Anchorage Daily News

EDITORIAL

Housing help

Rescue for homeowners isn't a free ride, but a second chance. It makes sense.

COMMUNITY VOICES

Anchorage passed this character test

Character building is often a difficult process — look at our once “highly esteemed” politicos headed off to prison. Perhaps we thought our community could enjoy a reprieve from bad behavior. Then came the careless and crude remarks of popular radio personalities who at some point in their careers drank that Kool-Aid that turns sparkling wit into dull-witted, schoolboy vulgarity.

COMPASS

EPA guidelines for mineral pollution in Alaska are flawed

Quick question: What is the most polluted state in the union? Alaska -- at least that is the answer you will get if you consult the EPA Toxic Release Inventory figures.

Tree award?

Anchorage may take good care of some trees, but less wholesale clear-cutting for new development would be nice.

Daily pork

NOTE: One of a series on curious items in the $3 billion capital budget awaiting veto decisions by Gov. Sarah Palin. Her deadline is May 23.

ELISE PATKOTAK

After oil catastrophe, lives rose on eagle’s wings

My sister is not exactly a bird lover. She lives across from a migratory bird sanctuary, but over the years some birds decided to build nests in her front yard instead.

COMPASS

City, state will benefit from new port

Just three years after the Port of Anchorage was built, the 1964 earthquake devastated Southcentral Alaska, leveling harbors in other communities. The earthquake weakened some of the port's pilings, but it stood strong and has continued to serve Alaskans for nearly half a century.

EDITORIAL

Fair pay, fair play

Equal pay for equal work should be bedrock principle of American life. Give us legislation to get there.

EDITORIAL

Daily pork

Nobody wants to see Junior impaled on a killer branch, but tell the janitor to get out his saw and cut down the bushes.

EDITORIAL

Trashed

The city needs to work out more details on a recycling plan so the Assembly has no excuse for rejecting it.

EDITORIAL

Daily pork

One of a series on curious items in the $3 billion capital budget awaiting veto decisions by Gov. Sarah Palin. Her deadline is May 23

ALAN BORAAS

Don't let money hijack political power

An innovative bill in the last Alaska Legislature would have helped reconstitute one of the most fundamental concepts in American democracy.

COMPASS

Remembering the man who helped revive Yup'ik dancing

Andrew Paukan, Angalraq, of St. Marys died March 2 this year. After waiting the customary 40 days, his wife, Mary, and family hosted a feast for the village.

EDITORIAL

Paying for college

$2.5 million for college grants is money well spent.

ANDREW HALCRO

High gas costs, no energy plan leave us with only prayer

In April, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama created a buzz when he commented that the residents of small Midwestern towns were a bitter lot due to broken promises and empty rhetoric from politicians. He was half right. I'd argue it's impatience, not bitterness, and it's not limited to the Midwest.

EDITORIAL

Defiant

Maybe a few years in the federal pen will help Kohring see the light.

COMPASS

Union is to blame for prison dispute

I am retiring after 30 years of public service with the Department of Corrections. I would like Alaskans to know the story behind the efforts of the corrections officers union to have Commissioner Joe Schmidt fired.

JOHN HAVELOCK

Alaska is the richest state, yet still plagued by fiscal woes

Alaska is not poor; it is the richest state in the country, in cash reserves and in prospects. For years, Alaskans have been regularly advised by their pundits that they are poor and that a day of reckoning looms. Our nonrenewable natural resources will some day (soon) be exhausted, they say, and we shall then rely on income from giant, reserve funds built from current income, from which we will draw to sustain government.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Clinton solved puzzle too late in game

By the time Hillary Clinton figured out how to beat Barack Obama, it was too late. When she began the race in 2007 thinking she was in for a coronation, she claimed the center in ord er to position herself for the real fight, the general election. She simply assumed the party activists and loony left would fall in behind her.

ALASKA ALMANAC

MIA: Medicare money, doctors

EDITORIAL

Bullet line

The private market may make this project happen without a lot of government help.