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Well, so much for that 50 state strategy. The Obama camp surrendered 4 states to McCain-Palin today. And, you know what that means? It's time to play the racism card! Andrew Malcolm at the Top of the Ticket ties this decision by the Obama Campaign to close election offices in North Dakota, Alaska, Idaho and Georgia to a poll on Democratic racism that was released this weekend: Exactly 44 years after Lyndon B. Johnson became the last Democrat to capture the state of North Dakota in a presidential election, it looks like Barack Obama won't be the next. The Associated...

(FAIRBANKS, Alaska) Sarah Palin’s homecoming to Alaska felt more like a victory party than a campaign rally, complete with confetti shooting out into the crowd of over 1,000 people who had come to get a glimpse of their state’s favorite daughter. After two weeks away from the 49th state, Palin was clearly overjoyed to be back in more familiar surroundings where people “know that up here, it’s a snow machine, not a snowmobile.” Minutes after her newly minted campaign plane—“Straight Talk 2”—touched down from a 10-hour flight from Washington, D.C., Palin was greeted on the runway by her daughters Piper...

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Still talking about the economy, as of 7:26 .. said she's coming up after this break and will talk about: drill, drill, drill.

Turkey's constitutional court opens a case today that will have momentous, and possibly disastrous, consequences not only for Turkey but also for much of the Muslim world (see page 34). It is a case that could end Turkish hopes of joining the European Union for ever and transform one of the West's most vibrant strategic allies into a feuding and embittered society, torn between military repression and Islamic fervour. For what the court is attempting to decide is whether Islam is compatible with secular democracy. If it rules that the present Islamist Government has undermined Atatürk's constitution, it will declare...

A former youth pastor was sentenced on Friday to six years- three years in prison and three years suspended- for his sexual involvement with a 14-year old girl. Keith Daniel Kiger, 31, of Winslow entered a negotiated plea of guilty to reduced charges of sexual indecency with a child before 4 th Judicial Circuit Judge William Storey. He was initially charged with second-degree sexual assault. Kiger was a youth minister at a church the victim had attended only a few times, so it would have been hard to prove he committed the act while being in a position of trust,...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband Todd, having put their pro-life beliefs into personal practice, introduced their fifth child to reporters and photographers April 21. Their son, born April 18, has Down syndrome. "When we first heard, it was kind of confusing," Palin, 44, said of the testing early in her pregnancy that showed her baby had Down syndrome. The news was "very, very challenging," she said, according to the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News. However, the governor said, she and her husband came to believe that God has blessed them. Palen said her son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, is...

The Senate moved yesterday toward asking the Justice Department for a criminal investigation of a $10 million legislative earmark whose provisions were mysteriously altered after Congress gave final approval to a huge 2005 highway funding bill.

HOT SPRINGS -- Danny Morrison just wanted to find a place where he could worship God. This simple yet overwhelming desire put him on a road that eventually led to the Catholic Church. But he is not alone. His wife Mary, stepson, Steve, and two step-grandchildren will enter the Church with him at the Easter Vigil Mass at St. John the Baptist Church in Hot Springs. His daughter-in-law, Kristy, is also returning to the faith after being away for nearly 15 years. Presence of God Morrison, 56, began his journey when the Southern Baptist church he had attended most of...

LEE COUNTY, Fla. -- Coconut Road near Fort Myers looks like any other concrete ribbon near housing developments, golf courses and shopping malls in this state's booming southwest. But like another fragrant slab of recent pork, the $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, Coconut Road leads to somewhere darkly fascinating. It runs straight into Washington's earmark culture of waste, corruption and anticonstitutional deviousness. Today the road ends at a chain-link fence, beyond which flows the river of traffic on Interstate 75. The earmark that would have built an interchange to connect Coconut Road to I-75 was, like the bridge,...

Barack Obama has won in Alaska, according to Fox News.

