregnant women got abortions. Today, that number is down to one in every five. Today there are 1.2 million abortions being performed per year. It appears we are st arting to win the he arts and minds discussion. We are also st arting to defund Planned Parenthood. While this is good news, it is only a st art. We can and should do better.

5. Chicago Lawyer. Jay Grodner, the Chicago area lawyer who keyed the paint job of a Marine Sergeant on his way to Iraq, causing over $2,400 damage to the vehicle had his day in court. The Sergeant was not present, having been shipped out. However, the Band of Brothers stood in for him in court. Grodner was a half hour late, and was arrested on the spot when he showed up. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor – which was a gift, as the dollar amount of the damage was sufficient for a felony. He had to pay the repair cost, will serve one year’s probation, and was fined $600 payable to the Semper Fi Fund (Marine Corps fund for the wounded). As it turned out, the judge himself was a Marine, having served for a few years in the 1960s. Grodner’s attempt to slow roll the proceedings until the Sergeant was shipped out came up short. Congratulations to all involved. Malkin, Sat.

6. Documents. Judicial Watch released the first batch of presidential papers from Senator Clinton’s Health Care Task Force in 1993. The contents were well discussed in Captain’s Qu arters last Friday and Saturday. Captain Ed observed that the released papers demonstrate very well why the Clintons are fighting so hard to keep them from seeing the light of day. These are damning to the Clintons, the White House War Room, sitting US Senators (Jay Rockefeller (D, WV)), the DNC, and the media. One memo rather late in the process was skeptical of the ability to take as much control over a previously free portion of the economy in a time of peace. Another set of memos by Rockefeller called for the WH to use the media to conduct a smear campaign against opponents of the plan – literally calling for the Clintons to use the power of the federal government to destroy people who disagreed with them – which was the foundation of one of the Counts of Impeachment against Clinton in 1998. He suggested that news organizations were ready, wiling and anxious to begin smearing opponents. A February memo called for creation of a database of interest groups who might be in opposition. This probably morphed into the database populated by the information gleaned from the 900+ FBI files that were given the WH early in the Clinton’s time there, the database that is still being used as a source of opposition research information to personally destroy political opponents. Another memo proposed using the DNC for intelligence collection and public relations purposes. Paraphrased from CQ, the Clinton WH, less than a month after the inauguration, proposed to complete politicize the entire process of selling the Health Care Task Force proposal, complete with spinning up all the usual suspects on the left to support the effort. They were not going to move this thru the legislative process via normal techniques. They were going to run it like a political campaign, with congressional vote to pass being the functional equivalent of the election. The memos demonstrate that the War Room was not stood up in response to Monica. It was set up and operating on day one. A Hillary Clinton administration will do much the same – only better, having learned from their mistakes during the 1990s. They will be sneakier, nastier, and play with sharper elbows. Do we really want to go through that again?

1. McCain. Well the drive-by media is busily selecting the Republican nominee. Last week, they switched from Mike Huckabee to their perennial favorite, John McCain. McCain has been poling well and doing well in primary states where non-Republicans get to help select the Republican nominee, states with open primaries. These states include New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina. Mark Levin wrote a column recounting McCain’s treachery against the Bush administration over the last seven years. McCain took the lead on the Amnesty Bill for illegals; he led the Gang of 14 which undercut the ability of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to halt democrat filibusters on judicial nominations; he took the lead in trashing the administration’s care and feeding of enemy combatants; and he voted against and actively opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2002 and 2003. There are a lot more, but these are the big ones in my mind. Additionally, McCain has recently and shamelessly adopted the green global warming rhetoric completely and is using it as a foundation for his campaign in the open primary states. McCain has been compromised by the media, and in many ways has sold his soul. There are those that believe he made that decision a decade or so ago when the local media went after his wife who was sick at the time. McCain had the choice of fighting, caving in to the media, or resigning. He did not choose to fight. It has been said that the most dangerous place in Washington DC is standing between Chuckie Schumer (D, NY) and an open microphone. The other dangerous place is standing between a reporter and John McCain when he can trash conservatives over a position. We conservatives nominate McCain at our peril. The media is pushing him as a candidate in an attempt to destroy the conservative movement. Do not allow them to be successful.

