Ketchikan: Over 100 Participate In Annual Walk America Event By MARIE L. MONYAK - The March of Dimes earlier this month held their annual Walk America fundraiser to support research and programs to help fight premature births that affect half a million babies every year in our country. The wind and rain didn't discourage the participants as over 100 people, many with their dogs, lined up at the A & P Market to get their shirts and check lists.

Over 100 Participate In Annual Walk America Event Alyssa along with her mother Laura Jackson, made an appearance to meet and encourage the walkers that volunteered for the Walk-a-Thon. Photo by Marie L. Monyak

Alyssa, the adorable and endearing 8 year old local celebrity, along with her mother Laura Jackson, made an appearance to meet and encourage the walkers that volunteered for the Walk-a-Thon. This charming little girl has a mission to show people exactly what their donations to the March of Dimes can accomplish. You see, Alyssa is a March of Dimes baby. Although a mother may do everything right during her pregnancy some babies are still born prematurely with life threatening complications, as in the case of Alyssa.

Renee Schofield, this year's Walk America Organizer explained, "Through the March of Dimes, Alyssa received surfactant therapy. In lay terms, when a premature baby is born, quite often they have a sticky substance in their lungs that holds them closed and surfactant therapy is the treatment used to open the lungs to allow them to breath. Alyssa is here today because of it."

Currently attending 3rd grade at Houghtling Elementary School, Alyssa thankfully has little memory of the 3 major surgeries and countless procedures she's endured although she can recall a time when she was in Children's Hospital in Seattle only 2 years ago. "They put a tube in my nose and I couldn't eat or drink for 24 hours," Alyssa exclaimed. Just a regular kid that collects Barbie dolls, she remembers her dad spending the night in her hospital room, the many visitors and even the service dog that visits young patients to keep their spirits high. Proving that she really is just a normal 8 year old, Alyssa tugged her mom's sleeve and exclaimed, "Mom, I'm gonna' be in Sitnews!" - More...
Friday - May 26, 2006

Ketchikan: Judge orders halt to work on logging roads By PAULA DOBBYN - Anchorage Daily News - A federal judge today ordered the U.S. Forest Service to stop fixing two disputed logging roads in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast. - Read this Anchorage Daily News story... May 26, 2006 - www.adn.com Top Stories U.S. News U.S. Politics Alaska Ketchikan

National: Senate passes comprehensive immigration bill By MARGARET TALEV and MICHAEL DOYLE - The Senate on Thursday passed a sweeping immigration bill that would allow millions of undocumented U.S. residents to seek citizenship, establish temporary guest-worker programs and strengthen border barriers to stem new illegal immigration.

"This is a success for the American people," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said. "This is a success for people who want to participate in the American dream. ... It is not only a security plan, but it is a comprehensive plan."

President Bush, too, welcomed passage of the Senate bill on a 62-36 vote, capping weeks of debate and maneuvering.

Still, the Senate's action sets up a showdown with the House of Representatives, which last year passed a border security and enforcement-only bill. A core of GOP conservatives adamantly oppose any effort to legalize the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

Even though the Senate bill passed with 22 Republicans voting in support, some of their House counterparts blasted them as out of touch with everyday concerns.

"We're the ones that are closest to the people, we're up for election every two years," Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa said on CNN. "We know what the Middle America is about. We know what real Americans are about." - More...
Friday - May 26, 2006

National: With very different House and Senate bills, real work now begins By MARGARET TALEV and MICHAEL DOYLE - Now begins the real fight over immigration policy - and a key test for the nation's weakened president.

The Senate's passage Thursday of a bill that could lead to citizenship for millions of undocumented workers is not yet cause for celebration among those who marched and waved flags in nationwide rallies this spring.

Nor does it guarantee a victory for President Bush, who asked the Republican-led Congress more than two years ago for a "comprehensive" bill with a guest-worker program and said in a recent nationwide address there should be some accommodation for otherwise law-abiding immigrants who snuck in years ago but now have jobs and families in this country.

