National: Democrats pushing for 80,000 more U.S. troops By LISA HOFFMAN - Democrats launched an effort Wednesday to boost the Army's ranks by 80,000 troops in defiance of the Bush administration.

Lawmakers from Colorado, California, Florida, New York and other states said the added soldiers are badly needed by an Army overstretched by the war in Iraq, peacekeeping in Afghanistan and other missions around the world.

By giving the service the authority to hire an additional 20,000 active-duty soldiers in each of the next four years, not only will full-time troops get a respite but so will National Guard and Reserve soldiers, the lawmakers said. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

National: A possible classic second-term Washington scandal in the making By CAROLYN LOCHHEAD - President Bush promised months ago to fire anyone from his administration who leaked the identity of a spy.

Yet no one expects Bush to fire Karl Rove anytime soon, short of a grand-jury indictment.

Czar of White House policy and message, mastermind behind Bush's winning campaigns for the Texas governorship and two presidential terms, architect of the "new Republican majority," Rove is nearly as central to Bush's presidency as Bush himself. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

National: With Congress weighing ethanol boost, complaints crop up By LANCE GAY - Congress, looking for a homegrown answer to America's increasing dependence on foreign oil, is considering a new energy bill that seeks to double the amount of ethanol produced in the United States annually.

On the surface, it looks like a win-win proposal. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

Alaska - National: Bite-sized news from here and there - A 72-year-old man died just after midnight Wednesday when his car flipped as a police officer tried to pull him over for speeding.

Officer Doug Sonerholm clocked the man at 78 mph in a 45-mph zone near the Wasilla Senior Center, Police Chief Don Savage said. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

Alaska: Traffic Fatalities on Alaska Roads Dropping - Alaska highway traffic fatalities for the first six months of 2005 show a 34 percent drop, compared with the same time period in each of the years 2000-2004. State officials believe the difference is attributable to ongoing efforts to urge Alaskans to use their seat belts, and to get drunk drivers off the road.

"It would appear that our efforts to urge Alaskans to "Click It Or Ticket" and our DUI campaigns are working," said Governor Frank H. Murkowski. "These campaigns, involving local law enforcement, along with State Troopers, are resulting in saved lives. And, when we consider the tragic impacts to families that we are able to avoid by making our highways safer and having fewer fatal accidents, clearly the benefits go way beyond the lives saved." - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

Power Pole Broken Front Page Photo by Chris Wilhelm

Ketchikan: Power Pole Broken- A brief fluctuation in power was caused Wednesday afternoon when equipment owned by Southeast Engineering hit a utility pole on Heckman Street. According to Joe Schofield, who is the Operations Manager for Ketchikan Public Utilities, the pole was broken causing it to lean precariously. - More...
Tuesday - July 14, 2005

Alaska: NOAA Fisheries Turns Camera's Eye To New Research Center - NOAA Fisheries Service is inviting people to watch construction of the new Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute at Lena Point in Juneau, Alaska through a web cam.

"If you pull up the web site on the internet, you will be able to view the on-going construction. The camera takes a low-resolution snapshot every second or so," said Ron Berg, Acting Administrator for the Alaska Region of NOAA Fisheries. - More...
Tuesday - July 14, 2005

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters Congressional importance By Walt Bolling - Thursday Graves on Pennock? By Gregory Fast - Thursday Who even reads Sitnews? By Janelle Hamilton - Thursday Wonderful time in Ketchikan By Anna Clay - Thursday Electors Getting Scammed By Don Hoff Jr. - Thursday Bridge By Neil Gray - Thursday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Silent Muslim Majority By: Sandy Huffaker Cagle Cartoons Distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Political Cartoonists Ketchikan Calendar, Meetings, Events Today's Forecast City Police Report 07/13/05 AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements July 2005 Click on the date for stories and photos published on that day... S M T W T F S 26 27 28 29 30 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: Good news - if only for awhile - Fairly or not, presidents get the credit when the economic news is good and take the blame when it's bad, and President Bush gets credit for some good economic news this week.

The White House budget office, in an exercise called a mid-session review, estimated that this year's budget deficit will drop to $333 billion, far less than the $427 billion it forecast in February. That jibes with Congress' figures that actually show it a little better, $325 billion. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

M.J. Anderson: America's class divide growing - When the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal each launch a series on class in America, as they did this past spring, it is tempting to think they might be onto something.

The gap between rich and poor in America has been widening since about 1973 - a fact so often reported it is no longer news. But the more the two papers looked into it, the grimmer the details. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

Clifford May: Some on left support war in Iraq, too - The war in Iraq is a neo-conservative project, right? Yes, in the sense that in the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have come to believe that "the defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom."

But little noticed is the fact that some of the strongest supporters of this revolutionary idea are on the left. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

Jay Ambrose: A White House lie - Somebody somewhere in the Bush administration, probably the president himself, is a liar, some critics have said repeatedly about a host of issues, even if the allegation was probably false and required that they themselves did the lying.

Now, however, the critics have an ironclad case that presidential advisor Karl Rove lied when he said he did not identify a CIA agent to reporters and that the president has not yet followed through on the pledge he made when he said he would fire anyone who did such a thing. What they don't have is a case that Rove broke a law, endangered national security or was simply hitting back at the agent's husband through the disclosure, despite all the ideological and partisan prattle to the contrary. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005

Martin Schram: News media covered up White House lies - Today we take a close-up look at White House lying about the outing of a covert CIA agent - and the news media's complicity in covering it up.

We also shed new insight upon what is the apparent real motive of a special prosecutor who has appeared to be running amok in probing whether any Bush official committed a federal crime in blowing the cover of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. It is a bizarre probe that has so far jailed no Bush official, and not even journalist Robert Novak, who revealed Plame's CIA tie. The only one jailed has been a journalist who never wrote a word about it. - More...
Thursday - July 14, 2005