2. Enforcement. There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the immigration issue. Washington DC and the Chamber of Commerce types want easy, quick immigration, with a large flow of people into the country, and little to no penalty for entering the country illegally. The people who pay the taxes want new immigrants to follow the law and to become Americans. These are not incompatible goals, with the exception of what to do with illegals. Of the presidential candidates, the best immigration proposal is that of Fred Thompson, who proposes to enforce the laws, control the borders, and st art encouraging illegals to return home. He has even talked about st arting to talk with the Mexican government itself as a vehicle to begin controlling the flow of illegals north. The argument against this approach – a complete red herring – is how do we intend to deport 12 -20 million illegals who have arrived over the last decade? The answer is that we don’t intend to deport that many people. What we intend to do is st art enforcing the laws, shutting off the flow of court-ordered free money and citizen benefits into the pockets of these illegals, and they will make the appropriate decision and go home by themselves. There are two examples of states that have recently passed tough enforcement laws for illegal immigrants – Arizona and Oklahoma. In both states, the illegals are st arting to disappear and leave the state, much to the surprise and dismay of people on the pro-illegal side of the argument. In both cases, the money spigot has not been completely turned off, it has only been restricted a bit, and that small amount is enough to encourage large numbers of illegals to go elsewhere. This isn’t that hard to do, and it can be done humanely, with great care and respect for everyone involved. We Americans welcome new Americans – people who want to come here and become p art of this nation. All we ask is that they follow the law and become Americans. CQ, Fri.

3. Gunboats. The Iranians came close to losing five high-speed small boats early last week, when they jumped three naval vessels near the Straits of Hormuz. The boats appeared to be testing the defensive posture of the American Captain. Both sides had the video cameras running. There was the requisite amount of Iranian trash talk on the radio. At this point, we don’t know whether or not this was an attempt to grab some headlines after Iranian video of small boats being blown out of the water by American warships shows up on Al Jazzera, a probe of the defenses, or something meant for internal Iranian consumption. I expect it was probably some combination of all three. While I do not question the actions of the Officers in Charge on the American vessels, and I haven’t a clue of the standing Rules of Engagement in the Gulf, I expect they will see more of this as the Iranians get bolder, so our guys ought to be ready as we approach the election. If it works out well, I hope for a reprise of the Tanker War of the late 1980s, when the US Navy destroyed the entire Iranian Navy.

4. New Hampshire. Crossover democrat and independent voters handed John McCain ( RINO, AZ) a primary victory in New Hampshire last week. Democrat voters gave Hillary Clinton a win over Barak Obama. The McCain win is unfortunate but not p articularly surprising, as he did very well in New Hampshire in 2000. The fact that he won by directly going after democrat voters to build his majority does not bode well for him as he gets into primaries where actual Republicans and conservatives get to select their own candidates for president. McCain was fully on board with the complete green agenda in New Hampshire and had his old friend Joe Lieberman (D, CN) making phone calls to democrat voters urging them to turn out and vote for McCain. The most disturbing p art of Tuesday night was that like Iowa, the democrat turnout was nearly double that of the Republican turnout. Both races are hotly contested. It does not bode well for the future Republican nominee to have democrat primary turnouts consistently double that of Republican voter turnouts, as the same thing may very well happen in November. On the democrat side, the race has turned into an old fashioned slugfest between Clinton Incorporated and Obama. The Clintons represent the democrat establishment and Obama is the designated insurgent candidate. Insurgents rarely win against the democrat establishment, and nobody, but nobody beats the Clintons in a knife fight. By week’s end, both liberals were trotting out their prospective victim cards and playing them against one another. Both the race card and the gender card were used with increasing viciousness. It is fascinating to see which democrat can out-victim the other. Finally, the thing that may have turned the expected Obama victory for Hillary was a widely rebroadcast Hillary question and answer session when she became misty-eyed and tearful at the thought of her not winning the nomination. Her excuse was that she had so much to give and cared so deeply. This was apparently enough to pull women out of the woodwork to vote for her. I am sure it played well also in Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing, and Moscow.

