Free Republic

WASILLA -- Sarah Palin got treated like a homecoming queen when she brought her national book tour to Wasilla today. About 1,000 people flocked to the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center in Palin's hometown to get the former governor and Republican vice presidential candidate's autograph on her best-selling memoir.

An explosion and fire at a natural gas plant operated by Fairbanks Natural Gas LLC levelled a maintenance building in Point MacKenzie, Alaska, according to an official. "Trucks weren't damaged nor was the plant itself, according to a worker who was there," said Dennis Brodigan, emergency services director of the Matanuska Susitna Borough. "All gas to and from the plant has been secured." The cause of the fire was unknown, he said. The blaze in the maintenance building was being allowed to burn itself out. The explosion may have been caused by oil drums stored near the maintenance building being...

As cleanup continues on one of the biggest oil spills ever on Alaska's North Slope, criminal and civil investigations are under way into the circumstances of the pipeline's rupture. The criminal investigatory arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency joined with the FBI and others to examine what led the pipeline to split open in late November, officials said. An estimated 46,000 gallons of crude oil and water poured from a 2-foot-long gash onto the snowy tundra, cleanup officials say. "The (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division is continuing to work in concert with our federal and state partners, and British Petroleum,...

The sea level in Juneau is actually falling very rapidly: "JUNEAU, Alaska — Global warming conjures images of rising seas that threaten coastal areas. But in Juneau, as almost nowhere else in the world, climate change is having the opposite effect: As the glaciers here melt, the land is rising, causing the sea to retreat. ___ Relative to the sea, land here has risen as much as 10 feet in little more than 200 years, according to the 2007 report. As global warming accelerates, the land will continue to rise, perhaps 3 more feet by 2100, scientists say."

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John McCain says he understands why Sarah Palin blacked out his name on a McCain campaign visor so she could avoid recognition while on vacation in Hawaii. The Arizona Republican made the comments about his 2008 running mate on "Fox News Sunday."

18 states allow for recall votes on US Senators. The 18 states allowing for recall are as follows: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. The Senate oath of office is: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well...

Mat-Su Valley and Alaska residents will finally have an opportunity to get their “Going Rogue” books signed. Former Gov. Sarah Palin will be at the Curtis C. Menard Memorial Sports Center Turf Court on Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to autograph copies of her best-selling memoir. According to a release issued early today, books will not be available for purchase at this event. The Curtis C. Menard Memorial Sports Center is at 1001 South Mack Drive in Wasilla.

Over the past few days, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in Copenhagen making the bizarre claim to anyone who will listen that his job destroying environmental regulations are somehow good for the economy. He also made the even more off the wall assertion that America's economy would be stronger if only the entire country followed California's lead in this area, and that Governor Palin's common sense skepticism to the man-made global warming religion was somehow wrong. All of these musings by the Governator were forthcoming despite the fact that foisting his regulations on California's economy have chased businesses and the jobs...

Go ahead, grumble about the snowstorm that socked the Anchorage area this week. Depending on your side of town, and not counting the Hillside, the official tally is between 5.5 and 20 inches. Now, put your ear to your freshly shoveled driveway, and you'll hear Valdez residents laughing. "My God, our people don't even get out of bed for that, and I'm not kiddin' ya," said longtime resident Tom McAlister. Snow started falling in Valdez early Monday morning and continued to fall like crazy. At one point on Tuesday, 4.8 inches fell in an hour. By Wednesday, 68.2 inches had...

Leadership: Alaska's ex-governor asks a question we'd like answered: Why is California's current governor pushing the same policies in Copenhagen that helped drive his state into record deficits and unemployment? The movie series that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name involved cyborgs traveling through time to alternately try to destroy or save one John Connor, who would grow up to be the leader of the resistance against a race of machines that ruled the planet. Prominent in the series was his tough cookie of a mom, Sarah Connor. Another Sarah has taken the lead in another resistance against another group...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTVA-CBS 11 News) A contractor hired for a major construction project on Elmendorf Air Force Base broke both state and federal law. At issue: the illegal immigrants that were granted access to the base to help construct the Air Force's new F-22 hangers. This summer the Air Force started a multi-million dollar effort to build new F-22 hangers on Elmendorf Air Force Base. The contractor hired for the steel work was Steel System Erectors out of California. An investigation has reviled the company employed undocumented workers and allowed them access to a national security site. A "critical infrastructure...

