Ketchikan: BLM Hands Over Land Where Historic School Sits To Borough By DICK KAUFFMAN - "It was a lot of struggle and effort to come to this place but like all things that are worth waiting for, I think this is one that's rare. Congratulations," Mike Zaidlicz said as he handed over ownership of the property on which the historic Clover Pass School building sits to the Ketchikan Borough. Zaidlicz, an Anchorage-based Associate Field Manager for the federal Bureau of Land Management, was in Ketchikan Tuesday for the event held at the Clover Pass School.

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Accepting the land ownership papers for the Ketchikan Borough were Borough Manager Roy Eckert and Borough Planner Leslie Real.

Shirley A. Rackley, Anchorage-based Realty Specialist with the federal Bureau of Land Management, was also in Ketchikan for the property transfer. She said she has worked on this project since 1998. She said there were lots of hurdles to jump to get to the point of transferring property ownership from the federal government to the Ketchikan Borough. Rackley said the biggest challenge was basically trying to get everybody to move on it.

Rackley said at first things fell through when the University of Alaska Land Office selected the property for a title transfer. Then at the end of 2005, Rackley said she was able to get everyone working together again on the project after getting in touch with the University Land Office and being told the University had relinquished their selection of the property on which the historic building sits. At that point, we could do this - transfer the property to the borough - and this school would be taken care of said Rackley.

All this takes time said Rackley. After all these years and hurdles and different managements - here we are. Rackley said she couldn't have accomplished this property transfer without the help of Ketchikan Gateway Borough Planners such as Leslie Real. - More...
Tuesday PM - August 01, 2006

Ketchikan: Don't mess with my dog! By DICK KAUFFMAN - Almost any dog owner will tell you, don't mess with my dog or you'll unleash my unspent energy. An alleged burglar found this to be true early Tuesday morning after he allegedly broke into a residence and struck the owner's dog. The alleged burglar soon found himself physically subdued by the owner, bound with an electrical cord and turned over to law enforcement officers.

Lieutenant Alan Bengaard of the Ketchikan Police Department, said officers arrested twenty-four year old Michael L. Simpson Jr. for Burglary in the First Degree, Assault in the Fourth Degree, Criminal Mischief in the Fourth Degree, and Resisting Arrest. - More...
Tuesday PM - August 01, 2006

Ketchikan: Contract Awarded for South Tongass Highway Rehabilitation - It was announced today by the Office of Representative Jim Elkins that they have been advised by the Department of Transportation's Southeast Regional Office that a contract has been awarded to SEACON for stage 1 of the South Tongass Highway Rehabilitation project.

The $8,679,095 contract was awarded on July 19, 2006 to the Juneau based company and consists of widening, alignment and drainage improvements, roadway reconstruction and repaving of South Tongass Highway from Surf Street to approximately 1/4 mile before Mountain Point. - More...
Tuesday PM - August 01, 2006

National: Blair issues warning to Syria, Iran By PETER HECHT - Delivering a major international policy address in California, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a stern warning Tuesday that Syria and Iran will face serious consequences if they continue working to destabilize the Middle East.

Without saying the two nations could face military action, Blair said: "We need to make it clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: come into the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us - or be confronted.

"Their support of terrorism, their deliberate export of instability, their desire to see wrecked the democratic prospect in Iraq is utterly unjustifiable, dangerous and wrong," the prime minister said in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. "If they keep raising the stakes, they will find they have miscalculated." Meanwhile, Blair heaped blame on Iran- and Syria-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and other Islamic extremists, saying their incursions into Israel were part of a calculated campaign to provoke a massive Israeli military response. - More...
Tuesday PM - August 01, 2006

Alaska: Hand that feeds bites Alaska campers By ANNE AURAND - Humans have allowed bears to take food from their coolers and backpacks one time too many, so wildlife officials on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula are cracking down.

New restrictions on the Russian and Kenai rivers are meant to break the cycle of bears getting food from people in an effort to head off potential maulings or bear shootings.

Tent camping is no longer allowed in the Russian River campground. Campers must sleep in a hard-shelled vehicle. This comes after a bear grabbed a man sleeping in his tent early Saturday morning. He suffered minor injuries.

And no one is allowed on the Russian River and parts of the Kenai between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. This applies from the Russian River Falls down to the power line crossing on the Kenai River.

Coolers, backpacks and anything with a scent that might attract a bear must be kept "within your grasp." That means carry it or put it in your car.

Violating the new rules can cost $125. - More...
Tuesday PM - August 01, 2006

British Columbia: Climbers discover long-lost crash site By ROD MICKLEBURGH - The gods of fate decided that, finally, it was time.

