Ketchikan: House bill blocks spending on Alaska bridges By LIZ RUSKIN - The U.S. House passed a bill Wednesday that prohibits Alaska from spending its federal transportation dollars on two controversial "bridges to nowhere." Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., added a provision to the annual transportation spending bill last week that prohibits the state from spending any of this year's appropriation on bridges from Ketchikan to Gravina Island or across the Knik Arm from Anchorage. - More... Thursday AM - June 15, 2006 Top Stories U.S. News U.S. Politics Alaska Ketchikan

Ketchikan: Ketchikan Federal Building Added to National Register of Historic Places By DAVE KIFFER - To some locals it is the "Big Pink."

The workers within its walls often call it the "Pepto (Bismo) Palace."

Steve Williams, the former Ketchikan City Councilman who was on the committee that selected the current color, prefers to call it "Majestic Salmon Colored."

Now, the federal government has decided to call Ketchikan's first "skyscraper" - the Federal Building at Thomas Basin - historic.

Earlier this spring, the federal building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It joins more than 20 other Ketchikan area sites on the National Register.

The six story building, the tallest in Ketchikan until 1954, was built in 1937-38, replacing the Federal Courthouse that had stood on a hill near what is Grant Street since 1905.

The first Federal Courthouse was on a plot of land adjacent to Ketchikan's first Main School. The space between the two site is now Grant Street and the Courthouse was where the Grant Street Playground now sits. It was a white boxy building, in sharp contrast to the Victorian gingerbread of the school house with its gables and cupola. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Alaska: Cruise ship industry funds Alaska tax fight By PAULA DOBBYN - A group called Alaskans Protecting Our Economy is mostly funded by a trade association based in Canada that represents foreign-flagged cruise ships, according to public documents.

Alaskans Protecting Our Economy represents individuals and businesses who oppose Ballot Measure 2, a citizens' initiative that would tax cruise ships and make them get state pollution discharge permits, among other steps.

The measure will go before voters in the Aug. 22 statewide primary.

Alaskans Protecting Our Economy received $593,300 in contributions as of May 11, according to filings with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. All of it came from the Vancouver-based North West CruiseShip Association. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

National: Top Dems' split on Iraq shows party's struggle By MARC SANDALOW - In a span of 90 minutes this week, three prominent Democrats offered competing visions of how to proceed in Iraq and displayed how difficult it will be to turn what was once the Republican Party's strongest asset into its electoral downfall.

As President Bush was returning from his surprise visit to Baghdad, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a leading contender for the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nomination, told a gathering of nearly 2,000 liberals that the war was a "strategic blunder" but warned it would not be in the nation's interest to "set a date certain" for withdrawal.

She was followed by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who told the same group the war was a "grotesque mistake" and that troops should be withdrawn "at the earliest practical date."

Moments later, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party's standard bearer in 2004, said he had made a mistake by voting to authorize the president to use military force in Iraq, and he called for a "hard and fast deadline" for troop withdrawal. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Southeast Alaska: Dr. Alyce Garrity joins ARMC medical staff - The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium's Alicia Roberts Medical Center in Klawock announces the hiring of Dr. Alyce Garrity, M.D., to the position of permanent staff physician.

Dr. Garrity primarily will be working after hours in the Frontier Extended Stay Clinic at ARMC. She is board-certified in urgent care medicine.

Dr. Garrity started her career as an Emergency Medical Technician and a paramedic in St. Louis and San Diego. She then became a Physician Assistant (PA) in East St. Louis, Ill., before going to the University of South Dakota School of Medicine to complete her M.D. She completed her emergency medicine residency at the University of Illinois College of Medicine-Peoria's St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria. She has worked for the Indian Health Service in Lame Deer, Mont.; Cherokee, N.C.; Kayenta, Ariz.; and Ft. Defiance, Ariz. She most recently worked in urgent care at First Care Medical Centers in Anchorage. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Southeast Alaska: Dr. Ellen Kemper joins ARMC medical staff - The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium's Alicia Roberts Medical Center in Klawock announced the hiring of Dr. Ellen Kemper, M.D., to the position of permanent staff physician.

Dr. Kemper recently moved to Klawock from Spokane, Wash., where she spent 13 years working for the Indian Health Service and the Spokane Tribe. She is the proud mother of four and a grandmother of two. Her husband will be a fishing guide for a lodge in Craig.

Dr. Kemper said the reason she took the job with SEARHC was a "desire to move back to Alaska" and to live in a "small community to raise our children." She previously worked for the Kodiak Native Clinic that's run by the Kodiak Area Native Association. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Southeast Alaska: Klawock 's Alicia Roberts Medical Center fees reduced by 37 percent - Fees at the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium's Alicia Roberts Medical Center in Klawock have been reduced by 37 percent since a new fee structure took effect on May 1.

