Free Republic

In one of Alaska’s most remote outposts, where a thousand hardy souls make their homes, the Obama administration has put the fate of birds and bears above the lives of people, blocking construction of an 11-mile gravel trail connecting a tiny fishing hamlet to a life-saving airport. King Cove has a clinic, but no hospital or doctor. Residents must fly 600 miles to Anchorage, via Cold Bay’s World War II airstrip, for most medical procedures including serious trauma cases and childbirth. Frequent gale-force winds and thick fog often delay or jeopardize medevac flights. According to local Aleutian elders, 19 people...

"It's a glow-in-the-dark compass ring. So you don't get lost." -Josh (played by Tom Hanks), in the movie, "Big" Maybe what we need in California is a glow-in-the-dark compass ring. Or, maybe it's just Republicans that need one. Perhaps just Arnold Schwarzenegger. Heck, maybe it's all three. Let's face it...to our fellow citizens, Arnold is the face of California and the State GOP (with all due respect to Ackerman, Plescia and Sundheim). As Jon Fleischman and I wrote on the heels of the Governor's January 5 State of the State address, "Now, 'Mr. Hollywood' has come up with his BIGGEST...

DURHAM - A Durham police detective investigating the Duke University lacrosse case arrested an alibi witness Wednesday on a 2 1/2-year-old misdemeanor warrant. Taxi driver Moezeldin Elmostafa said Investigator R.D. Clayton and another officer asked whether he had anything new to tell them about the rape case before driving him to the Durham County jail. He said no and was held for five hours, until a friend posted his bail on a shoplifting charge. Ernest Conner, a Greenville lawyer who represents defendant Reade Seligmann, said the cabbie's arrest amounted to intimidation. "It appears to me they are trying to pressure...

Ron Cowan wiped away his tears, but they wouldn't stop flowing. The flashy developer who once crashed his helicopter into San Francisco Bay held his breath and muttered "Goddammit" as he stepped up to the microphone. It was June 11, 2004, and many of his longtime friends were on hand to sing his praises and name a road after him. He had helped put most of them in office. But Cowan knew something many of those in the sizable audience did not: He'd paid a steep price to get his road, the Ron Cowan Parkway. The man had gambled everything...

Welcome to the North Shore Road EIS Website Project Update The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is available for your review. The DEIS document has a main document section (Volume I) with five appendices. The Summary in Volume I provides an overview of the entire document. Technical details are presented in the main document and appendices. Public Hearings Scheduled The public hearings to comment on the DEIS have been scheduled for February 2 - February 13, 2006. The upcoming public hearings will give you an opportunity to provide comments on the DEIS. While the DEIS includes an Environmentally Preferred Alternative,...

KETCHIKAN -- Mike Salazar, the Ketchikan borough mayor, had just fielded a call from Reader's Digest. Another reporter wanting to talk about "the Bridge to Nowhere." The proposed $315 million bridge from this small Alaska city to a neighboring, nearly uninhabited island, has become a sensation. It's made Ketchikan famous, but not in a way Salazar likes. "It makes me frustrated that we haven't been able to communicate our need well enough for the rest of the United States to understand it," said the mayor, who was first elected to the town council in 1976. Salazar said, "Everybody calls it...