Comment

DAN FAGAN

Success is great, but I can always do better

In 2010 I will begin my eighth year as host of a radio talk show. I spent most of my adult life as a reporter and I always thought it was the best job in the world. That was until I got my own talk show. Hosting a show with a big audience has been very rewarding. Of course I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. I still struggle each day to handle my show responsibly. It's not always easy, but I do try.

JOHN HAVELOCK

Capable students should go to college free

We educate people because it is in the best interest of state and country; the benefit to the educated individual is incidental. Public education protects our society from economic decline and social degeneration. Our social structure slides into imbalance if there are not avenues for upward mobility.

ELISE PATKOTAK

Help save children from abuse, death

Once again the headlines tell a sad, sad story. American children are still killed by their parents or caregivers with disgusting regularity.

MICHAEL CAREY

'Old welder' ran roughshod over Alaska

Bill Allen said what you expect from a man standing before a judge at sentencing. I made mistakes, I'm sorry, I know I will be punished. Remember the good I did.

CARL HIASSEN

Editors pose questions in Palin book manuscript

(Confidential response of Sarah Palin's book editor to the first draft of her coming memoir, "Going Rogue"):

PAUL JENKINS

Bill Allen disappointed former employee

People ask me: What do you think about Bill Allen and what he did?

STEVE HAYCOX

History omits the joy in tough times

History is tricky business. We'd like it to give us the true story of the past. But along with the other liberal arts -- literature and philosophy -- whose domain it shares, history doesn't produce certitude about much of anything. Even when one has the salient facts right, there's the challenge offered by the theory that there are an infinite number of explanations for any one event.

ELISE PATKOTAK

Industry will meet need for electric car charging

Given the cost of gas per gallon, I think electric cars would be an amazing boon in the Bush. People wouldn't have to choose between groceries and gassing their car so they can take that needed mental health break to the lake.

WALLY HICKEL

Commons care can yield resource revolution

I commend the committees in Norway and Sweden who chose President Barack Obama and Dr. Elinor Ostrom as winners of Nobel prizes this month.

DAN FAGAN

On his way out, Begich left us with a big mess

By now, only the obsessively partisan have yet to understand former Mayor Mark Begich deceived the public so he could push through labor union contracts he knew we couldn't afford.

MICHAEL CAREY

Trip to book store recalls who helped through life

I just returned to Anchorage after three weeks seeing America, mostly by rail. The trip began in Portland and continued through Spokane, Minneapolis, New York and Boston.

ELISE PATKOTAK

Bush booze: controversy, contradiction

Do you feel that trying to follow the booze wars in Bush Alaska is like trying to watch Australian rules football -- it looks like something you should be able to understand; yet you can't quite figure out what the heck is happening.

COMMENT

Keep government's hands off the press

As some in Congress toy with bailing out struggling newspapers and the president says he will be "happy to look at" such legislation, you have to wonder what it would mean if the press no longer were free of the very government it is supposed to watch.

ALAN BORAAS

Alaskans must leave stupidity behind

The Dena'ina of Cook Inlet have stories called "Stupid Boy Stories." (For the record there is at least one stupid girl story.) The stories cut to the heart of what education is all about.

ELISE PATKOTAK

Raise taxes - but make the execs pay

There's a political ad running on TV now that almost makes me mad enough to toss out the free speech part of the First Amendment so we can prevent this kind of mindless brainwashing.

STEVE HAYCOX

A firsthand report on transfer of Alaska to US in 1867

Sunday is Alaska Day, commemorating the transfer of Russian America to the United States in 1867. One of the more fun accounts of that early time in Alaska was discovered some years ago in the Newberry Library in Chicago by the late Alaska historian Morgan Sherwood.

ELISE PATKOTAK

We all need to disconnect once in a while

You don't hear much about hermits nowadays. I imagine that for many young people brought up amidst the instant and constant "in touch" revolution, the very concept of hermit is more foreign than the concept of a rotary dial.

PAUL JENKINS

Columnist finds Palin's book in a dream

Imagine my surprise when a carton wrapped in duct tape landed with a thud! in the puddle at my front door. In today's world, unannounced deliveries are as welcome as root canals, but what the heck?

STEVE HAYCOX

Bartlett was true architect of statehood

Next Thursday, October 8, is the anniversary of the birth of William A. Egan, Alaska's first state governor, president of the constitutional convention in 1955-56, and Tennessee Plan Senator (1956).

ELISE PATKOTAK

Take a lesson from Seaman, not Masek

Here's what struck me the most about the front page of the paper last Wednesday. Above the fold was a story about a Bethel doctor, Jill Seaman. Contrast that with the story below the fold that day in which Beverly Masek's lawyer pleaded for leniency in her sentencing.

GREGG ERICKSON

Warning: PFD could be hazardous to health

Did you know that the arrival of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend increases the death rate? That's right, the PFD could be implicated in your premature death later this month.