In political terms, the Justice and Development (AK) party which won 47 percent of the votes in Turkey’s July 22 elections and will have almost two-thirds of the parliament seats is a pragmatic, conservative, business-oriented moderate party despite its roots as an Islamic-oriented one. In societal terms, the Justice and Development (AK) party is probably transforming Turkey from a secular into a more Islamic society, with a big effect on the status of women, the situation of minorities, and Turkey’s foreign policy. Both statements are true. And this is the point many observers are missing in the great change signaled...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (CNS) -- Joe Miller, a showman, has spent his life being goofy and making people smile during his career as a circus clown and a carnival-ride owner. So when he proposed a serious idea, most people just laughed. Miller, who lives outside Lafayette, La., wanted to relive one of the happiest days of his life and reunite with his classmates from his first Communion at St. Patrick Church in North Little Rock. He dubbed it a Communion Reunion, and for the two months leading up to the June 3 event, Miller became part detective and part party...

The production of Russian weapons in eastern Europe without licenses causes direct damage to the country's economy and interests, a first deputy prime minister said Friday. "It is not a secret that such production is carried out in a number of eastern European countries, including NATO members," Sergei Ivanov said adding that the illegal production should be stopped. He said this is "intellectual piracy," adding that these countries supply Russian weapons to world markets at dumping prices. "Despite our appeals to these countries, we have received no reasonable answer," he said. Russia says it suffers major losses from the counterfeit...

BELIZE CITY (Reuters) - Collapsing bridges, bursting sewer pipes and crumbling roads caused by global warming could cost Alaska up to $10 billion over the next few decades, researchers said. Atmospheric temperatures in the northernmost U.S. state have risen by more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit (around 2 degrees Celsius) over the past five decades, Peter Larsen, a resource economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told a climate change conference in the Central American country of Belize. Larsen led a study with a team of engineers to calculate how Alaska will cope with the highest temperatures it has experienced in...

Millions of young fish being raised in Alaska's vast network of salmon hatcheries were fed food contaminated with melamine, the same substance that has triggered a massive recall of pet food following the deaths of cats and dogs.

Brian Tanner was sitting in his Acura Integra recently outside the Palmer Library playing online games when a Palmer police pulled up behind him. The officer asked him what he was doing. Tanner, 21, was using the library's wireless Internet connection. He was told that his activity constituted theft of services and was told to leave. The next day, Sunday, police spotted him there again. "It was kind of like, 'Well gee whiz, come on,' " police Lt. Tom Remaley said. The police officer confiscated Tanner's laptop in order to inspect what he may have been downloading, Remaley said. Remaley...

By Larry Kahaner Sunday, November 26, 2006; B01 In the grand narrative of World War II, the Battle of Bryansk is a minor conflict, barely deserving of a footnote. But Bryansk has another place in history. It was there that a then-unknown tank commander named Mikhail Kalashnikov decided that his Russian comrades would never again be defeated. In the years following the Great Patriotic War, as Soviet propagandists dubbed it, he was to conceive and fabricate a weapon so simple, and yet so revolutionary, that it would change the way wars were fought and won. It was the AK-47 assault...

Tom Milliron figures Juneau schoolchildren are going to encounter guns one way or another, whether venturing armed into nearby wilderness or visiting the home of a friend

The image above shows a corpulent former Russian President Boris Yeltsin bedecked in toga and driving the “young farm girl” and “young factory fellow” from a famous Soviet monument like horses before his chariot. The caption reads: “Corruption: An impediment to progress.” Will Russia fall as Rome did, it seems to ask? Yeltsin was justly criticized during his reign for personal and systemic corruption but in fairness we must ask: Was it any difference before or since in Russia? Is Russia making any economic progress now? As this article will show, the answer is a resounding “nyet!” On May 24,...

Teenaged Burglar Shot By Homeowner GWINNETT COUNTY -- Police say a man shot and wounded a teenager he found in his home – attempting to rob him. Police say 27-year-old Ronald Ramsey arrived at his Lawrenceville home Tuesday afternoon and found 17-year-old Alrazi Basher of Duluth inside, robbing him. Officials say when Basher tried to flee the home, Ramsey shot at Basher and hit him and his vehicle. (More...) Clerk fatally shoots robber at liquor store A liquor store clerk shot and killed one of two armed men who tried to rob the southwest Houston business Wednesday night, police said....

