Comment

MICHAEL CAREY

Quitting cost Palin hope for high office

Sarah Palin's career as governor of Alaska is over. So is her barely begun career as a serious presidential candidate. The road map to the White House doesn't include a stop at "I quit."

ELISE PATKOTAK

Readers want more on Temporary Sal

Well, this has certainly been an interesting few weeks. First Ed McMahon dies and then, in rapid succession, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Karl Malden and Robert McNamara.

JOHN HAVELOCK

U.S., Iran have dipped from French well

The troubles in Iran remind us of the elusive nature of truly democratic institutions, our own checkered history in their defense and the prospects for renewal at home.

DAN FAGAN

Pollster's column was a liberal manifesto

Christian bashing is in these days, but pollster Ivan Moore took it to new levels this week with his column in The Anchorage Daily News. Moore ties in French President Nicholas Sarkozy's decision to ban the wearing of the burqa in his country to Christians in Anchorage opposing Prop 64, which creates special rights for people who like to have sex with members of their own gender.

ELISE PATKOTAK

Politicians who balk at health care for all aren't credible

Americans can sometimes seem to be quite a contradictory group. Or at least, certain segments of the population are. For instance, the segment that purports to represent the Moral Majority seems to have as much trouble as other political parties in knowing when to keep their pants zipped.

ALAN BORAAS

Beware God's messenger in the fancy suit when you pray

The cultural battle raging in Anchorage over inclusion of gay, lesbian, and transgender Alaskans into the municipal code's non-discrimination ordinance exposes a doctrinal ambiguity in a branch of the religious right that exposes its followers to manipulation.

GREGG ERICKSON

Candidate Palin has character problem

Could my governor, the charismatic Sarah Palin, be the leader Republicans are desperately looking for to lead their party out of the wilderness in 2010?

WALLY HICKEL

Alaska stays true to vision of its founders

This coming August I will turn 90. I was 21 in October 1940 when I stepped off the S.S. Yukon in Seward. I had no money, no job and knew no one. With no place to stay the night, I slept on the floor of the lobby of a small hotel.

COMMENT

There's no need for feds to twiddle with knife law

Surely, like me, you are horrified by the skyrocketing number of drive-by knife attacks in Alaska and across our great land.

STEVE HAYCOX

Seattle's 1899 exposition rife with racism

One hundred years ago this month a remarkable mini-world's fair opened in Seattle on what is now the University of Washington main campus, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Presented at a time when world's fairs were all the rage, Seattle's leaders intended the exposition to take their town beyond its rowdy, gold rush heritage and place it firmly among America's respected cities.

MICHAEL CAREY

Early Alaska judge sided with Native witnesses

During the summer of 1912, President William Howard Taft appointed Frederik E. Fuller of Nome federal judge for Interior Alaska, headquarters Fairbanks. Fuller, a 44-year-old former Pennsylvanian, immediately faced a difficult trial: A murder case scheduled for September in Iditarod.

ELISE PATKOTAK

Cheney an unlikely voice of reason in gay-rights debate

It occurs to me that Father's Day came and went without any acknowledgement on my part to the many dads I know. This is probably because I have now lost all the dad figures in my life. For the first time ever, I didn't even have an uncle to call.

DAN FAGAN

Proposed code violates founding principle

It's been so disappointing seeing some of my fellow conservatives condemn the gay community in an effort to defeat the ordinance adding sexual orientation to discrimination laws in Anchorage.

ELISE PATKOTAK

Constant exposure part of Palin dilemma

I spent this past week with a couple of my heroes. Both are Alaska women who make it clear that being an Alaska woman means being independent, strong, inquisitive and intellectually restless until the day you die.

COMMENT

Sloppy proposal reeks in timing, content, intent

Is anybody really still in the dark about why certain members of our august Assembly, at this particular time, are hell-bent on ramming through an ordinance adding "sexual orientation" to the growing list of behaviors and personal traits protected against discrimination?

JUDITH KLEINFELD

Don't feel guilty about gossip; enjoy it

When my husband comes home, I ask him hopefully, "Any gossip?"

JUDITH KLEINFELD

Double bed might save you from divorce

"You have a double bed. That's so cute!" said the woman who used to help me clean my house. "You don't see double beds much any more. Sleeping in a double bed, I bet you have to make up when you have a big fights."

ELISE PATKOTAK

To help break cycle of abuse, try removing judgment

Picture yourself a mother in a small village with a family to feed -- a small village in which survival is a communal experience. Without the support of neighbors and extended family, you and your family might starve or freeze to death.

JOHN HAVELOCK

Obama charts way out of Afghanistan

On Thursday, President Barack Obama's Cairo speech signaled the first of several steps in reconstructing a policy foundation to our Afghanistan involvement; a new policy not abandoning military power but relying less on it and acting more out of consciousness of neighborhood interests.

DAN FAGAN

State holds one big key to pipeline's construction

The ever-elusive Alaska gas pipeline is making headlines once again. Former Gov. Frank Murkowski and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich have all expressed frustration over the lack of progress regarding the pipeline.

ELISE PATKOTAK

What is self-evident, not given by a god

We are a country of civil, not religious, law. Anyone doubting how strongly our Founding Fathers felt about that should remember how carefully they crafted these words in our Constitution, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." Self evident, not god given.