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National: Bush accepts Iraq mistakes, orders increase in troops - U.S. President George W. Bush Wednesday evening took the blame for the situation in Iraq, saying, "Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." He said, "The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me."

In a televised address to the American people Wednesday, President Bush announced the deploymented of five additional U.S. Army brigades to Iraq to support Iraqi army operations in and around its capital, Baghdad, and two Marine brigades to Anbar province to assist in operations against al-Qaida.

Bush said the political gains made by elections in Iraq have been overwhelmed by sectarian violence. He called for a new direction in Iraq policy to neutralize al-Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents.

Bush said, " For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq." He said, "The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities." - More...
Wednesday PM - January 10, 2007

National: Dems weigh options in responding to Bush Iraq plan By MARC SANDALOW - Democrats in Congress almost universally oppose President Bush's plan to escalate troop levels in Iraq. The question is what they will do to stop it.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced a measure Tuesday that would require congressional approval for Bush to increase the number of U.S. troops, which is now 130,000 to 140,000. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California suggested over the weekend that the House might refuse to approve those portions of the Pentagon's budget that were directly tied to increasing the number of troops in Iraq.

Yet most Democrats appeared to be settling on a more cautious route, seeking a way to oppose an escalation without looking like they are abandoning the troops, let alone taking ownership of a war that has been a political disaster for Republicans - More...
Wednesday PM - January 10, 2007

Alaska: Alaska a hot topic in San Francisco By NED ROZELL - While trolling the poster sessions at the Moscone Center in San Francisco during the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (attended by more than 13,000 scientists), a person bumps into a great deal of information on Alaska. Here are some notes from the legal pad:

In September 2005, a massive rock avalanche on a remote mountain peak registered on seismometers all over Alaska. Earthquakes sometimes rattle steep mountains and cause avalanches, but no earthquake preceded the collapse on Mount Steller, located about 80 miles east of Cordova. A scientist may have found the trigger for the rock and snowslide that fell about 8,000 feet, sheared off a glacier on the way down, and spewed black rock that extended six miles from the mountain.

A year after the event, Bruce Molnia, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, was looking at aerial photos of Mount Steller and saw a hole in the surviving ice face that didn't fall from the top of the mountain. The ice cave is the mouth of a channel that probably held running water, Molnia said.

"You don't get 30-meter holes on top of a mountain without water flowing down," Molnia said.

Looking at the photos of Mount Steller and nearby peaks, Molnia also saw evidence of two more water channels above other avalanche sites. Somehow, he said, large amounts of water are flowing through ice and snow at high altitudes in the area.

"(The avalanches) all seem to have an unusual meltwater trigger," he said. "How can you get so much meltwater at 3,000 meters?" - More...
Wednesday - January 10, 2007

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters Basic Rules NTVFD...Show us the numbers! By Ed Fry - Wednesday PM Tribal Members, It's Time for Change By Albert White - Tuesday PM ACCOUNTABILITY STANDARDS By Peter Ellis - Tuesday PM NTFD -Tax Cap - Consolidation By Cheryl Henley - Tuesday PM Micro-managing the war By Anita Hales - Tuesday PM Shut Down Of Airport Shuttle By Ken Levy - Tuesday PM NTVFD/I was wrong By Mary Henrikson - Tuesday PM Litter on Ketchikan's roadways By Kathie Morris - Tuesday PM Get back to the fundamentals of governing By Randy Williams - Sunday PM Airporter By Cynthia Grant - Sunday PM Public critisisms of KIC By Charles Edwardson- Sunday PM Re: Micro-managing a war By Rick Grams - Sunday PM Micro-managing a war By Anita Hales - Saturday PM Basic Roles and Responsibilities in Government By Samuel Bergeron - Saturday PM Point Higgins/ CGB Trail Update By Carrie Dolwick - Saturday PM NTVFD Fee Increase By Mary Henrikson - Saturday PM Richard Jackson for President of KIC & Bergeron For Tribal Council By Samuel Bergeron - Wednesday PM NORTH TONGASS EMS - FIRE FEE INCREASE By Ken Bylund - Wednesday PM The thrill of victory By Chris Elliott - Wednesday PM Tax increase for NTVFD By Jennifer Brewer - Wednesday PM Airport Shuttle CLose Down By Neil Gray - Wednesday PM Airporter Service By Ken Leland and Bob Kern - Tuesday PM Will you get more service with doubled fees? By Ed Fry - Tuesday PM Beware This Credit Card Scam By Sen. Con Bunde - Tuesday PM First we must have honesty By Frances C. Natkong - Tuesday PM Shiites Blew It With Saddam Execution By Mark Neckameyer - Tuesday PM Welcome back By Bill Thomas Sr.- Tuesday PM More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Ketchikan Ketchikan Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Today's Forecast Satellite Today's Weather Images Marine Forecasts Ketchikan Weather Data Current AK Weather Map CLASSIFIEDS Auto-post your ad in the proper category, or email your ad & photos to ads@sitnews.us  CLASSIFIEDS' CATEGORIES Announcements For Sale / Free Stuff Garage Sales Homes / Apts/ Property Pets Wanted Lost & Found Local Services January 2007 S M T W T F S 31 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31       More Front Page Archives