5. FEC. It appears the Federal Election Commission is going to sit this election out. The six-person panel is down four members as senate democrats block a Bush appointee that was instrumental in winning the Texas redistricting case. Democrats wanted to make an example of him and force Bush to withdraw the nomination. So far, he has refused to do so. Unfortunately, he did not take the opportunity to complete all recess appointments while congress was out for the Christmas break. There are an additional three slots on the panel, two democrats and an additional Republican that will not be submitted until the senate acts on the first nominee. While I don’t mind the standoff at all, as it essentially downsizes the government a bit, I do mind the lack of action by President Bush to protect his prerogative to nominate the people he selects for executive positions. Congress in encroaching on territory and authority it does not constitutionally have. And eventually something ought to be done about it, preferably by the conservative in the Executive Office. One addendum to this is that the two remaining members of the FEC, one Republican appointee and one democrat appointee, will render opinions without the force of law, for the remainder of the election season, providing of course, that they are able to come to some sort of agreement. CQ, Weds.

1. RIAA. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is fighting a losing battle against new technology distribution of audio recordings by filing and winning lawsuits against people who “share” audio files. The logic is that they retain property rights prohibiting distribution of the music. Last week, they upped the ante in a lawsuit against a gentleman from Arizona, claiming that ripping music from legally purchased CDs and storing that music on your personal computer is a violation of their copyright agreement. This is a staggering claim, one that will destroy the IPod and MP3 industry as it exists today. The law, as it stands today allows users to copy audio and video for their own purposes, and as long as they do not sell or otherwise distribute the copies, the buyer can change formats, record on other media, and otherwise use the copies as they see fit. A lot of us, who st arted out with LPs, copied them onto tape to preserve the LPs over time. The RIAA’s claim, should it be upheld in court, would be a reversal of numerous court findings over the years, and eventually make any format conversion of audio and video illegal. I do not expect it to be upheld in court. Now for a blast against the RIAA: Guys, your problem is not people converting CDs to MP3s on their home computers. Your problem is that you as an industry have so lost the bubble on music, that your customers are no longer buying your dreck at $12 a pop. You have made a lot of money over the years reselling the same product in different formats – for example, the same music has been sold and sold again on 45s, LPs, cassette tapes, 8-track tapes, CDs and today as MP3s. As the ability of individual customers to easily and quickly convert their music into MP3s that can be loaded into any IPod or memory stick continues to proceed, the sales of the same music in new formats is going to tail off. And I never have understood the notion of suing your customers for “sharing.” Sharing is how different people get a taste of new music outside of the normal advertising and sales routine. People who like the music will usually then purchase it. I know that there are a number of people out there – normally the young – that believe that music ought to be free and seamless and unlimited in its distribution. There are a number of new bands out there that agree, and are st arting to offer their music for free as MP3 downloads from the Internet. They plan on making their money via sales of paraphernalia and concerts and are using the music itself as hooks to bring the customers into the show. The RIAA is fighting this new direction tooth and nail, attempting to use the courts and the Congress of the United States of America to halt the march of new technologies, new business models, and new directions in music. In doing so, they muck around in the marketplace to the extent that they will destroy their livelihood, for nothing is going to stop the technology or the ability of new, creative bands (or old, creative bands for that matter), to come up with new business models that will make them money in the world of today. Washington Times, Dec. 30.

