Free Republic

THE GREAT ALONE - official trailer Suzanna Caldwell February 25, 2015 Greg Kohs’ independently produced documentary follows four-time Iditarod champion Lance Mackey along the 2013 trail, where he went on to place 19th. It also traces back to his early life, with family interviews, including dad and 1978 Iditarod champion Dick Mackey, along with his hard-scrabble rise over the years to becoming a legendary dog musher.

Kansas appears on the verge of becoming among the most welcoming states to people who want to pack heat. A bill promising Kansans the ability to carry concealed firearms — without taking safety training or weathering the background checks required in most of the country — won initial approval in the state Senate on Wednesday. The change, expected to pass Thursday to a likely receptive House, would make Kansas a “constitutional carry” state. That would mean citizens would not need a permit to carry a hidden gun. The bill would maintain the current permit process for people who want to...

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Smoking, growing and possessing marijuana becomes legal in America’s wildest state Tuesday, thanks to a voter initiative aimed at clearing away 40 years of conflicting laws and court rulings. Making Alaska the third state to legalize recreational marijuana was the goal of a coalition including libertarians, rugged individualists and small-government Republicans who prize the privacy rights enshrined in the state’s constitution....

The Iron Dog Snow Mobile race started yesterday from Big Lake at 10:00 AK time. This year's race is being called the “water & dirt” race because snow is lacking on some major portions of trail and the race route had to be changed to avoid open water on the Yukon. Through slush and muck, soggy Iron Dog snowmachine racers head north Todd Palin and partner Tyler Huntington (Team 11) are in this year's race and have made it to the McGrath Airport checkpoint as of Sunday night (Feb. 23) – last year, they were early out of the race...

Alaska has been named the happiest and healthiest state in the nation. In 2013, the Last Frontier state held the eighth position on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. One year later, the state climbed to the top of the list for the first time since 2008. To compile the list, researchers interviewed 176,000 United States residents. Each participant was asked to rate their happiness and health on a scale of 0 to 100. The categories include social life, financial stability, physical well-being, community involvement, and purpose in life.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's receiving encouragement to run for president from an unlikely source — Rev. Al Sharpton. The MSNBC host and civil rights leader tweeted that during a meeting on the red carpet at the 40th anniversary episode of Saturday Night Live on Sunday, he encouraged Palin on Twitter to make a bid for the White House — but not with the intention of winning. Reverend Al Sharpton ✔ @TheRevAl I saw Sarah Palin on the red carpet and we talked to Xtra together. I urged her to run in 2016 and help the Democrats out. 9:24...

Governor Palin wowed the crowd as she arrived on the "red carpet" for Saturday Night Live’s 40th Anniversary 3-hour special.She stopped on the "red carpet" to talk with actor Alec Baldwin, quipping that she likes his brother, Stephen –a conservative– better. NBC anchors Savannah Guthrie and Matt Lauer intereviewed the two of them, and it may be me, but it seemed as though Baldwin was doing his best to keep Gov. Palin from talking. After Guthrie asked her a direct question, Baldwin was forced to listen, while chomping on his gum (or could it have been leftover food from dinner?)Twitchy caught some of the...

A state-level campaign to rein in the federal government by calling an unprecedented convention to amend the U.S. Constitution is gaining steam, picking up support from two high-profile Republicans as more states explore the idea. Coburn, a legendary government-waste watchdog, announced this week that he has joined the effort by becoming a senior adviser for the group Convention of States Action, which wants states, not just Congress, to pass constitutional amendments. Article V of the Constitution states amendments can be ratified either by Congress or by states if two-thirds of them petition Congress to call a convention. Then, any amendment...

They're probably about half as old as scientists once thought they were. But a pair of butchered bones found in a cave near the Alaska-Yukon border are "definite" evidence of human presence in North America just after the end of the last Ice Age, perhaps as much as 14,000 years ago, according to a new study. The bones were originally discovered in the late 1970s by Canadian archaeologist Dr. Jacques Cinq-Mars at a site known as Bluefish Caves, high in northwestern Yukon Territory. In one of the caves, dubbed Cave 2, archaeologists found more than 18,000 fragments of bones from...

State legislators around the country have introduced more than 200 bills aiming to nullify regulations and laws coming out of Washington, D.C., as they look to rein in the federal government. The legislative onslaught, which includes bills targeting federal restrictions on firearms, experimental treatments and hemp, reflects growing discord between the states and Washington, state officials say. “You have a choice,” said Kentucky state Rep. Diane St. Onge (R). “To sit back and not do anything or say anything and let overregulation continue — or you have the alternative choice to speak up about it and say, ‘We know what...

