Climate protesters from Just Stop Oil sprayed orange paint on ancient Stonehenge in southern England. Two protesters were arrested in what Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a “disgraceful act of vandalism.”
Just Stop Oil is an international group that has spray painted other things orange, like private airplanes and public buildings. The group says the pigment is made of corn flour and will wash away in the rain. As its name indicates, it wants an immediate end to all oil, gas, and coal production.
Stonehenge is a 5,000-year-old circle of stones that is one of the world’s most famous prehistoric sites, thought to have been built around 2,500 B.C. It is a World Heritage Site.
According to Just Stop Oil’s website, the pigment was made of an “orange cornflour” that will wash away in the rain.
The group recently took responsibility for smashing the glass protecting the original copy of the Magna Carta at the British Museum in London.
“It was Willie, Mickey and the Duke, Say hey, say hey, say hey”
~ “Talkin’ Baseball,” a song by Terry Cashman
One of the all-time great baseball players passed away Tuesday. Willie Mays, who roamed centerfield for 23 seasons with the New York/San Franciso Giants and the New York Mets died at age 93.
Starting his professional career in the Negro Leagues, then earning Rookie of the Year honors in his first season in the Majors, followed up by two years of service in the U.S. Army. Upon his return, Mays became a perennial All-Star, winning two Most Valuable Player awards and a World Series championship. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979.
Mays earned the nickname “The Say Hey Kid” because as a rookie he had difficulty remembering peoples’ names, so he would simply say, “Say Hey” when someone recognized him. It caught on and became part of baseball lore for one of the best five-tool players to don a uniform.
A five-tool player is a rare commodity. It means a player has 1) good fielding skills and 2) a strong throwing arm, and can 3) hit for average, 4) hit for power, and 5) run the bases well.
Willie Mays was a the perfect example of a five-tool player; so much so that many fans consider him the best all-around player the game has ever seen.
As a teenager, my teammate Jim idolized Willie Mays; so, of course I would always tell him that he was probably the third-best centerfielder of all-time, right behind Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. This wasn’t said because I necessarily believed it (and most certainly not because I was a Yankees fan – I wasn’t), but because it rattled Jim’s cage and set him off on a tangent. And that – as with many a baseball argument – was the whole point. We’d argue back and forth, in between taking ground balls during freshman baseball practice, and I’d laugh . . . .until Jim threatened me with bodily harm.
“Alright, alright. He was better than DiMaggio,” I would concede, “but not Mantle. Mickey wouldn’t have had to catch Vic Wertz flyball behind his back because he was fast enough to get in front of it.” This type of verbal heresy would cause Jim to respond with a flurry of expletives, much of which my naivete prevented me from understanding until I was an upperclassman.
Passionate and wholly unproveable debates are the prerogative of diehard baseball fans, and the ones over who was the best centerfielder or the best all-around player are the most fun. Ken Griffey Jr. is now added to that mix, and we older fans bristle at the audacity of young fans to challenge the sanctity of DiMaggio-Mantle-Mays debate.
When I was a young boy in the late 1960s, my family moved from Ohio to the South Bay Area of California. I continued to root for Cincinnati, but the Giants played less than an hour’s drive north, so my Dad took us Candlestick Park to watch baseball (and to Oakland, across the bay, to watch the A’s). Even though Mays was in the twilight of his career, he was by far the most popular player and the face of the franchise. While most every team in the Major Leagues had a pink-skinned bobblehead representing their team, the Giants’ bobblehead had dark skin, and it was assumed that was an homage to Willie.
In the summer of 1970, Mays was approaching 3,000 hits in his career. We went camping and, as usual, took a transistor radio with us so we could listen to games around the campsite. My big brother’s pretend favorite team, the Montreal Expos, were playing the Giants at home the day that Mays was sitting on 2,999. So engrossed in the moment, I hadn’t noticed that nearby campers caught wind of the broadcast and inched their way over to our site to listen in. When Mays punched the ball through for hit number 3,000, a cheer went up and it was only then that I noticed our camping neighbors were standing around listening.
