Anchorage Daily News

Interrogated, cuffed, stripped, jailed. Fairbanks Daily New-Miner columnist Dermot Cole in two columns of recent days has held forth angrily on the visa-mixup case of Reinhard Neuhauser, a University of Alaska graduate and ski coach who says he was mistreated by federal officers in Seattle while trying to return to Alaska. Neuhauser was ultimately sent back to Austria, after he was questioned repeatedly and held for hours in a jail cell.

“Our congressional delegation should demand an independent investigation of why Neuhauser, who has lived in Alaska for six years, was booted out of the country,” Cole concludes in the first of his reports. The second column, which ran over the weekend, holds that the Neuhauser treatment was “a nightmare that could have been scripted by Franz Kafka” and is evidence of a border policy that “creates new enemies for the United States whenever an innocent foreigner trying to enter the country is placed behind bars.”

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Alaska a major player Tuesday? A Juneau Empire story over the weekend picked up on the theme present in many Alaska news stories of late: that the state this year, largely because of the tightness of the races, is suddenly a player to be accounted for in national presidential politics. (Click here to get to ADN’s weekend political coverage setting up the coming Super Tuesday.)

“I’ve never seen this much interest,” the Empire story quotes Rich Listowski, a former national committeeman for the Democratic Party. Then the newspaper notes in a separate story that if you want more evidence of Alaska’s growing role, consider this: Bill Clinton personally telephoned a Juneau Democratic delegate urging support for his wife.

A Kodiak Daily Mirror story also weighed in on what’s going on in that community, where party spokesmen said interest has been high.

And a KTUU Channel 2 story points to increased voting by 18-24 year olds in caucuses and primaries held in other states to support the notion that young people are getting involved in politics again. “I think people sort of want a new voice and that’s why they're going after Barack Obama, and they want something that’s not going to be the same sort of Democrat and Republican,” the story quotes West High student Wiley Grayson saying. “They don’t want to have the government controlled by money and these very small interests.”

Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal story today details Republican candidate Ron Paul’s push in Alaska, where he is finding a “hotbed of support.” “Alaska is a very, very limited-government state — they aren't even embarrassed to use the word ‘libertarian’ up there,” Paul told the newspaper. (Click here for ADN’s story on Paul’s Alaska effort.)

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Forgive McCain his sins. A Washington Post story notes that presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been known for his “forceful and sometimes personal” battles with his fellow senators. And now Republican members of the body, including Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, are having to struggle with the notion McCain could be the party’s presidential nominee.

Some are forgiving, according to the story; some aren’t. As for Stevens, who has often been at odds with McCain on spending issues: “I forgive him for whatever disagreements he has had with me. We can disagree on things, but I have great admiration for him.”

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All the Palin you might want. APRN’s “AK” show over the weekend committed a substantial segment of its hour to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The program includes a few critics and fans, including one who’s pushing her for vice president.

In a separate piece on its web site, APRN includes nine minutes and then some of a Palin interview that went into the making of the “AK” program.

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Stick ’em up. Gimme your heating oil. Ketchikan police are investigating a rash of stove oil thefts, according to a Ketchikan Daily News story. No. 1 stove oil seems to be the preferred booty, according to the story, and police theorize high fuel prices are a central motive.

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TransCanada bid found lacking. An Alaska Journal of Commerce story reports that a legal opinion from attorneys working for the Legislature has concluded that TransCanada Corp.’s application to build a gasline fails to meet terms of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. The opinion is in direct contradiction to the Palin administration view, which held that TransCanada’s bid was the only one to qualify.

According to the newspaper: “A Jan. 23 opinion prepared by Washington, D.C.-based law firm Saul Ewing for the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee argues that proposals in TransCanada's application for federal loan guarantees to cover construction cost overruns and a ‘bridge shipper’ provision for the federal government to guarantee shipping commitments in an initial open season amount to conditions in its proposal, which is contrary to the state law and the terms of the solicitation for proposals.”

Meanwhile, a Juneau Empire story today explores the peculiar mix of interests that is teaming up on both side of the gasline issue. The issue has blurred traditional Alaska political lines, perhaps most vividly in the Republican Party, where Gov. Sarah Palin and Senate President Lyda Green — both of them from Wasilla — hold starkly differing views on aspects of the proposal.

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Barrow stands up for whaling. The organization Save the Whales Again!, with “Heroes” star Hayden Panettiere as a main spokesperson, is pushing the Bush administration to resist Japanese commercial whaling and is also resisting subsistence whaling. And this isn’t going down well with people in Barrow, according to an APRN story.

Residents were particularly angered at Panettiere’s comments about the dangers to children who are being breast fed by mothers who consume whale meat. And the APRN story includes a string of comments from Barrow mothers and others who take offense. “I was offended as a Native,” one said, “because a lot of our kids up here are breast fed and the ones who are breast fed are a lot healthier than the ones who are not.”

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Cruise lines face changes. The cruise industry could be shaken, thousands of jobs could be lost, and ports, including some in Alaska, that depend on the travel trade could be hurt if proposed federal regulations go forward, critics of the changes warn in a story in The Seattle Times over the weekend. The changes would require that cruise liners sailing from Seattle to Alaska stop for 48 hours at foreign ports and would also mean some vessels have to be reconfigured.

“The proposal would cause immediate, significant economic harm to the U.S. port industry,” said Kurt Nagle, president of the American Association of Port Authorities.

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The right to bear arms. KTV Channel 11 delved into one of Alaskans’ favorite subjects — guns — and found out that when you bring them up, you’re going to get a response. The station’s first report was a story reporting that Alaska flunked the Brady Campaign’s report card on gun laws. The second report was on the dozens of comments coming in telling the Brady Campaign what they could do with their report card.

“You can pass all the gun laws till the cows come home,” the stations quotes one response from Larry DiFrancesco, “and all you will accomplish is denying law abiding citizens the ability to defend themselves. Criminals are lawbreakers. They pay no attention o the law. Why does the media have such a hard understanding something so simple!!!”

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“Ordinary people, extraordinary heroes.” Mother Earth News has a lengthy, first-person story in praise of firefighters that notes some of the enticements — house loans, tax breaks, health club memberships — that communities across the country have come up with to lure people to the difficult, dangerous job. The story includes this from Alaska: Volunteers in Sitka get free cable TV.

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