Venezuela has received its first delivery of tens of thousands of Russian assault rifles. It is the first batch out of a total of 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has ordered from Moscow.

US sets up £215m deal for Afghan arms - from Russia By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 22/05/2006) American defence officials have secretly requested a "prodigious quantity" of ammunition from Russia to supply the Afghan army in case a Democrat president takes over in Washington and pulls out US troops. The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Pentagon chiefs have asked arms suppliers for a quote on a vast amount of ordnance, including more than 78 million rounds of AK47 ammunition, 100,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 12,000 tank shells - equivalent to about 15 times the British Army's annual requirements. The Bush...

The small group of Eastern-rite Catholics who gather each week in Sacred Heart Parish’s former church building in Wasilla now belong to a bona fide church community of their own. Blessed Theodore Romzha Byzantine Catholic Mission was established Feb. 16 by Byzantine Catholic Bishop Most Reverend William Skurla. The new "mission" — a precursor to a parish — is associated with the only Byzantine Catholic parish in Alaska: St. Nicholas of Myra in Anchorage, founded in 1958.So, what is a Byzantine Catholic?The Catholic Church contains 23 rites, or liturgical expressions. The vast majority of people who call themselves Catholic...

It would benefit energy policy and the nation's governance -- and send a message to people for whom environmentalism is collectivism in drag. In 1986, Gale Norton was 32 and working for the secretary of the interior on matters pertaining to the proposal to open a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- area 1002 -- to drilling for oil and natural gas, a proposal that then had already been a bone of contention for several years. Today Norton is the secretary of the interior and is working on opening ANWR. But this interminable argument actually could end...

JUNEAU -- It was only a small taste of freedom David Mulligan, 21, of Sitka, served 25 days for drunken driving and was released at 7 a.m. Tuesday from Lemon Creek Correctional Center. Authorities allege he stole a van three minutes later. A man who lives a block from the facility had left his 1997 Dodge van running to warm up. When he came out of the house, it was gone. Two hours later, the owner called police on a cell phone, saying he was following the stolen van in traffic. Police responded, and said they found Mulligan alone in...

November 30, 2005Hillary's Doctor Offers 'Born Again' Abortions Editor's note: According to William F Harrison's book review of My Life by Bill Clinton at Amazon -- This guy was Hillary's doctor and a friend of Bill and Hillary since the 70's. "I am almost 69 years old, and have been a student of all of the presidents of my lifetime, starting with FDR and going to GWB. I have known Bill and Hillary Clinton personally since they both moved to Fayetteville to teach at the University of Arkansas Law School in the early 70s. I met Hillary first as her...

Blankenship points to thorny relationship with governor By Jessica Lowell rep5@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE - Reaction was mixed Friday in the wake of Trent Blankenship's announcement that he's giving up his post as the state's top educator. The announcement came at a news conference in Casper, where Blankenship confirmed he has been hired as superintendent for the North Slope Borough School District in northern Alaska. He said he is leaving his Wyoming state post Aug. 1 but assuming his new duties July. Blankenship has about a year and a half left in his term. Even before the...

I am looking for info to the best place to get a good deal on kit/salvage guns. I am also looking for advice on the best way to go about getting an ffl for part-time business applications.

MOSCOW, May 11 (RIA Novosti) - Mikhail Kalashnikov, 85, the patriarch of Russian gun makers and designer of the most popular gun in the world - the Kalashnikov assault rifle, is as active as usual. He is to personally unveil his latest design at the MILEX 2005 international arms show in Minsk from May 17 to 20. According to Rosoboronexport - the only Russian state arms export intermediary, the legendary arms designer will also participate in the 2nd international scientific conference on military-technical, defense and security problems and dual-use technologies in Minsk. He is to deliver the report titled Russian...

Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey waged an assault yesterday against in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants as the students waited to urge lawmakers to approve the controversial bill. ``Breaking the law should not entitle you to public benefits,'' Healey told the Committee on Ways and Means. ``America is a nation of immigrants, but America is also a nation of laws.'' The bill, which has failed to pass before, would provide illegal immigrant students who have been in Massachusetts at least three years and graduated from a state high school the opportunity to attend state colleges and universities at the same cost...

EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Frigid temperatures, blasting wind and more snow than some places normally see in a year left parts of the Midwest and South paralyzed Thursday, and transformed a section of highway in southern Indiana into a parking lot. The winter storm dumped double-digits of snow from Ohio to Wyoming, the Texas Panhandle to the Great Lakes, disrupting pre-Christmas travel. Motorists in parts of Mississippi and Tennessee were warned Thursday to stay off highways iced up from freezing rain. Hundreds of thousands lost power in Ohio. Southern Indiana barely had time to catch its frosty breath after a snowstorm...

Put info and links about Alaska here.

State could decide leadership in Senate By GERARD SHIELDS gshields@theadvocate.com Advocate Washington bureau It's still a big "if," but Louisiana voters could decide who runs the U.S. Senate for the next two years. Due to the state's unique runoff election system, the eyes of the nation could well be focused on the Pelican State and its politics beginning Wednesday. If no U.S. Senate candidate gains 50 percent plus one vote in Tuesday's general election, the top two vote-getters will compete in a Dec. 4 runoff. Because all the other 33 Senate elections will be decided next week, the Louisiana race...

-- Republicans Likely to Pick Up Senate Seats by John Gizzi Posted Oct 15, 2004 With two weeks to go before voters go to the polls in 34 states to choose U.S. senators, prospects are good the Republicans will make a net gain of 3 seats. Such a gain would increase their Senate majority from the current 51 to 49 (when Independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont is counted with the Democrats) to 54 to 46. The Republicans appear poised to pick up seats in five states where Democratic incumbents are retiring--Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina But...

August 6, 2004 Alaskan Delegate to New York: Don't Fence Us InBy ALAN FEUER ORTH POLE, Alaska, Aug. 1 - Doug Isaacson has a few ideas about city folks. First of all, they do not understand Alaska. Second of all, they do not understand Alaska.He was flying in a six-seat Piper Navajo the other day above the tundra, grousing that he could not build on all that empty land because the city slickers wanted to preserve it. They needed some place to dream of in their cramped apartments, he was saying. It drives a man like Mr. Isaacson insane."It's a...

Fire in Arizona Threatens Some Homes; Dozens Evacuated in Alaska Associated Press Jun 30, 2004 PAYSON, Ariz. (AP) - Fire crews burned trees and brush around this mountain town of 14,000 on Wednesday to keep a spreading wildfire from coming any closer. Seventeen buildings, including homes, barns and sheds, were considered threatened by the fire, which remained five miles away, said Marty Christensen, a spokesman for the crew fighting the fire. The fire has burned roughly 32,000 acres and was considered only 3 percent contained, Christensen said. "It's still extreme conditions, but I think everything is going as planned," he...

Act Now in Five States! See Below! What Are You Doing to Stop Same-sex "Marriage?” Have you done all you can to stop same-sex "marriage" from entering your town? Many excellent initiatives are underway to uphold traditional marriage. You can now participate in these efforts!As part of its Traditional Marriage Crusade, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) is working to get state marriage amendments on ballots across the country. The TFP is also setting up a page on its web site that will list many of the efforts to defend traditional marriage.In addition, the...

AK-47s Headed to U.S. Had Legal Permits Wed Apr 28, 4:13 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo! By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - A U.S.-bound shipment of thousands of AK-47 assault rifles and other combat-type weapons, seized by Italian authorities who suspected they were being smuggled, actually have legal permits to be imported, American officials said Wednesday. About 7,500 AK-47s, AKM rifles and other weapons worth an estimated $6 million were seized April 20 aboard a Turkish-flagged ship in the port of Gioia Tauro. They were bound for New York from Romania. At the...