The lower rates are the result of a federal readjustment of the Alaska geographic differential and they affect outpatient services at all of SEARHC's facilities, said Mark Gorman, the vice president of SEARHC Community Health Services. The rates were established by the Medicare Modernization Act, which set rates for Alaska at 67 percent above the national average for 2005. Once the initial 12-month period was over, the rates dropped down to about 6 percent above the national average, Gorman said. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Alaska: Polar bears turn cannibal By TENILLE BONOGUORE - Two polar bears have starved to death and two others were found dead this year in the region where scientists previously discovered unprecedented cannibalism within the population.

Scientists were stunned to discover that two mother polar bears had been stalked, killed and eaten near their Beaufort Sea dens, and that much larger male bears cannibalized a young male during the spring of 2004.

Now, four more dead polar bears have been found in the Alaskan and Canadian regions of the Beaufort Sea, and researchers are getting very worried. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters Avian Flu and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness By Jim Hill - Wednesday am School Board members are interested By Tom LeCompte - Wednesday am Please support Mr. Eklund By Connor Pihl - Wednesday am Global Warming By Marvin Seibert - Wednesday am Consider ramifications of supporting actions of superintendent By Wendy Gierard - Tuesday An awesome principal!!! By Rhonda Bolling - Tuesday Peter York - A life well lived and appreciated By Lynne Miller - Tuesday A capable administrator; A valuable asset By Doug Edwards - Tuesday Let's stay focused on keeping good people in the right positions By Peter Bolling - Monday A fair process is not limited to private meetings By Susan Doherty - Monday Let's stick to the FACTS, ISSUES and PROCESS By Karen Pitcher - Monday Baseball By Justin I. Williams - Monday Hello from Kanayama! By Bonnie Sullivan - Sunday Is America Veering to the Left? By Tom Proebsting - Sunday A passion for baseball By Tracy DeBruler - Sunday Facts? By Rob Thomas - Saturday "Concerned Horde of Citizens" then as now By A.M.Johnson - Saturday "Veiled" threats By Rick Krueger - Saturday Re: What Are They Thinking...Kiffer By Bobbie McCreary - Saturday Mean-spirited, public apology owed By Gigi Pilcher - Saturday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan May Calendar Arts This Week Today's Forecast Ketchikan Weather Data Current AK Weather Map City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements June 2006 Click on the date to read the stories published on that day. S M T W T F S 28 29 30 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   Front Page Archives

Tom Purcell: For Father's Day, The Apple Core and the Toilet -I don't know what I was thinking. Nonetheless, in 1974, I flushed an apple core down the toilet, an action I would come to regret.

As it went, my father the Big Guy had remodeled our basement into a family room. He installed the inexpensive pine paneling common to the times. He also built a small bathroom, which would be the bane of his existence.

The Big Guy, always looking to save a buck ­ he had six kids to feed, after all ­ bought the cheapest toilet he could find. It never did work right. He spent much of his spare time unplugging it. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Dick Morris: Trend Shows At The End - Current surveys show a tendency toward the Democrats but do not show a rout as of yet. Any Republican strategists who take comfort from that did not live through 1986 or 1994, the two most recent years when a party trend swept through Congress like a plague, killing the deserving and the undeserving alike.

In both of those years, the trend toward the party that eventually won manifested itself only in the last week of polling and really only in the last few days. So it will be in 2006. Whether there will be a rout or not is anybody's guess - mine is that there will be and that the Democrats will win both houses of Congress. But you won't see the process one way or the other in today's polling data. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Michael Reagan: Brothers Under the Skin - I've been wondering why there is something familiar about the behavior of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, and suddenly it dawned on me that we have our own similar insurgency right here at home ­ it is called the Democrat Party.

Think about it. Both are operating under the same motivation ­ an unrequited lust for lost power. And both will do just about anything to retrieve it.

Remember, under Saddam Hussein's long rule, his fellow Sunnis ­ a distinct minority in a nation with a vast Shiite majority ­ were the kings of the hill ­ and incredibly cruel monarchs to boot. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006

Clifford May: Gunning for Gitmo - It's difficult to say what motivates someone to take his own life, but when three Islamic militants coordinate their suicides, as happened recently at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, there is at least a basis for speculation.

Give these self-described holy warriors their due: As devout Muslims they would have viewed suicide as a grave sin. What would not have been taboo: "martyrdom," self-sacrifice to further the jihad against the infidels.

If that was their goal, they succeeded. They gave momentum to an international campaign to shut Gitmo down which would mean the release of their comrades. To a committed jihadi, such an achievement would be preferable to spending years praying, watching television and playing volleyball. - More...
Wednesday - June 14, 2006