The United States Senate failed to invoke cloture on a bipartisan bill that would have forced the armed forces to alter the way in which sexual misconduct charges against members of the military are handled. Because the motion to close debate only got 55 votes, five short of the 60 required, the proposed changes won’t…
Ice Alaska 2014 – formally, the BP World Ice Art Championships 2014 – continue in Fairbanks. The multi-block sculptures are now carved and judging is complete. Here’s a sampler of the amazing multi-block pieces the artists have carved. The Chinese team’s lovely, multi-layered mountain scene, with aurora chasing above the mountains, won the Governor’s Award for Realistic…
Commentary / Hypocrisy / Law / Parnell
Can you imagine how outraged Governor Sean “Captain Zero” Parnell would be if, say, the State of Maryland intervened in a fight over Beluga Whales in Cook Inlet? Captain Zero would be breaking out the “We Don’t Give a Damn How They Do It Outside” bumperstickers, issuing intemperate press releases and railing against the Lower…
The Bar-tailed Godwits are on their way to Alaska. About 900 New Zealanders got together near Christchurch this past Sunday to see them off. Apparently, it’s a Kiwi ritual. The Bar-taileds left on the first, 11,000km (6,820 mile) leg of their 17,600km (10,900 mile) spring migration to Alaska. The Bar-tailed Godwit is the all-time, indisputable…
WC is pleased and grateful that he is able to make this report: His niece, Ginny Patton’s emergency fund has now reached $23,855, within shouting distance of the $25,000 target. Many of WC’s readers have made large and small contributions to that fund, helping out a stranger who was in a financial jam. WC is…
The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) is a conservative “think tank,” although there’s a lot more reflexive neocon ideology than thinking in that particular tank. Ordinarily WC wouldn’t sully the pages of his blog with the antics of this crowd of right wingnuts, but recent events at Apple’s shareholder meeting point to precisely…
Ice Alaska 2014 – formally, the BP World Ice Art Championships 2014 – are under way in Fairbanks. The single blocks are carved and, when WC was there on Saturday night, being judged. Here’s a sampler of the amazing pieces the artists have carved from a single block of ice this year. The sculpture is very…
WC may have figured out Captain Zero’s vision for Alaska. The New York Times recently had a piece on the regulatory climate in the sovereign state of North Carolina. Last June, state employees in charge of stopping water pollution were given updated marching orders on behalf of North Carolina’s new Republican governor and conservative lawmakers. “The…
We’re now one-sixth of the way through 2014. Through those first two months, there have been 6,381 incidents of firearm violence in the United States, resulting in 1,646 deaths and 2,726 injuries. If we straight line those appalling numbers out for the balance of the year, we can project 9,876 firearm deaths and 16,356 firearm…
The NeoCons in the U.S. House keep trying to find a scandal in the IRS’s treatment of new applications to IRS §501(c)(4)s. So far, the witch hunt investigation has been an abject failure at discovering evil conduct by the IRS, other than the general background evil associated with being the revenooers, at least. It’s indisputable…
WC was lucky enough to take a trip to the Galapagos Islands in 2002. Ken Whitten and Mary Zalar put the trip together, and because they had been there before, laid out a trip that got to some of the more remote islands and landings. We spent fifteen days in the Galapagos, made 26 different…
Despite the impression you may have, WC is rarely reflexively for or against new ideas. Apart from ideas like arming high school kids, WC usually takes a look at the thinking that goes in to an idea before opening up the sarcasm spigot, as it were. So when WC heard about HJR 1 and the…
