Statement of Sen. Murkowski responding to Gov. Jindal’s Republican address:

It is absolutely appropriate for our federal government to spend money on volcano monitoring. A current example is Mount Redoubt. This active volcano, which is on the flight path into Anchorage International Airport, the third busiest cargo airport in the world, and Elmendorf Air Force Base, has been smoldering since the end of January. The Alaska Volcano Observatory has been on 24 hour watch since then.

A volcanic eruption at Mount Redoubt has the potential to bring down a jumbo aircraft flying over Southcentral Alaska. Alaskans vividly remember that volcanic ash from an eruption of Mount Redoubt nearly brought down a KLM Boeing 747 as it was completing its flight from Amsterdam to Anchorage in December 1989. The volcanic ash caused the failure of all four engines on the jumbo jet.

It is understandable that citizens in the Lower 48 may not be familiar with our many active volcanoes in Alaska and how devastating they can be to our state and its citizens. In many ways, it is the same kind of danger caused from Mother Nature that the Gulf states face from hurricanes or all coastal communities face from a tsunami.

However, Governor Jindal raised a legitimate question last evening about whether it is appropriate to fund volcano monitoring in legislation that purported to stimulate the economy and create jobs for unemployed Americans. One of my key criticisms of the economic stimulus bill is that it turned into a supplemental appropriations bill, rather than a targeted approach to stimulate the economy.

 

And it's really USGS money!

Bobby Jindal and volcano monitoring: What was he talking about?

Fact Checking the Republican Response: No, there's not $140 million in the stim for volcano monitoring

Don't Pisstak

As reported around the blogosphere, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal made at least one faux pas in his GOP response to President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress when he said
"But Democratic leaders in Congress -- they rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history, with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."
Obviously he neglected to vett (popular word these days, isn't it?) his zinger with people like, oh, say, Senator Murkowski or Governor Palin.
A look at the State of Louisiana website prominently displays another liberal democrat initiative, the National Hurricane Center.
Personally, I am also a fan of high speed rail, but that's another issue.
Here's the email I just sent to him:

Governor, great speech last night except for one small thing: Volcano Research is as important to the people of Alaska and Washington State and trans-Pacific air commerce as the National Hurricane Center is to the Gulf.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory (www.avo.alaska.edu) is critical preparedness infrastructure to us, as is the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.
You are no stranger to natural disasters, and neither are Alaskans.
While it got you a great line about the "eruption of spending" in Washington, a sudden eruption of one of our many active volcanoes could have a devastating effect on life here in the Last Frontier and cripple the northern air trade routes that are so important to our Nation's economy.
Personally, I would like to hear you state that you misspoke last evening, and recognize the similarities of importance in Federal warning systems for natural disasters between the Gulf States and the Pacific Northwest.
Sincerely and with best regards from Alaska,
Mark E. Springer

Bethel, Alaska 99559

cc: Senator Murkowski

Y'all Come Back, Now

Let me say this about that. If you are from Alaska, listen to the Governor carefully.
As to Franklin Graham, I have to say that being from Hooper Bay I have to respect the man for what he did for my Alaska home village. When the school burned a couple of years ago he was there that day pledging to rebuild homes. And he and his organization, Samaritans Purse did just that (with a lot of help from the community!)


Video courtesy of Anchorage Daily News.

Anonymity

The "Anonymous Blogger," bane of politicians from Wasilla to, well, Wasilla, is a creature not even of modern times, but a graffiti artist from the prehistoric, drawing animal pictures on the ceilings of caves and carving hearts into oak trees and asking, politely, that their name be "withheld by request."
Of course, in our modern age an authors name can be "withheld by choice" allowing, one would infer, greater intellectual latitude.
What is ironic, of course, is the pithiness with which some anonymous commentators comment on public and attributed statements by anyone, with no opportunity (barring a blog reply) for retort, not that many bloggers would welcome such response in the first place.
The policy here at Both Barrels has always been to be up front about who we are, partly through ego and partly because that is the way we have always operated, with a byline and letting the chips fall as they may.
This is not to say that we don't hold the work of some of the Anonymous Bloggers in high regard. Some are remarkable writers and we will be linking to their work as time allows.
Whether our willingness to attach a name to the words functions as a restraint only time - and I - can tell.

We May Be Back

Shocked? Don't be! After a more or less self-imposed hiatus form the public square, your Both Barrels editorial board is giving careful consideration to the implications of a reappearance. Certainly the times call for a voice from the wilderness (not that there aren't one or two now, but what the hey) too add to the roil.
As some would say, stayed tuned.
MS

Calling it for Tommorrow:

Well, heres MY vote-
       Norman (Our Yup'ik Republican) Ayagalria for Senate Seat S
       Diane Benson for US House
       Andrew Halcro for Governor

This is a little more like it

Not sure if I like the color scheme, bit at least I have the page looking decent.
Now all I have to do is pump out some content.

Where the hell have I been?