2. Pakistan. It looks like something is going on in Pakistan following the assassination of Benezir Bhutto. There are reports of increased Special Forces activities in the fundamentalist tribal provinces of Pakistan next to the Afghanistan border. This region has been one of the known hiding places for Bin Laden and the Taliban after they were flushed from Afghanistan. They have relied on the support of local hard-line tribal chieftains to protect them while they have spread their fundamentalist infestation into the government of Pakistan. Somewhere along the line, they became bold enough to st art standing up hard core Sharia and the torture rooms. The locals are not taking this very well, and appear to be moving the same direction as the Anbar Shieks did in Iraq. There is an opening in Pakistan for the same sort of new surge strategy that is working in Iraq. Special Forces activities in or near Pakistan appear to be an attempt to peel off the Al Qaida and Taliban friendly tribal leaders as they turn against the fundamental nastiness of Sharia as practiced by the bad guys. All in all, this is not going the direction that Al Qaida or the Taliban expected, and I do not believe it will end well for them either. Strata Sphere, Sat.

3. Transcanada. The Palin administration chose Transcanada as the winning application for construction of the new natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay. Transcanada is an experienced pipeline construction and operating company that proposed a $26 billion project that would parallel the existing Alaska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay southward to its intersection with the Alaska Highway and then southeast through the Yukon, British Columbia and into Alberta. Palin’s decision will need to be ratified by the Alaska legislature. There are a couple problems with Transcanada: First, they have no guarantee from the producers for any natural gas for the pipeline; second, they propose going to the Congress for billions of dollars of guarantees should the producers not provide enough natural gas to fill the pipeline to capacity. This will be a problem. On the other hand, we have Conoco – Phillips, who proposed a non-qualifying bid for the pipeline. They offered to build it themselves; pay for it themselves; and fill it with their own natural gas; all st arting a year after Transcanada proposes to st art.; Like Transcanada, the also want something in return: a stable tax structure in Alaska for the next 40 years. This is something both the Palin administration and the Alaska legislature – to their detriment – have refused to discuss so far. Personally, I am more comfortable with Conoco than I am with Transcanada. Perhaps both companies can get together on this and we end up with something that will proceed apace. ADN, Sat.

4. Chicago. A story of lawyerly anti-military nastiness in Chicago hit the blogs last week as a local lawyer keyed a vehicle of an active duty Marine on his way to Iraq. Attorney Jay R. Grodner, 55 of Chicago was caught in the act by the Marine. The police were called and responded. There was $2,400 damage to the vehicle. The Marine is going to press charges and damages against the lawyer, who is using his knowledge of courtroom procedures to slow-roll the proceedings until the Marine is deployed back to Iraq, where he will be unable to pursue the case. The lawyer is also going to jack up attorney bills to a level that the Marine Sergeant can no longer afford to pursue the case in court. The incident hit the MilBlogs and a call went out for volunteer help from former Marines and Marine attorneys. Sounds like that help is on its way. I expect the perp not to have a fun time either in court or before the Illinois Bar defending himself against ethics charges. Chicago Tribune, Thurs.

5. Ethics. Yet another session of the Alaska legislature, yet another ethics bill filed for consideration. This one will be the third piece of legislation in the last three years. Given the recent prosecutions of sitting legislators for bribery and conspiracy, there is a real fear in the legislature that there will be more indictments. Indeed, one of the hot rumors up here is that there are going to be a bunch more indictments against current and former legislators and state officials filed Real Soon Now. I oppose this sort of running scared, CYA action for a couple reasons. First, we haven’t had sufficient time to see if the previous pieces of ethics legislation have worked. Second, the legislature is well on its way to making it too complex, too wonderful, and too intricate for a citizen to run for office and serve in it if elected. Making things this complex only serves to make criminals out of normal people. It also serves the democrats, who can rely on their supporters among trial lawyers and the unions to do the legwork to keep them out of trouble. This new legislation is a bad idea and ought to be killed on the spot.

"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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