Based on historical patterns, the next president is likely to be a GenXer. This is not good news for the many baby boomers running, or thinking about running, in 2016. When voters decide it is time to move the presidency on to the next generation, they keep electing presidents in that next generation, or they go on to the one that follows. They do not go back. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were from the baby boomer generation. Barack Obama is from the Gen X generation (those born 1961 to 1981). If the pattern holds, the next president will...

“She is my hero,” Nugent said of the former half-term Alaska governor. “Sarah Palin is the perfect example of what our Founding Fathers envisioned for an experiment in self-government.” http://radio.foxnews.com/2015/02/06/ted-nugent-sarah-palin-perfect-example-of-what-founding-fathers-wanted/

First, Sarah Palin is one of us, not one of them. Second, the country needs a healer – someone who can rise above the mass media's hate-fueled attacks while working to bring sanity back to government and ideological balance back to both major parties. Sarah Palin can do this: she's a deeply committed conservative who has consistently shown, and not just as governor and McCain's running mate, but throughout her personal and political life, both an ability to work with the other side and a willingness to listen to others. Third, Palin is electable – whether she takes Scott Walker,...

Lawmakers have failed in past attempts to rename North America’s highest mountain, but a new proposal may have a better chance this year under a Republican Congress, according to an aide to an Alaska lawmaker who is resurrecting the effort. U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have introduced a bill to give Mount McKinley its historical Alaska Native name. The Alaska Republicans announced a Senate bill Wednesday to formally call the 20,320-foot mountain by its Athabascan name, Denali, KTUU reported. The bill comes after previous efforts by Murkowski failed. …

The “Smithsonian” magazine compiled a list of the “100 most significant Americans,” and to the dismay of his fan base President Obama failed to make the cut. Adding insult to injury, former President George W. Bush made the list. But it gets even better, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was also included. The liberal website Raw Story bemoaned the very idea that the Smithsonian Institution “decided that George W. Bush is a more ‘significant’ figure in U.S. history” than the exalted one. Curiously, the only redeeming qualification Raw Story named when mentioning Obama is that he was the country’s first...

On Sunday, President Obama announced that he will recommend to Congress that it should designate 12 million acres in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as wilderness.[i] When briefing the press about the plan, Presidential Advisor John Podesta said that regardless of the law and Congressional action, the administration was going to manage these 12 million acres as if it had been designated as wilderness by Congress. That means that ANWR will be unavailable to resource development. In 1980, Congress set aside some of the acreage in ANWR (the “1002 area,” comprising the Coastal Plain) for future consideration of oil...

Genesis 14:21 The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.” Just as the price of gas is reaching levels Americans can both go to the grocery store and fill their cars in the same week, our Glorious Premier Obozo decides to close the remainder of the ANWAR desert to oil exploration. This oil reserve holds more than thirty years of energy for America and would further stabilize the price of gas, but Marxists like him hate cheap oil so he is closing this production by edict. Alaskans want to develop and...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published a final environmental impact statement for the agency’s conservation plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In that EIS the agency has selected a plan alternative that recommends that Congress should designate the entire refuge as wilderness, (see map page 23) including the coastal plain area, sometimes known as the 1002 area. This wilderness designation would place the entire refuge off limits for oil and gas exploration and development. Land in the immediate vicinity of the coastal village of Kaktovik would be excluded from the wilderness designation but would still require Congressional...

How would Sarah Palin do if she decides to run for president? According to her former top-of-the-ticket running mate, quite well. "She's very interesting. And I'm sure she'd do great," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told The Washington Post Wednesday in a brief interview. After the 2008 presidential election, McCain has consistently praised Palin, despite her clash with his campaign team. Palin has also defended McCain. The former Alaska governor campaigned for the senator in his 2010 reelection bid....

JUNEAU - In a move geared toward increasing awareness of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, nine bars throughout Alaska volunteered to participate in a University of Alaska Anchorage study on FASD. "It's a full academic research study, on the effectiveness of a pregnancy test dispensers located in bar bathrooms," said Ryan Ray, aide to state Sen. Pete Kelly (R-Fairbanks). Most of the nine bars participating are located in rural Alaska. Kelly Spokesperson Heather Shadduck says $500,000 was allotted in the FY2015 Mental Health Trust budget for the FASD awareness campaign, plus another $400,000 out of the capital budget for the UAA...