Dave Kiffer: Dousing a Dangerous Development - The petty dictators of airplane discipline gave travelers an early Christmas present recently by allowing us to take water on plane flights again.

Water had been banned you remember because it was dangerous. At least that was the theory.

Some really clever miscreants in Britain had been foiled in their attempt to create some sort of water-based bombs and blow up a whole bunch of airplanes. Therefore we were forced to hand over our Dasanis and Purple Mountains at the gate

Good thing too. The beverage service on flights was getting so bad that people were BYOBing so much liquid that the overhead bins were getting too full of spritzer and airline toilets were flushing so often that it was a challenge keeping the planes aloft. - More...
Tuesday - January 09, 2007

Jay Ambrose: President Bush, the stealth humanitarian - Whether it's helping get the homeless into homes, fighting malaria and other diseases in Africa or spending on U.S. poverty programs, President Bush is breaking records - and getting no credit for it.

You might say he's a stealth humanitarian, someone whose heartlessness is constantly preached while his accomplishments are persistently ignored.

But then you stumble on the Bush ambition regarding chronic homelessness. He wants to end it, and the consequences of administration efforts to date are amazing - significant percentage drops in such cities as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Portland, Ore.

The basic idea of the program being endlessly advocated by a Bush appointee, Philip Mangano, is for cities to combine federal, local and charitable funds to put the chronically homeless into their own apartments and assist them with social services instead of dealing with them piecemeal so they too often end up in jails, hospitals and other facilities. As various news accounts explain, you save money this way, but here's the real gold: You save lives. - More...
Tuesday - January 09, 2007

Dale McFeatters: Lawmakers in search of self-restraint - The House, it turned out, was serious about ethics reform; the Senate perhaps less so.

The House banned a number of lobbyist-provided benefits that many lawmakers seemed to have come to think of perks of their office - gifts, meals, travel, the use of corporate jets. It did not venture into the trickier, more ambiguous world of lobbyists doing political fund-raising.

The most significant reform involved earmarks - lawmakers' personal pork projects often quietly slipped into spending bills in the dead of night and often done so at the behest of a generous lobbyist.

The projects might themselves be fine, even worthwhile. The problem is that no congressional panel has scrutinized them for their merit or relative priority in a tight budget. A particular project may be a laughable waste of money, but usually it doesn't come to light until too late, after the bill has been passed. - More...
Tuesday - January 09, 2007

Martin Schram: There's a huge loophole being left in ethics reforms - Nothing is as deceptively euphoric as Washington in full flower. And in the first days of 2007, the cherry trees, the Congress and the idiots of the nation's capital were all blossoming.

We saw the blooming cherry trees - a result of botanical confusion that 70-degree winter days meant spring had sprung.

We saw the blooming of a new Congress - as in the first hours of the first day, Democrats made a show of rushing ethics reforms through the House they now control. By a vote of 430-1, as still-embarrassed Republicans had no choice but to go with the flow, the House members voted to ban themselves from taking freebees from lobbyists - no meals, gifts or travel. It was a morality show designed to demonstrate that the evils and abuses symbolized by Tom DeLay's pal Jack Abramoff are now ancient history.

Then we heard the blooming idiots. They were the pols, pundits and think-tank denizens who gushed that these showy ethics flourishes, once adopted by the Senate, will fundamentally change the craft of politics in the nation's capital. But, in fact, it will fundamentally change nothing. Because it misses the main point about how Washington really works. - More...
Tuesday - January 09, 2007