Alaska House Rules Chair Craig Johnson reacted with shock and disgust today upon hearing allegations made by Alaska Senate Rules Chair Johnny Ellis that the House made a deal with the Senate on end-of-session bills and that the House broke the mythical deal.
Late Monday the Mayor, flanked by City Attorney Dennis Wheeler and Police Chief Mark Mew, held a press conference to announce an independent investigation into Anchorage Police Department (APD) policies and procedures.
The election of 2012 will go down as one of the most famous in the city’s history. The unprecedented mismanagement of the election itself, as well as the strategies employed by some of the candidates, provide us with several important lessons for next time. Because this week there were too many honey badgers to count, we offer these key takeaways.
As we fully expected, the Anchorage Daily News came out on their editorial page in support of Prop. 5. What took us a bit back was this small statement at the bottom of the editorial. It was titled simply "A dissent" and it was written by Frank Gerjevic, the Editorial Page Editor for our State's largest and most "progressive" newspaper.
This week the public debate over voter proposition 5 took a turn for the worse. Coward, bigot, anti-semite, sexist, racist, dummy; all of these were used to describe anyone who has the audacity to oppose prop 5.
I am a 57 year old man who “came out of the closet” at age 39. I spent the next several years living the gay lifestyle, including being involved with the Imperial Court of All Alaska (ICOAA), the Alaska chapter of an international GLBT support and service organization.
It is fundamentally unjust to have a law in place that grants legal protections to a group of people on the basis of their religion while simultaneously excluding sexual orientation as a protected category.
In Anchorage, homosexual rights advocates are attempting to rally support for a proposed homosexual and transgender nondiscrimination law by comparing their effort to the historic civil rights struggles of African-Americans. So far, the comparison has met with resistance from local African-American pastors.
The hoarding of unneeded school buildings by the Anchorage School District is undermining taxpayer confidence. Our overcapacity of elementary schools in particular, is beginning to look like Imelda Marcos's shoe closet. Until the ASD effectively deals with excess school capacity, they will continue to have big problems garnering voter trust for new school bonds.
I'm not reflecting on a plastic Fisher-Price toy set --- I'm talking creative signs, Gadsden flags flying high, patriotic music and bad hot dogs. Held in Wasilla, naturally.
Here's what I love about being a right-winger, at our best moments. We have solutions.
Well, true colors don't fade for long. Lisa Murkowski, one of Alaska's two senators, seemed capable of grasping the implications of the Blunt Admendment last week when she enjoyed local press coverage of her vote in support of it.
For two gruesome nights this week I listened for hour after hour as the Senate Resources Committee took public testimony on ACES reform.
The one thing that actually stood out to me was how many people parroted the “we need MEANINGFUL reform” line. What exactly does “meaningful” mean in this debate?
Like the rest of the nation, Alaskans have been discussing and debating the merits of school choice for decades. Many parents say they would like having the option of choosing non-government schools for their kids; teachers’ unions say they hate the idea.
For any Alaskan interested in getting a better understanding of our state’s history of resource development and the resulting impact on our state’s political culture, Icebound Empire: Industry and Politics on the Last Frontier is well worth the read.
