GOP PAC endorses Sean Parnell. The Wall Street Journal this morning includes an opinion piece by Club for Growth president Pat Toomey announcing the group's support of Republican challenger Sean Parnell for Don Young's congressional seat.

Among their comments:

"Mr. Young is actually a poster child for what's wrong with the Republican Party in Washington," and "Mr. Young spends taxpayer money so wastefully he could make a liberal Democrat blush."

The rest of the piece takes apart Young's spending history. (Tip to Alaskan Abroad for the pointer to this.)

Don Young was also in the news at APRN for a temper flare-up over failing to win support for a logging community finance bill by tapping offshore oil drilling. Democrats had tried to go after oil companies for back taxes for support. The bill failed on all counts, and Young was angry.

"If we don't increase our supply, Mr. and Mrs. America, instead of $4 dollar a gallon, it's going to be $10 a gallon by January. We must act in the Congress. If you do not, may the wrath come down on you and make you be punished for what you have not done."

***

Ben & Jerry's studies climate change in Barrow? That's right, the ice cream company. Ben & Jerry’s Climate Change College brought eight young people from around the world together to study global warming through industry workshops, lectures and internships.

Cara Augustborg represented Ireland, according to the Irish regional newspaper Bray People. She and the others kept a nightly blog on their Alaska adventures, and she made a short video interviewing Barrow residents here. She described the people she met in Barrow as "tough and very dependent on their environment to get food."

***

Smoked salmon recalled in Fairbanks. Santa's Smokehouse recalled 163 pounds of smoked silver salmon after a random test by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation indicated it may have been contaminated, according to the Fairbanks NewsMiner.

The recall covers a 235-pound batch. The fish had been sold through the company's store and online. DEC seafood section chief Manny Soares said this is the first time an Interior Alaska Fish Processors product has failed testing.

In other salmon news, this time from Chile, the Patagonia Times reports that hundreds of cannery workers have lost jobs due to production cutbacks after infectious salmon anemia was found at 21 fish farms there. Norwegian- and Japanese-owned canneries were affected.

***

Juneau is stubbornly set against road access. The New York Times delves into the two sides of the debate over the Juneau Access Road, a 51-mile, $400 million highway that would let Alaskans drive to their state capital.

"There is an insularity here," Mayor Bruce Botelho said, "that I think is a net positive."

Of course, not everyone agrees.

"We're losing our younger generations," said Richard Knapp, who first started trying to build the road in 1984, when he became Alaska's commissioner of transportation. "Opportunities are limited here, and there's nothing to do."

A governor cool to the idea and mountains of lawsuits are likely to stop any progress.

***

Douglas woman kills garden-poaching porcupine with sledgehammer. It's in The New York Times, so it must be true, right? This is a hilarious tale of gardeners fighting back against nature - squirrels, rabbits, woodchucks - that invade their gardens and leave detritus in their path.

Suzanne Williams, a retiree living in Douglas, admits a porcupine finally got to her. "He was after my carrot crop," she explains. "I said I just cannot handle this anymore. He sees me and tries to wander off, but they can't run very fast. I got him with the sledgehammer."

And no, she's not sorry.

"Doesn't the spinach scream when it boils? I think probably all living things have some scream going on. We're all predators, no matter whether we're animals, mineral, birds or fish, and that's part of it."

***

Critter update, this time on the bald eagle that got a new beak. Newsreader alerted you to the eagle that'd lived three years with a bullet-shattered beak through the kindness of the humans feeding it. The Associated Press and the Daily Mail have reports that a team finally and successfully attached an artificial beak to the 15-pound eagle named Beauty.

A Boise engineer spent more than 200 hours designing the temporary fix. Now she can grasp for food and drink water. This fix is still temporary, and a more permanent beak is still being designed. The damaged bird was found in an Alaska landfill in 2005.

***

Soaring fuel prices are causing fishermen to change how they fish. APRN and the Peninsula Clarion talk to commercial fishermen who are changing their boats and their methods to cope with expensive fuel.

Dan Thompson, a commercial fishermen from Kenai, said he could be paying as much as $10,000 to run his boat from Anchor Point to the Forelands instead of the $6,000 he's paid in the past. Because of the higher fuel prices, he says, commercial fishermen won't fish early, when processors sell the fish for the most money.

"If the price of fuel is right up there around $5 a gallon, we would have to catch 100 fish to just pay for fuel for a day," he said.

Energy and climate change issues continue to worry rural Alaskans. The Arctic Sounder discusses the search for alternative energy sources like wind farms as a cushion against rising fuel prices.

Check out the interactive map and analysis by the Institute for Economic Research, looking at why fuel prices cost so much in the Bush, and why some people are paying double what others pay. In False Pass, a gallon of fuel oil is $2.90 but in Lime Village, it goes for $6.25. Their study examine factors that explain this.

***

TransCanada session wraps up Week One. The Fairbanks Daily News Miner and the Anchorage Daily News report on expert testimony to legislators on the gas pipeline proposal. Some legislators sounded an optimistic note.

"If we were on the floor, I'd call the question," said Rep. Con Bunde.

Rep. John Coghill, a Republican from North Pole, called the $500 million for the project something like putting a down payment on a car.

Fred Dyson, a Republican from Eagle River, saw it more like a card game. "We're in the first rounds of a very big poker game. People are playing bluffs and trying to psyche each other out."

Meetings around the state for citizen input are next.

***

Lonely-hearts video set in mythical Ravenstoke, Alaska. What’s a town of 3,000 guys to do when they live so far away that no women care to join them? The reporter in this piece of fiction from joescartoons.com calls Ravenstoke a place “where the line between civilization and the wild is barely discernible.” It’s done as a serious newscast, if Jon Stewart were the reporter and he worked for The Onion..

***

In other headlines of interest to Alaskans:

< Cool spring, slow fish send bears roaming into communities (Kodiak Daily Mirror)

< Barrow to get new hospital (The Arctic Sounder)

< Rural residents added to subsistence halibut list (Kodiak Daily Mirror)

< 1900s dance brought back to Juneau (Juneau Empire)

< Fairbanks mayor wants bed-tax reform (Fairbanks NewsMiner)

< Bishop visits 200-year-old Russian Orthodox Church (KIAL)