"Now the time has come for the very active participation by the president," said Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I believe the president will put a very heavy shoulder to the wheel."

The Senate vote does mean Congress almost certainly won't be sending Bush a hard-line, enforcement-only bill as a majority of the House of Representatives favored - the concern that first sent many immigrant-rights advocates to the streets in protest. But lawmakers from both parties said it may be hard for the House to bend very much in a midterm election year marked by GOP political uncertainty and a growing rift between the president and fellow conservatives. - More...
Friday - May 26, 2006

National: NSA furor shows risks, rewards of info revolution By JAMES ROSEN On Capitol Hill and the 24/7 cable talk shows, the national debate over government surveillance of domestic phone calls has been framed as a struggle between privacy and national security.

Yet, the furor over warrantless wiretapping and phone records collection is part of a broader information revolution in which Americans voluntarily surrender vast amounts of personal data for the sake of commerce and convenience.

As politicians ponder how much leeway the National Security Agency should have to track electronic communications, they face a stark question:

Is Big Brother worse than Big Business? - More...
Friday - May 26, 2006

National: Sen. Clinton pitches energy plan By MARGARET TALEV - Guests arrived an hour early to get a good seat. The room was sold out days in advance. Fans, largely women and some with tears in their eyes, swarmed and fidgeted, pens in hand, holding books to be autographed. Protesters circled outside. In short, this was not your ordinary speech on energy policy.

But when you are Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - who won't say she's running for president in 2008 but is putting together the money and organization, but also is a divisive figure for the Democratic Party, and is trying to reconcile husband Bill Clinton's role, and can't talk about any of this because she has to act as if she's only concentrating on her Senate re-election campaign this year in New York - there are no ordinary speeches anymore on anything, and there haven't been for months.

At a breakfast speech Tuesday at the National Press Club, Clinton, 58, laid out a plan for adjusting U.S. energy policy to reduce foreign oil reliance and improve fuel efficiency. Her remarks covered everything from Saudi oil, to fuel economy in American cars, to coal, wind power and ethanol.

"This is probably a more wonk-ish speech than many of you anticipated," she said toward the end. - More...
Friday - May 26, 2006

Science - Technology: Tropics getting wider, altering jet streams By LEE BOWMAN - Satellite temperature readings of Earth's atmosphere over the past 26 years indicate that the tropical zone may be expanding and shifting the storm-steering jet streams toward the poles.

Researchers report Friday in the journal Science that the apparent north-south widening of the zone amounts to about 140 miles and that droughts and other unusually dry conditions in recent years for the American Southwest and Mediterranean Europe may be related to the expansion.

The scientists also found that the jet streams of the Northern and Southern hemispheres have moved toward their respective poles by about 1 degree of latitude, or 70 miles. But they said they couldn't yet tell if the changes are being triggered by natural climate swings or by human activity contributing to global warming. - More...
Friday - May 26, 2006

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters Ask Governor to veto appropriation for proposed aquarium By David Hanger - Thursday Tourists By Jerry Cegelske - Thursday Re: Minutemen/Border Patrol By Gerry Nance - Thursday Aerial Genocide on Long Island, Alaska By Robert A. Sanderson Jr. - Wednesday Oppose Head Tax By Anita Hales - Wednesday Minutemen/ Border Patrol By Virginia E. Atkinson - Wednesday New Front Roads By Patti Fay Hickox - Tuesday Vigilantes along the border By Neil Gray - Tuesday Homeland security? By Ken Lewis - Tuesday Don't Spray on Long Island By Frances C. Natkong - Tuesday Good to be home... By Archie Inoncillo - Tuesday Time to return to the gold standard? By Peter Morici - Monday "YES" on the Cruise Ship Ballot Initiative By Carrie L. James - Monday Wrong about the "vigilante" groups By Erni Grace - Saturday RE: New Guest Worker Program No Substitute For Cracking Down By David Levin - Saturday New guest worker program no substitute for cracking down By Mike Harpold - Friday Palin is Party's Brightest Hope By Lysa Maher - Friday Computer Users Over 60 By Lisa Pearson - Friday Guard Won't Solve Illegal Immigration Problem By Neil Gray - Friday Ketchikan By Marvin Seibert - Friday Paintball! Sunday May 21st! By Gregory Vickrey - Friday Revilla High School was there for me. By George Jackson - Friday National Security, Needles, and Haystacks By Alan Lidstone - Friday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan May Calendar Arts This Week Today's Forecast Ketchikan Weather Data Current AK Weather Map City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements May 2006 Click on the date to read the stories published on that day. S M T W T F S   01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31       Front Page Archives