Man, if it isn't blog season in Alaska! What with the exciting governor race and all hahahahaha.
One supposes I should get back on the ball and type a line or two, which is exactly my intent.
I'm in fine company, considering a few of the other Alaskan bloggers out there, to who I really don't, nor won't hold a candle. I'll run them up the flagpole for you in a little bit.
Right out of the gate, I like Diane Benson - she's got my vote. I'll tell you why soon enough.
The enigmatic Sarah Palin, while piquing my interest early on is fading fast and well she should. Her recent "Open Letter" is going to be a hot topic on this page.
I havent used this thing for a while, so bear with me as we "get our blog (back) on."

Exhortations to the Oblivious

Exhortations to the Oblivious

Alaska's VPSO Program safe for another year

Well it seems the Village Public Safety Officer Program dodges a bullet, no pun intended, as the State of Alaska announced its readiness to renew contracts with several Regional Non-Profits.
The issue at hand is, and quite correctly, the indirect rates charged by the non-profits.
Public Safety Commissioner Bill Tandeske said today that the State is looking for an across the board rate that will allow the State to save some money, and put more VPSO's to work.

Good riddance to Arafat

YAHOO Censors Mailing List over DNC Security Concerns

Kill 'em all- Let God sort 'em out!

No Skeeters, No Problem? Not So Fast
By JAMES GORMAN

Published: June 22, 2004
The New York Times

Elizabeth Willott is the kind of professor who gives the ivory tower a good name.

She is an entomologist and environmental ethicist at the University of Arizona, and I called her to ask a simple question: What good are mosquitoes?

Dr. Willott seemed like a good person to call because she has spent some time thinking about these issues. She has an article in the current issue of Restoration Ecology titled "Restoring Nature, Without Mosquitoes?"

In it she notes that in planning wetland restoration, people sometimes fail to give enough thought to one inevitable consequence - more mosquitoes. In the bad old days, not all wetlands were drained to build hotels. Another motivation was the real fear of death and disease, as spread by mosquitoes.

So, I asked, what about mosquitoes? Would everything really collapse if we got rid of them? Well, she said, no. The web of life is not that fragile. "If you take a snip, it won't unravel."
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In fact, she said, there is "quite a bit of ecological research now showing that removal of a species doesn't make a huge difference." If the species of mosquitoes that are intimately connected with human beings were made to disappear, there might be some ecological disturbance, but "you probably could remove them without catastrophe."

Do they do anything of value, then? That depends on your point of view, she said. The philosophical arguments about intrinsic value versus instrumental value can get quite complicated. In essence they ask whether a mosquito, or a tree, or anything, has a value in and of itself, apart from what human beings think.

This is the sort of discussion that may be intriguing in an air-conditioned classroom, but seems absolutely incomprehensible at dusk near a marsh. If there's a chance that our children might get encephalitis, then we're ready to wipe mosquitoes off the face of the earth.

One small step beyond this "me, me, me" approach is to think about the value of any given organism to environmental balance. This is still not intrinsic value, since environmental balance is useful to people, but it is a bit less self-centered. Step outside the anthropocentric view of life and one possible value of mosquitoes is population control. Mosquitoes have historically kept human populations down worldwide, and still do in much of the third world. The problem is that they do this by facilitating pestilence and death, so this is not going to enhance their status, among human beings at least.

Mosquitoes may also keep some other animal populations down by spreading disease - something we might be able to see the value of. And other creatures - some fish, frogs birds and bats - eat them. It's possible that if we were able to wipe out mosquitoes, some other species might either suffer from lack of food, or explode in numbers because the burden of disease was lifted.

Another value of mosquitoes, perverse to some, obvious to others, is that they "keep out the riffraff," meaning human beings. Concentrations of pests offer protection to wilderness areas. The tsetse fly, which causes livestock disease as well as human sleeping sickness, has kept humans away from some wildlife refuges and has been called "Africa's best conservationist." Of course, this view has been described by others as ecological imperialism.

In any case, the reality, said Dr. Willott, is that "we're not going to get rid of the mosquitoes." It's just impossible, particularly if we want to use methods that don't kill off everything else. DDT is very effective at mosquito control, but it can be disastrous for birds of prey.

When I asked Dr. Willott if she thought it was immoral to try to make a species go extinct, assuming you could do it without hurting other organisms, she thought the question was significant enough to require a formal statement. "Striving for the unachievable is not an appropriate use of resources," she said. "If one acknowledges that eradication is highly unlikely to work or might have serious side effects, the moral thing to do would be to find another way." In other words, don't be stupid.

What she suggests is that we take the middle ground and try to kill some of the mosquitoes some of the time.

I mentioned to her at the end of our conversation that although mosquitoes were not that much fun to be around in reality, I shared her fascination with them. As a subject to talk and write about, they are irresistible.

Yes, she said, "and they find us the same."

Alaskans Fighting CAPPS II - Count Me In

Planes Are For Flying, Not Spying.
This isn't communist Russia: we have no 'papers' to show. We walk through metal detectors and put up with TSA security rifling though our stuff, shouldn't that be enough? As long as we don't have anything on us that can cause harm to the plane or our fellow passengers, we should be left alone.