After 21 and a half seasons with the Giants (in New York until 1957, and in San Franciso until 1972), Willie Mays was traded to the New York Mets. It was an attempt to allow him finish his career in the city in which it began, and it was an unpleasant experience, as Willie’s age began to show. He dropped flyballs and barely hit .200 in his final season, 1973. But the Mets won an improbable pennant, beating a far more talented Reds team in the National League playoffs to earn a trip to the World Series against the Oakland A’s. Willie, in a twist of irony, was returning to the Bay Area to finish out his career.
My Dad purchased tickets to the Series as business perks, but allowed me to attend three games, including the game seven finale that would determine baseball’s champions. Late in the game, Mays came to the plate, and many fans (especially a star-struck eleven-year-old) figured this would be the great Willie Mays’ final at bat. He fouled off a pitch, and I recall thinking, “some lucky S.O.B. in the stands just caught a ball from Willie’s last at bat.”
What a privilege is was to have seen in person one of the most talented baseball players ever (not as talented as Mickey Mantle, Jim, but pretty darn great).
Tim Barto’s first love is baseball, and served as president and coach of the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks of the Alaska Baseball League. When not watching the Chinooks, he finds time to serve as vice president of Alaska Family Council. He wishes he still had that Willie Mays bobblehead from his youth.
Federal holidays, since Joe Biden became president, now equal 11 days, plus one an additional day for those working in Washington, D.C. on Inauguration Day every four years. That is on top of the minimum 13 days of personal leave and 13 days of sick leave for workers at the 0-3 years of service level, and 26 days of personal leave and 13 days of sick leave for those with 15 years or more of federal service. Some federal government workers now. get 50 days of vacation/sick leave per year.
Here are the federal holidays, including Juneteenth, June 19, which was added by Biden in 2021:
New Year’s Day January 1
Martin Luther King’s Birthday 3rd Monday in January
Washington’s Birthday 3rd Monday in February
Memorial Day last Monday in May
Juneteenth National Independence Day June 19
Independence Day July 4
Labor Day 1st Monday in September
Columbus Day 2nd Monday in October
Veterans’ Day November 11
Thanksgiving Day 4th Thursday in November
Christmas Day December 25
Here are the 14 days when the Municipality of Anchorage won’t work. Juneteenth was added in 2023:
New Years Day
January 1st
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
3rd Monday in January
President’s Day
3rd Monday in February
Seward’s Day
Last Monday in March
Memorial Day
Last Monday in May
Juneteenth
June 19th
Independence Day
July 4th
Labor Day
1st Monday in September
Indigenous Peoples’ Day
2nd Monday in October
Veteran’s Day
November 11th
Thanksgiving
4th Thursday in November
Day after Thanksgiving
4th Friday in November
Christmas Eve
Interruptions on December 24th
Christmas
December 25th
City and Borough of Juneau’s days off:
New Year’s Day – Monday, January 1
Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday – Monday, January 15
The Justice Department announced its findings that Alaska Division of Elections violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide an accessible ballot for in-person voting, selecting inaccessible polling places for federal, state, and local elections and for maintaining an inaccessible elections website.
The ADA requires that states’ voting services, programs and activities be accessible to individuals with disabilities.
For REAA elections in Alaska — the rural unorganized boroughs for education board elections — the Justice Department complains that the state does not provide an accessible voting machine in any polling station and only provides paper ballots with offers of assistance from poll workers.
“Voters with disabilities faced obstacles voting in the October 2023 REAA election in which only paper ballots were available. One voter with a vision disability, after being told that no magnification device was available, required assistance to vote using a paper ballot. Another voter with disabilities who has difficulty walking, moving, writing, and talking struggled to complete the paperwork but poll workers failed to offer any assistance. Both voters stated that they would have preferred voting on an accessible machine, privately andindependently, but no accessible machine was available,” the complaint says.
