Feds Consider Taking Alaska Tribal Land into Trust

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Photo Credit: Paxson Woelber / flickr

Photo Credit: Paxson Woelber / flickr

The U.S. Department of Interior announced this week that it will consider taking Alaska tribal land into trust.

The move could lead to pockets of “Indian country,” where tribal courts and governments would have authority to create their own laws and justice systems, the Anchorage Daily News reported (https://is.gd/bUHu9y).

Currently, the only Indian country community with a reservation in the state is Metlakatla, in southeast Alaska.

The state opposes the move.

A judge in Washington, D.C., last year agreed with Alaska Native tribes, supported by nonprofit law firms, which sued in federal court saying the Interior Department should have been taking land into trust years ago.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska State Fair Books ‘Duck Dynasty’

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Photo Credit: Dave Nelson / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Dave Nelson / Creative Commons

A contentious cable television reality show star will be among the highlighted acts at this year’s Alaska State Fair, officials announced Wednesday.

Phil Robertson and other members of the show “Duck Dynasty” will headline the concert venue Aug. 30, fair marketing director Dean Phipps said.

Set in Louisiana bayou country, A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” follows a family that manufactures duck calls and loves to go bird hunting.

Robertson, the family patriarch, was briefly suspended by A&E last year after GQ magazine quoted him declaring that gays are sinners and African Americans were happy under Jim Crow laws establishing segregation. Supporters of Robertson’s right to voice his opinions flocked to his defense before the network reinstated him.

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Alaska Legislature Unanimously Approves $145 Million Bond Funding Legislation for Ucore’s Bokan-Dotson Ridge

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Photo Credit: Wonderlane / flickr

Photo Credit: Wonderlane / flickr

Ucore Rare Metals Inc (TSX VENTURE:UCU)(OTCQX:UURAF) (“Ucore” or “the Company”) is pleased to comment on the passage of Senate Bill 99 (“SB 99” or “the Bill”) by the Alaska State Legislature in a unanimous vote, with all 38 representatives in attendance voting in favor of the Bill.

SB 99 was introduced by Senator Lesil McGuire (AK-R). Senator Bert Stedman (AK-R) proposed the amendment which would authorize the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (“AIDEA”) to issue bonds to finance the infrastructure and construction costs of the Bokan-Dotson Ridge rare earth element project up to a principal amount of $145 million, subject to its own internal due diligence and Board approval. SB 99 was presented to the House by Representative Feige (AK-R) and cross-sponsored in the House by Representatives Munoz (AK-R), Kito III (AK-D), Kreiss-Tomkins (AK-D), Wilson (AK-R) and Isaacson (AK-R).

“I am thrilled to have been able to take the next step toward realizing Alaska’s potential for rare earth minerals mining,” said Alaska State Senator Lesil McGuire (R- Anchorage). “I have long seen the need for a US source of these important materials and the potential benefit for Southeast Alaska and our state economy. Senate Bill 99 offers Ucore the chance to partner with AIDEA and make this tremendous project a reality.”

“Over the past 20 years, Southeast Alaska lost about 30-percent of its economy due to the decline of the local timber industry,” said Senator Stedman. “This project offers a very large employment opportunity for Southeast Alaska and replicates what has already worked with places such as the Red Dog Mine.”

“We’re very pleased with the outstanding support that the Bokan Project has received from the Alaska State Legislature,” said Jim McKenzie, President & CEO of Ucore. “Alaska has a very long history of advancing and supporting key resource projects, both financially and otherwise, and Bokan is no exception. Alaska legislators have recognized that the area has the potential to be America’s leading heavy rare earth production hub, with an array of ancillary industries, such as REE separation and metal manufacture. Our very sincere thanks to Senators McGuire and Stedman for their vision and leadership in this area, and the collateral support of its cross-sponsors.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Palin: If I Were President, ‘Waterboarding is How We’d Baptize Terrorists’

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Sarah Palin would like all terrorists to know that if she were in charge, waterboarding is how the United States would baptize them.

At least that’s what the former Alaskan governor and ex-vice presidential nominee told thousands of attendees this weekend at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Indianapolis.

“If I were in charge,” Palin said Saturday during a Stand And Fight rally at Lucas Oil Stadium, “[our enemies] would know that waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists.”

Palin mocked what she called the Obama administration’s coddling of suspected terrorists.

“Enemies, who would utterly annihilate America, they who’d obviously have information on plots, to carry out jihad,” Palin said. “Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen.” The White House, she said, has failed to put “the fear of God in our enemies.”

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Alaska Supreme Court says Tax Exemptions Cannot Be Denied to Gay Couples

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Photo Credit: Mel Green / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Mel Green / Creative Commons

Same-sex couples in Alaska must receive certain property tax exemptions given to married couples, despite a ban on gay marriage, the state Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

The decision in a lawsuit brought by three Anchorage same-sex couples represented a blow to the state, which had prevented gay and lesbian couples from taking advantage of a tax break for senior citizens and disabled veterans that, in some circumstances, takes into account marital status.

The ruling follows high-profile victories in recent months by gays and lesbians seeking the right to wed in several U.S. states.

Marriage rights have been extended to gay couples in 17 states and the District of Columbia in a trend that gained momentum when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last June that legally married same-sex couples nationwide are eligible for federal benefits.

In 1998, Alaska voters amended the state’s constitution to restrict marriage to between a man and a woman.