Dale McFeatters: Heeeeere's Osama! - We heard again from Osama bin Laden this week, his third communication this year, and students of his missives are noticing a distinct difference in tone.

There is much less invective and, in this latest, none of the usual threats. Instead, he was commenting on recent events: U.S. defense spending - way too high; President Bush and the Republicans - not treating people fairly; the Palestinian government - restore its funding; Zacarias Moussaoui - he wasn't in on the 9/11 plot, but - and here comes the teaser - "two of the brothers" currently at Guantanamo Bay were. It's an old trick: Always leave your listeners wanting more.

You can see what the crafty terrorist is up to. He wants his own talk show. - More...
Thursday - May 25, 2006

Jason Love: Flying Coaster - Roller coasters have always struck me as a preventable trauma. I mean, if life ain't hard enough. And while in our youth we jump off buildings just to see, we come to feel secure on the ground and view thrill rides as far-off things like outer space or pterodactyls.

I actually blacked out on my last coaster, so who else would be chosen to ride Magic Mountain's newest addition, Tatsu: Flying at the Speed of Fear. I thought Godzilla had killed Tatsu back in the fifties, but here he was -- the tallest, fastest, longest "flying coaster" in history. Take that, Russia.

The others were raring to be first on board, but newness is not something I look for in a ride. I'm more into prestige and track record. What they needed was a big mirror reading, "You must be this crazy to get on Tatsu."

Then I met 10-year-old Josh Malone, who had, in three days, ridden the coaster 165 times! He was a Tatsu Master. - More...
Thursday - May 25, 2006

Michael Reagan: The Divine Right of Congress - For centuries monarchs defended the doctrine of the divine right of kings, a concept that vanished with the development of parliamentary systems limiting royal powers.

That doctrine is now being reasserted; this time by an heir to the parliamentary system - the United States Congress - whose leadership is up in arms over the FBI acting on a search warrant to enter the office of a member of the House caught taking a bribe.

Although evidence exists that Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., was accepting bribes, and had defied a legally issued subpoena - an action that led a federal judge to issue a warrant authorizing the FBI to search his office for the material - the royal members of the Congressional leadership are ranting that the search has violated their alleged constitutional rights. - More...
Thursday - May 25, 2006

Will Durst: Mister Majestic - Well, the good news is the president has finally come up with an immigration policy. The bad news is nobody can figure out what it is yet, but hey, give the man his props; he gave it a shot.

Sensing what could be called a somewhat dissatisfied electorate in the same way a 13-acre glacier might be referred to as an ice cube, he delivered his long-awaited speech on immigration and uncharacteristically revealed an actual plan.

A magnanimous five-part plan but not one that included amnesty. This was an amnesty-free plan. A plan that had something to do with increasing border guards and utilizing the National Guard in an unnamed amorphous manner, and there was a provision about going home. Not President Bush, unfortunately, but there was nothing, I repeat, nothing, in there about amnesty, even the thing he called "earned citizenship." A concept that is totally different than amnesty. Somehow. No matter what those confused Republicans are saying. - More...
Thursday - May 25, 2006