BEAVER -- The Beaver County Sheriff's Office has arrested three men suspected in a series of burglaries. According to the Spectrum, deputies said Luis M. Lopez, Andy F. Lopez, and Oren T. Hounchell admitted to varying levels of involvement in a series of break-ins at homes, stores and the Beaver City Library. They were also found in possession of an undisclosed amount of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. All three face multiple burglary and drug charges. Deputies discovered a set of footprints left in the snow after one of the home burglaries. They followed those footprints to the Hounchell's home. The...

As if she didn't have enough adversaries, Sarah Palin has decided to mix it up with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ostensibly, the issue was global warming. Actually, it's about the future face of the Republican Party -- whose it will be, and the ideology that person brings to the table. The exchange of criticisms between the ex-governor of Alaska and the current California governor was provoked by comments Schwarzenegger made about Palin at the international summit on climate change in Copenhagen – a conference Palin not only avoided, but called on President Obama to boycott. With that, the gauntlet was thrown for...

I'd like to thank Eugene Robinson for highlighting Alaska's achievements on climate change ["Palin's own 'Climate- gate,' " op-ed, Dec. 15] and for noting that I've "treated the issue as serious, complex, and worthy of urgent attention," while making "any number of pragmatic, reasonable, smart decisions as governor." But he's wrong to suggest that my views have somehow changed or that now I'll have to "renounce" my past efforts. Continues....

Politics: If the Democrats' stitched-together Frankenstein monster of health care reform gets the 60 votes to get through the Senate, it will have been done through an assortment of bribes and brass knuckles. (snip) Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, has also been critical of the buy-in and public option, but he has an additional issue about whatever comes out of the Senate not involving public funding of abortion in any way. Michael Goldfarb on the Weekly Standard blog quotes a Senate aide as saying the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the...

ALBANY -- State Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis swiped back at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and other deniers of man-made climate change during remarks at this week's international climate conference in Copenhagen. "Last week, Sarah Palin -- you all remember her -- put a new posting on her Facebook page challenging the severity of climate change and telling President Obama to boycott Copenhagen," Grannis told his audience Monday. He pointed out that in the last 50 years, temperatures in Alaska have increased 6 degrees, and some coastal villages are at risk of falling into the ocean because of melting...

Native Alaskan groups who depend on whaling and a coalition of environmental groups sued the federal government Tuesday, seeking to block a Shell Oil subsidiary from drilling next year in the Beaufort Sea. The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, a federally recognized tribal government representing Alaska North Slope communities, asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a drilling plan the Minerals Management Service approved in October. Hours later, a coalition of 10 environmental groups and Arctic communities filed a second action with the San Francisco court, claiming the MMS did...

Governor Palin's recent op-ed in the Washington Post caused significant panic among the purveyors of the man-made global warming scam. We covered this extensively last week here and here. Today, Investor's Business Daily, in an editorial, takes another look at the one-sided "debate" between Governor Palin and the hopelessly outclassed Al Gore...

Heavy oil is thick as honey and hard to pump out of the ground. That's where most of it has stayed while lighter crude is available. But heavy oil may be the future of Alaska's petroleum development, despite higher costs and more environmental concerns… … Lawmakers will be interested in knowing whether some of the North Slope's vast natural gas resources would be best used helping to reach heavy oil fields. "If we want to develop new sources within known fields, then you have to talk about heavy oil," said Paskvan, D-Fairbanks. … The North Slope has an estimated 30...

Sarah Palin is such a cold-eyed skeptic about the Copenhagen summit on climate change that it's no surprise she would call on President Obama not to attend. After all, Obama might join other leaders in acknowledging that warming is a "global challenge." He might entertain "opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." He might even explore ways to "participate in carbon-trading markets." Oh, wait. Those quotes aren't from some smug Euro-socialist manifesto. They're from an administrative order Palin signed in September 2007, as governor of Alaska, establishing a "sub-Cabinet" of top state officials to develop a strategy for dealing with climate...