<p>The nation's 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team has begun to take shape in Alaska, with soldiers arriving at Fort Wainwright and Fort Richardson this fall and winter, and a fleet of new eight-wheeled Stryker vehicles expected over the next 15 months.</p>

<p>Church divided on gay bishop EPISCOPALIANS: Alaska leaders join dispute over recent confirmation of New Hampshire man.</p> <p>JUNEAU -- The leaders of Alaska's Episcopal Church will grapple over the coming days with the explosive subject of homosexuality, a debate that is threatening to break their national church apart.</p>

[OMED: Michael sits darkly at the sports desk for the Tillamook Headlight Herald A journalistic Trekkie who types faster than light, he has experienced blackouts many times -- the one before this on a golf course. (He parred a hole, and the shock was too much for his delicate literary sensibilities.) In the piece below, he relates his experiences in far out New York City, when, once more in his star-crossed life, the lights went out. (Photo: Publicity shot of Mike O'Brien during his days as a star of Hollywood SciFi flicks.)] On Aug. 14, my first full day ever...

Court upholds sentence in Jesse Dirkhising caseMan convicted in homosexual rape, murder of 13-year-old boy keeps 25-year prison term Posted: September 21, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern By Jon Dougherty© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com The Arkansas Supreme Court has upheld the 25-year sentence of a man convicted of the homosexual rape and murder of a 13-year-old boy. The state's highest court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling which said a pair of statements made to police in September 1999 by Joshua Macabe Brown shortly after his arrest should not be thrown out. Earlier, Benton County Circuit Judge David S. Clingler ruled although he had ''serious...

Was anybody watching "The Factor" last week as PO'd as I was at the guest O'Reilly picked to discuss gasoline prices? Let's make sure O'Reilly knows what the real problem is: liberals (paid off by tree-huggers) who won't drill in ANWR. Simply cut-and-paste the letter below and email it to O'Reilly@foxnews.com . It is even better if you modify it and make it your own - but keep it short. Don't forget to put your name and town at the bottom of the email: _______________________________________________________ Dear Bill, I was outraged at your guest who implied that the recent price gouging...

As I write this, I'm huddled in a tent on the tundra of the wildest part of America, about 175 miles above the Arctic Circle in the last great wilderness virtually untouched by humans other than Eskimos and Indians. This fate of this wildlife refuge is to be decided by politicians in Washington in perhaps the most contentious debate about the environment today. Supporters of oil drilling make much of the fact that almost none of those who insist on protecting this refuge have ever seen it or ever will, and they sometimes argue that it is a frozen wasteland...

Evans & Novak Week of August 25 by Robert Novak Posted Aug 22, 2003 Politics 2003 Week of August 25 Democratic: Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is scaring the daylights out of the party establishment. 1) It is not brain surgery. Unless either Rep. Richard Gephardt (Mo.) beats Dean in Iowa and/or Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) beats him in New Hampshire, the Vermonter is home free. 2) Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) has been belaboring Dean as too radical and a non-winner—epithets that seldom, if ever, stop an insurgent candidate. Lieberman’s path to the nomination is unclear. 3) Gephardt is trying...

BAQOUBA, Iraq — An American soldier stands at the side of an Iraqi highway, puts his AK-47 on fully automatic and pulls the trigger. Within seconds, the assault rifle has blasted out 30 rounds. Test fire complete. U.S. troops in Iraq may not have found weapons of mass destruction, but they’re certainly getting their hands on the country’s stock of Kalashnikovs — and, they say, they need them. The soldiers based around Baqouba are from an armor battalion, which means they have tanks, Humvees and armored personnel carriers. But they are short on rifles. A four-man tank crew is issued...

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has warned Congress that rising natural gas prices threaten ``erosion'' of the nation's economic health. What goes around, comes around. If you refuse to let producers find more gas, as the nation has too often done, rising prices are inevitable. Natural gas supplies one fourth of the nation's energy. High prices act just like a tax to depress demand for everything that gas goes into, from electricity to plastics to warm homes. Current prices are almost triple those of 1998-1999. The Bush administration backed down in the face of quite groundless objections from Florida -...

Here is the bottom line with Iraq; this is what it all boils down to. Countries like France and Germany -- besides having many lucrative, sweetheart financial deals with Iraq that a war would cost them -- do not understand how Saddam thinks, i.e. they think that he can be reasoned with; he can't -- he's a madman (read any biography of the man to see how truly twisted he is). On the other hand, he, i.e. Saddam, understands how the leaders and diplomats from countries like France and Germany think -- all too well. He understands that they --...