More than 38 years after a twin-engine Cessna carrying a pilot and two passengers was swallowed up by the wilderness, an extraordinary set of circumstances has led to its discovery late last week in a high, remote valley of the Rocky Mountains.

What did it take? It took a pair of intrepid mountain climbers, one pushing 70, the other pushing 60, with a plastic prosthesis for a lower left leg, who decided to scale a peak so far off the beaten track no one had scaled it before. - More...
Tuesday PM - August 01, 2006

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters Lick Three Times, Then Bite? By Suzan Thompson - Tuesday PM Youth Baseball By Brad Groghan - Tuesday PM Re: Consolidation can be for the better. By Rodney Dial - Tuesday PM Borough Assembly Candidate By Gregory Vickrey - Tuesday PM Concrete Classic Closed By Hunter Davis - Tuesday PM Pennys for the Poor, Millions for the Rich By Alan Lidstone - Tuesday PM MURKOWSKI JET TIME QUALITIES By Pete Ellis - Monday TIME FOR THIS GENERATION TO STAND UP FOR ALASKA By Eric Croft - Monday Cowards Of Our Own Destiny By Don Hoff Jr. - Monday Ketchikan O.B. Floor By Tracey Scadden - Monday Consolidation can be for the better. By Robert McRoberts - Monday Murkowski's jet By Victoria Canul Dunne - Friday If You Want My Vote By Samuel Bergeron - Thursday Ketchikan Concrete Classic By Tracy Mettler - Thursday Picturesque City By Bill Thomas SR. - Thursday Four years is enough By Charlotte Tanner - Thursday Don't forget your year-round customers By Jean Bland - Thursday Protesters & Baseball By Scott Kline - Thursday The Government is Here to Help By Alan Lidstone - Thursday Tax or Not to Tax or even Tax Higher By Marvin Seibert - Thursday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan Arts This Week Today's Forecast Ketchikan Weather Data Current AK Weather Map City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements August 2006 Click on the date to read the stories published on that day. 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     Front Page Archives

Bill Steigerwald: Illuminating the Shadow Party - The Shadow Party -- the network of big money, ex-Clinton political operatives, unions and left-wing grass-roots organizations that now essentially controls the Democrat Party -- was not discovered or named by David Horowitz and Richard Poe.

But in their new book, "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party" (Nelson Current), coming out Aug. 8, Horowitz and Poe set out to expose what their publisher says are "the influential and powerful Americans secretly stirring up disunion and disloyalty in the shifting shadows of the Democratic Party." Horowitz, a long-ago radical Marxist who is now the tireless and articulate conservative nemesis of the Left, is a columnist, author and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles. I talked to him July 26. - More...
Wednesday AM - August 02, 2006

Dick Morris & Eileen McGann: GOP Must Raise The Minimum Wage Or Look For New Work - Sometimes it's a close question as to whether the leaders of the House are more arrogant or more stupid. The combination of the two is deadly.

The arrogance stems from a deep-seated conviction that state-by-state gerrymandering has made it impossible for the Republican Party to lose the majority in the House. The stupidity is demonstrated by their refusal to take the two steps that could give their beleaguered members some kind of political cover as they run for reelection: lobbying reform and a minimum-wage increase.

But the arrogance is misplaced. The Republicans can, indeed, lose the House. - More...
Wednesday AM - August 02, 2006

Editorial: The House minimum-wage plan is a poison pill - Say what you like about the Republican leadership in Congress, but their brazen behavior often has a touch of wicked genius about it. Silent-movie villains with their black capes and sinister mustaches couldn't outdo these characters for sheer heartless cunning - and if you doubt it, consider what happened last week with the minimum wage in the U.S. House.

In the early hours of Saturday, the House voted 230-180 to raise the minimum wage, which ordinarily would be a cause to cheer. The minimum wage, which stands at $5.15 an hour, hasn't been raised since 1997. Under this plan, it would rise modestly to $7.25, which would put it closer to what a poor worker needs to survive. - More...
Wednesday AM - August 02, 2006

John Hall: Slamming doors and making wars - Everywhere you hear doors slamming.

No to Middle East peacekeepers, no to more trade globalization, no to ceasefires.

Down went the World Trade Organization expansion, and with it the hopes of the developing world to get a better shake from the free market.- More...
Wednesday AM -August 02, 2006

Dan Thomasson: Israelis doing U.S. no favors - With allies like this, who need enemies?

If the Israelis had deliberately set out to undermine about the only friend they have left in the world, they couldn't have done a better job. Their tragic bombing of women and children in Lebanon had nearly the same impact on a White House hoping to turn voter attention away from its failures in Iraq and the nation's growing loss of international respect. - More...
Wednesday AM - August 02, 2006