Global Warming: The Alaskan governor who knew polar bears weren't endangered says the planet isn't either and challenges the oracle of climate change. Al Gore says despite the CRU e-mails, the situation is of the utmost gravity. In a Dec. 9 Washington Post op-ed, Sarah Palin noted that the Climate-gate e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia "reveal that leading climate 'experts' deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures and tried to silence their critics from publishing in peer-reviewed journals." This did not sit well with Gore. "The entire North...

Jeffrey Judge of Eagle River has a Sarah Palin superfan in the family: his father. "He took down the family pictures and put her on the wall," said Tammy, Judge's wife. "So now when you go over there, she's like, staring at you," his daughter added.

ACES: "Tweaks" possible, but only if they yield more jobs, revenue for state. Gov. Sean Parnell is reviewing whether to change state oil tax laws implemented under Sarah Palin, as oil companies blame the taxes for driving investment dollars from Alaska to other parts of the world. The governor said Wednesday that he has asked the state Department of Revenue to evaluate whether any "tweaks" should be made to the tax system that could lead directly to more jobs for Alaskans. He said he's also spoken with oil companies. "My bottom line, if they need tax changes, and it will...

Anchorage resident Lisa Moore says she traded sex with then-Veco boss Bill Allen in 1996 for an apartment, money and jewelry. He was 59; she was 19. She also says she introduced him to a 15-year-old girl who became his sex partner.

Former U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is coming to Hamilton, Ont. Palin is making an appearance in April to help raise funds for the Juravinski Cancer Centre and St. Peter¹s Hospital. Gabe Macaluso, former CEO of Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, is a member of the committee organizing the visit and will release more details about the visit soon. Palin, who reportedly makes $20,000 for speaking engagements, is on tour in the U.S. promoting her new book, Going Rogue. It will be Palin¹s first visit to Canada since losing the 2008 election.

Balash: Without exemption cap-and-trade scheme could sink NS gas line Without some form of exemption for the planned gas treatment plant at the Prudhoe Bay end of a future gas pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope, current climate change legislation working its way through Congress could add $14 to the cost of every British thermal unit of gas flowing through the pipeline, thus sinking the viability of the pipeline project, Joe Balash, special assistant to the governor for energy and natural resource development issues, told Law Seminars International’s Energy in Alaska conference on Dec. 7. “That is something that frankly is...

Sarah Palin is an authentic American phenomenon. She resonates with a majority of the American people as authentic -- because she is authentic. She is a no-BS, stand-for-the-truth, take-a-licking-and-keep-on-ticking kind of gal. In other words, she is not like the ordinary, everyday, go-along-to-get-along professional politicians who control our national political parties. And it is precisely for that reason that she can now spearhead an American political renaissance. Our nation has been buried for decades under political pabulum. The Democrats pretend to represent average Americans, but they are controlled by wealthy elitists who pay lip service to American values while propagating...

An e-mail scandal demonstrates that matters are uncertain. The issue is, however, politicized. No president should make deals in an environment like that. With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate-change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue. "Climategate," exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate-change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen...

Gov. Sean Parnell is reviewing whether to change state oil tax laws implemented under Sarah Palin, as oil companies blame the taxes for driving investment dollars from Alaska to other parts of the world. The governor said Wednesday that he has asked the state Department of Revenue to evaluate whether any "tweaks" should be made to the tax system that could lead directly to more jobs for Alaskans. He said he's also spoken with oil companies. "My bottom line, if they need tax changes, and it will result in more investment, I'm all for it," Parnell said in an e-mail....

Officials have found a 24-inch jagged rupture in a pipeline that began pouring oil and water Nov. 29, creating one of the biggest North Slope crude oil spills ever. The on-scene coordinator for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Tom DeRuyter, said Tuesday that the breach on the bottom of the pipe was the biggest he had ever seen and indicative of the incredible pressure the pipeline was under when it split. Workers located the source of the leak Monday after cleanup crews hauled away spilled crude and contaminated snow and ice that had been obscuring the area. Officials say...

Of course, the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s book is “An American Life.”Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans — ordinary, hard-working, God-fearing, common-sense, good, ordinary, real Americans. If you are not living an American life, you are, to use a Palin coinage, living “bass-ackwards.”(snip) I approached reading her book with trepidation, worried I might learn that I am not a real American, dang it, just another dreaded, jaded “enlightened elite.”