ACLU Was Forced to Revise Release on Patriot Act Suit

Justice Dept. Cited Secrecy Rules

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A27

When a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the American Civil Liberties Union could finally reveal the existence of a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act, the group issued a news release.

But the next day, according to new documents released yesterday, the ACLU was forced to remove two paragraphs from the release posted on its Web site, after the Justice Department complained that the group had violated court secrecy rules.

One paragraph described the type of information that FBI agents could request under the law, while another merely listed the briefing schedule in the case, according to court documents and the original news release.

The dispute set off a furious round of court filings in a case that serves as both a challenge to, and an illustration of, the far-reaching power of the Patriot Act. Approved by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law gives the government greater latitude and secrecy in counterterrorism investigations and includes a provision allowing the FBI to secretly demand customer records from Internet providers and other businesses without a court order.

The ACLU first filed its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of such demands, known as national security letters, on April 6, but the secrecy rules of the Patriot Act required the challenge to be filed under seal. A ruling April 28 allowed the release of a heavily censored version of the complaint, but the ACLU is still forbidden from revealing many details of the case, including the identity of another plaintiff who has joined in the lawsuit. The law forbids targets of national security letters to disclose that they have received one.

ACLU lawyer Ann Beeson said the court order also means that she "cannot confirm or deny" whether the ACLU is representing the second plaintiff. The group is the only counsel listed in court documents.

The dispute over the ACLU's April 28 news release centered on two paragraphs. The first laid out the court's schedule for receiving legal briefs and noted the name of the New York-based judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero.

The second paragraph read: "The provision under challenge allows an FBI agent to write a letter demanding the disclosure of the name, screen names, addresses, e-mail header information, and other sensitive information held by 'electronic communication service providers.' "

Justice lawyers said that both paragraphs violated a secrecy order and that the ACLU should be required to seek an exemption to publicize the information, court records show. Justice spokesman Charles Miller declined to comment yesterday.

"It simply never occurred to us that this information would be covered by the sealing order, because it's completely non-sensitive, generic information," Beeson said.

The dispute was partly resolved yesterday. Marrero ruled that the briefing schedule could be publicized, along with edited versions of other court filings. But the paragraph describing the information that can be sought remains absent.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

What the FBI can ask for in a National Security Letter

"The provision under challenge allows an FBI agent to write a letter demanding the disclosure of the name, screen names, addresses, e-mail header information, and other sensitive information held by 'electronic communication service providers.' "

This paragraph was removed from filings by the American Civil Liberties Union against the FBI's powers under the USA PATRIOT Act.

Islamic Militants Murder Tower Professional

Nicholas Berg killed and videotaped for the world to see

(Baghdad, Iraq) - May 12, 2004 - Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old tower and infrastructure professional from Philadelphia, PA was brutally murdered by Islamic fundamentalists this week in a revenge killing that was seen and reported throughout the world.

Mr. Berg, a member of the Tower Pro List Serve and last employed by Prometheus Towers, left the United States for Iraq as an independent contractor. His parents said he was an entrepreneur who left home to jump start his career by taking advantage of the opportunities offered by Iraq's massive reconstruction - although he did not have contract work already lined up. He was also supportive of the administration's mission in Iraq and believed he could help with the reconstruction.

His mother told reporters that all he wanted to do was help rebuild the communications towers and upgrade the communications systems throughout Iraq. That goal ultimately cost Mr. Berg his life.

Islamic militants, with ties al-Qaida network, murdered Mr. Berg and videotaped the gruesome killing. The tape was published and promoted on a website and the murder was said to be in retaliation for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison.

The five killers, covered in shrouds and dressed in black, forced Mr. Berg to state his name, tell where he was from and name his family members shortly before they brutally murdered him. The tape was shown on every major U.S. news network and was edited to end right before Mr. Berg's slaying.

In a final show of humiliation, Mr. Berg's killers put his body on the side of a road in Baghdad where it was discovered by the U.S. military.

Mr. Berg's parents lost contact with their son on March 24, 2004 and did not hear from him again until April 11. He was detained by U.S. officials while he tried to find tower work. It appears that he was captured by his killers shortly after his release from U.S. custody.

The White House immediately condemned the killing of Berg by saying that "it shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom. They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children."

The Berg family was devastated when they received official news and said that their son had visions of building and servicing cell phone towers throughout Iraq.

Wireless Infrastructure News Service

Slaughter

I just watched the video of the beheading of American free-lance technologist Nicholas Berg.
It is horrifying to watch as his executors read, in sing-song Arabic, and he rocks on his ankles, surely unaware that these moments are his last.

Poor Ben Stevens

They giggled at him on the Senate Floor tonight and he had to take a point of personal privelege to complain.
Hey Benny-boy, news flash- everyone is tired of your self-serving whining. You ain't your old man and never will be.
So, get over it.