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Alaska: Neighbors Prepare for Natural Disasters with Emergency Watch

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Photo Credit: Your Alaska Link

Photo Credit: Your Alaska Link

When a natural disaster does strike, neighbors are going to be your closest source for help. Some streets are sticking together and making plans as part of the emergency watch program.

For many Alaskans having an emergency kit is not a priority,”wouldn’t it be better to just have that stuff at home?” said Michelle Torres, Public Information Officer for the Office of Emergency Management in Anchorage.

This program is designed specifically for the state’s largest city. The three major concerns are earthquakes, winter weather and wild fires, ” who in the neighborhood has tools, who in the neighborhood has a generator? does somebody know first aid or cpr?” said Torres.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaskan Polar Bears Threatened…By Too Much Spring Ice

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Photo Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service / AP

Photo Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service / AP

Five meters of ice– about 16 feet thick – is threatening the survival of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region along Alaska’s Arctic coast, according to Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career.

That’s because the thick ice ridges could prevent ringed seals, the bears’ major prey, from creating breathing holes they need to survive in the frigid waters, Crockford told CNSNews.com.

“Prompted by reports of the heaviest sea ice conditions on the East Coast ‘in decades’ and news that ice on the Great Lakes is, for mid-April, the worst it’s been since records began, I took a close look at the ice thickness charts for the Arctic,” Crockford noted in her Polar Bear Science blog on April 18th.

“Sea ice charts aren’t a guarantee that this heavy spring ice phenomenon is developing in the Beaufort, but they could be a warning,” she wrote, noting that they “don’t bode well” for the Beaufort bears.

“What happens is that really thick ice moves in because currents and winds from Greenland and the Canadian islands push it against the shore,” Crockford told CNSNews.com.

Read more from this story HERE.

Miller: It’s Not Federal Overreach, It’s Tyranny (+video)

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Screen Shot 2014-04-27 at 1.57.34 AMThis past Friday, I joined the two other candidates vying for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate in the first televised forum of the campaign season. One of the questions put to us at the “Alaska Asks” forum, which aired on the local NBC affiliate, addressed the role the federal government should play in our state. I said, in contrast to my opponents, we are not dealing merely with an issue of federal overreach, but a form of tyranny.

The Constitution does not authorize the federal government to control over two-thirds of Alaska’s land, nor approximately 85 percent of Nevada’s. The stand-off in that state and the government shutdown last fall, during which Alaskans were denied the opportunity to hunt and provide for their families on these lands as an act of political retaliation, highlighted a federal government that exercises far too much control over our daily lives and livelihoods.

The federal government’s continued stranglehold on Alaska’s resource development, as other states like North Dakota boom economically, is unacceptable. The EPA’s armed raid of a family mining facility in Chicken, Alaska last fall demonstrates just how out of control Washington is. 

We need fundamental reform. Tweaking at the margins and increasing the go-along-to-get-along caucus in the Senate will do nothing to address the daunting challenges we face. 

Ronald Reagan said nearly 50 years ago, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.” 

Let us do our part to ensure America remains the land of “the free and the home of the brave” in our time, and let us set an example for generations yet to come.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

It the highlights below, the candidates field questions concerning the federal government’s blocking of resource development in Alaska, Senator Rand Paul’s “Life at Conception” Act, and the constitutional issues raised by the surveillance state.

 

Gen. Jerry Boykin Endorses Joe Miller for U.S. Senate

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BY12G01_NORMALFollowing Joe Miller’s successful campaign launch earlier this week in front of a crowd of over 200 supporters, Lieutenant General (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin announced his endorsement of Miller for U.S. Senate. Boykin currently serves as Executive Director of the Family Research Council and formerly served as commander of the U.S. Army’s elite “Delta Force” among his many leadership assignments during his 36 year military career.

General Boykin’s endorsement statement reads in full:

“It is a great privilege to express my sincere support for and endorsement of Joe Miller for the US Senate. At a time when America needs leaders rather than professional politicians, Joe Miller is the man that Alaskans should send to Washington. A West Point graduate, Joe has served his nation in the uniform of a United States Army officer, making him one of a dwindling number of leaders in America to have done so.

“As a dedicated father and devoted husband, Joe embraces the family values that will help keep America strong. Joe Miller is a strong conservative on issues of National Security, Smaller Government and fiscal constraint, and Social issues like life and family. On all the core issues that conservatives hold dear, Joe is rock solid. I will be doing all I can to support Joe and I will be watching the polls on election night with great anticipation of Joe Miller being chosen to represent the fine men and women of Alaska in the US Senate.”

Miller responded to the endorsement stating, “I am deeply honored and humbled to receive the endorsement of a man I respect so deeply and who has served our country with such distinction. General Boykin is at the forefront of the fight to restore our nation’s cultural foundations of faith and family.”

Ronald Reagan said nearly 50 years ago, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

“I thank General Boykin for his support of my candidacy, and I pledge to do all I can to steer the government back towards its core mission of securing Americans’ God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” said Miller.

Florida and Alaska Officially Pass Convention of States Application

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Photo Credit: Convention of States.com

Photo Credit: Convention of States.com

From sea to shining sea, the Convention of States movement is sweeping the nation.

I’m pleased to announce that Florida and Alaska have both officially passed the Convention of States application to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.

The Alaska Senate passed the Convention of States application (HJR 22) on Saturday by a vote of 12-8, and the Florida House passed the Convention of States application (SM 476) yesterday by a voice vote.

Read more from this story HERE.