WASHINGTON — The Interior Department on Monday gave the go-ahead for Shell Oil to begin drilling three exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea , a move that opens the door for offshore oil and gas production in the Arctic . "This is progress," said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski , the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee , calling the announcement "an encouraging sign that Alaska's oil and natural gas resources can continue to play a major role in America's energy security."

Salazar Conditionally Approves Shell’s Exploration Plan For Certain Chukchi Sea Leases Drilling Contingent on Shell Adherence to Stringent Environmental Requirements WASHINGTON, DC – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced that the Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has approved, with conditions, Shell Gulf of Mexico, Inc.’s Exploration Plan to drill three exploratory, information-gathering wells in the Chukchi Sea. “A key component of reducing our country's dependence on foreign oil is the environmentally-responsible exploration and development of America's renewable and conventional resources," said Salazar. "By approving this Exploration Plan, we are taking a cautious but deliberate step toward developing additional...

MSNBC: Crowds lined up at each stop on the “Going Rogue” tour were told no personal photos with Sarah Palin were allowed. Instead, the Palin camp offers their own photographer, who will take the picture and then sell it to fans.

When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Neither the first snow of the winter nor the slushy, untreated roads could deter hundreds of fans from coming here Saturday morning to get a copy of “Going Rogue” signed by it’s author, Sarah Palin. The BJ’s in the Fair Lakes Shopping Center welcomed hundreds of people to line up and wait for hours to meet the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate. People came prepared to withstand the elements. Winter coats, umbrellas and most importantly plastic shopping bags, protected their books from the chunky, wet falling flakes. Some cuddled an armful of books for their favorite...

Arizona Sen. John McCain came to the defense of his former GOP running mate Sarah Palin on Sunday. But in doing so, he used an adjective that some might not consider such a compliment. McCain was responding to a question from NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press,” about whether Palin’s brand of conservatism is “what the Republican Party needs to regain power in the midterms and ultimately in 2012.” McCain responded that the former Alaska governor has “earned herself a very big place in the Republican political scene” and that he was “proud of her.” Then came this: “I...

The lines began forming Saturday morning outside the Sioux Falls Barnes & Noble bookstore, fully 35 hours before former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was to arrive there to sign her new book, "Going Rogue." But the mother of five was far from South Dakota tonight. In fact, she was only about a half-dozen blocks from the White House that she didn't help John McCain win. Palin appeared in a brand-new role for the possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate -- joke-teller as the GOP's representative at the annual winter Gridiron Dinner, a 124-year-old group of Washington writers and guests who hold...

Palin to face another ethics battle By Tony Romm - 12/05/09 09:35 AM ET Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) faced yet another ethics complaint on Friday: This time, for allegedly using state resources "for partisan political purposes" during the 2008 campaign. Under state law, elected officials may not "use or authorize the use of state funds, facilities, equipment, services, or another government asset or resource" for campaigning, stumping or politicking. But Palin, argues Andree McLeod -- a local activist who has filed many ethics complains against the former Alaska governor -- sought political advice from her staff and asked...

Fifteen state representatives wrote Gov. Sean Parnell on Friday to say they were "troubled by the mounting evidence that (Alaska's 2007 oil tax increase) may wind up doing more harm than good to future oil development." The representatives, including state House Speaker Mike Chenault and other top leaders of the Republican-led majority, said recent developments have them worried. They cited the recent announcement by Conoco Phillips that it would not drill an exploration well on the North Slope next year for the first time in 45 years, and will instead pursue offshore development that doesn't result in state tax dollars....

Shishmaref, Alaska (Dec. 3) -- When the arctic winds howl and angry waves pummel the shore of this Inupiat Eskimo village, Shelton and Clara Kokeok fear that their house, already at the edge of the Earth, finally may plunge into the gray sea below. "The land is going away," said Shelton Kokeok, 65, whose home is on the tip of a bluff that's been melting in part because of climate change. "I think it's going to vanish one of these days."

British oil giant BP PLC has begun cleaning up a second pipeline leak at its Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska this week, after fluid spilled from a flow line Wednesday. The incident did not impact oil production in Prudhoe Bay, the largest U.S. oilfield complex, a BP spokesman said Friday. The leak in the six-inch (15-centimetre) diameter flow line, which was discovered Wednesday, spilled about 27,030 litres of a watery mixture known as produced water into an operational building and an outdoor gravel area, Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation said in a situation report late Thursday. The spill was the...

In the months since she returned to the public spotlight, Sarah Palin’s continually evolving political identity has undergone a subtle change as her public persona centers increasingly on her disabled son, Trig. Palin began her political career as a reformer breaking up Alaska’s corrupt boys club and shifted seamlessly into last fall’s campaign trail culture warrior. But her decision to carry to term her Down syndrome child established a special relationship with anti-abortion activists, and now Palin has transformed herself from a politician who was anti-abortion into the leading figure of the anti-abortion movement. Since she resigned the Alaska governorship....

When President Obama spoke to troops at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base last month, the unit there parked a shiny new F-22 fighter plane in the hangar. But according to multiple sources, White House aides demanded the plane be changed to an older F-15 fighter because they didn't want Obama speaking in front of the F-22, a controversial program he fought hard to end. "White House aides actually made them remove the F-22-said they would not allow POTUS to be pictured with the F-22 in any way, shape, or form," one source close to the unit relayed. Stephen Lee, a...

A reasonable argument can be made that Sarah Palin did the right thing when she quit after two and a half years into her first term as Alaska governor. Yes she let many down when she asked us for her vote and then quit after a couple of years on the job. And yes some would argue the only reason she quit was for more money and fame. But regardless of her motives, her quitting could end up saving the country. Even Palin critics would have to admit she is a mighty force on the political scene. Whether it’s firing...

WASILLA -- A Palmer city law that blocked people from carrying guns in city parks and other places was tossed out last week after a local man pointed out the rule infringed on people's Second Amendment rights. "I'm thoroughly excited," said Ryan Clark, a former Marine and now a plumber who lives outside Palmer. The outdated law prohibited anyone other than a peace officer or Alaskan with a permit to carry a concealed weapon from carrying any weapon, concealed or not, in government office buildings, courthouses, hospitals, schools, places where alcohol is sold or served, domestic violence or sexual assault...

Not only should we be careful in what we wish for, but we should be ever so diligent when drafting pro gun legislation. One of the greatest evils against the Bill of Rights is legislation that doesn't pass the constitutional test. This can happen even when the legislators have the best of intentions. Alaska police officers regularly disarm law abiding citizens, taking their firearms and running the serial numbers through the system. This in itself is a violation of the “fourth amendment”. No surprise here, officers that have taken an oath to uphold the constitution are regularly breaking this same...

A year ago someone set fire to Wasilla Bible Church. Today, that person is still out there. The Wasilla Police Department is leading the ongoing investigation, but none of the leads they've chased so far have ended up panning out. "The investigation is still open, and we're still asking the public to contact us if anybody has heard anything," Deputy Chief Greg Wood said. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and the state fire marshal's office both assisted in the initial investigation, and the state crime laboratory collected evidence at the scene. An ATF press release issued...

The storm mucking up Southcentral Alaska this week battered a far-flung U.S. Coast Guard outpost in the Aleutians over the weekend with hurricane-force winds, according to the National Weather Service. Out in Attu, the crew of the Coast Guard's Long-Range Navigation Station reported sustained winds of 125 mph with gusts hitting 178 mph over the weekend. The station also got more than a foot and a half of snow. The gusts, equivalent to the winds of a Category 5 hurricane, damaged a communications antenna, which broke free from three securing mounts, the Coast Guard said. The station's crew has been...

Cleanup efforts continued Tuesday on a three-quarter-acre area of tundra affected by a spill of oil and water near BP's Lisburne Processing Center on the North Slope. More than half of the affected area was coated by a sprayed mist from an 18-inch flow line, a pipeline that carries raw oil, water and gas to the center for separation… Late Tuesday it remained unclear how much oil had spilled or why the pipeline leaked. … The new spill was discovered Sunday afternoon. Cleanup of contaminated snow began late Monday, with 12 workers removing 40 cubic yards of contaminated snow with...