“During federal and state elections, the State offers absentee in-person and Election Day voting. It provides in-person early voting in Juneau, the Anchorage area (Anchorage, Wasilla, Eagle River, and Palmer), Fairbanks, Nome, Homer, and Soldotna. Although the state claims that it provides accessible machines during early voting and on Election Day, not all early voting and Election Day sites had an accessible machine and at some sites the accessible machine was not operational. The State does not provide accessible voting machines at absentee in-person voting sites,” the Justice Department complaint said.
“For too long, people with disabilities have been denied the fundamental rights and freedoms that citizens of our democracy possess, including the opportunity to fully participate in the voting process,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department is fully committed to enforcing the ADA to make sure that individuals with disabilities have an equal opportunity to vote, including by voting privately and independently like everyone else.”
“Voting is a fundamental right for all American citizens and ensuring they have full access to the election process is a hallmark of our democracy,” said U.S. Attorney S. Lane Tucker for the District of Alaska. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to collaborate with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to work toward accessibility in voting for all Alaskans.”
The department opened its investigation in response to complaints from individuals with disabilities in Alaska alleging accessibility issues.
Voters with disabilities reported that they could not vote privately and independently because accessible voting machines were unavailable or did not work, that they encountered inaccessible polling places and that they could not obtain key election information on the state’s election website.
The Alaska investigation is part of the department’s ADA Voting Initiative, which focuses on protecting the voting rights of individuals with disabilities across the country.
The plan to add more Democrat voters to the states continues in the Biden Administration, as hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who have lived in the country for at least 10 and who are married to American citizens are going to be granted amnesty, the president announced Tuesday.
That means people who have been in the country criminally for 10 years need to hurry up and find a spouse.
Those who are approved after a Department of Homeland Security case-by-case assessment of their application will be afforded a three-year period to apply for permanent residency. They will be allowed to remain in the United States and be eligible for work authorization for up to three years. This will apply to all married couples who are eligible, Biden said.
“This action will protect approximately half a million spouses of U.S. citizens, and approximately 50,000 noncitizen children under the age of 21 whose parent is married to a U.S. citizen,” the White House said.
It’s a mixed message for those who are planning border incursions into the United States. Earlier this month, Biden announced he was cracking down on illegal immigration, including denying asylum applications whenever the number of border incursions is “high.”
During his presidency, illegal immigration is at an all time high. Some 7.2 million illegals have entered the country during the Biden Administration’s three-and-a-half-year presidency, which is greater than the population of 36 states.
In 2023 alone, Biden’s border policies led to more than 2.4 million illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. Mexico border.
Between January and May of this year, some 1.39 million illegal immigrants from 177 countries traveled through Mexico to reach the United States, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Migration, a government agency. Most of them were from Central American countries, with the leading feeder of illegal immigrants Venezuela, with 380,000, followed by Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, and Haiti, all of which are heavily populated by violent gangs and drug traffickers. Others are coming from China, India, Mauritania, and Angola, according to the Mexican government.
Some critics see this new policy as part of Biden’s attempt to win Hispanic voters. But with the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, the immigrants coming from 177 countries through Mexico to the U.S. means that virtually the entire world is using Mexico as its staging ground.
A controversial proposal to rezone much of Anchorage into an “anything goes” scheme has been greatly simplified by three members of the Assembly. Now, it’s about allowing up to three dwellings per residential lot in every residential neighborhood, rather than the previous plan of “any residential type in any neighborhood.” The prior goal of packing Anchorage with density has been scaled back.
Assembly members Anna Brawley, Daniel Volland and Meg Zaletel announced the new, substitute version (version S-1) ofAO 2023-87, which they say reflects feedback they have received. The vast amount of public feedback to the proposed ordinance was negative.
The change in zoning is meant to reflect changing demographics, the new version says. Fewer people of childbearing years are having children and Anchorage has an aging population of Baby Boomers, “a larger proportion of people living alone, and a continuing outflow of working-age adults and families leaving Anchorage and Alaska, particularly over the last decade,” the document explains. “Additionally, the Municipality’s own 2012 Anchorage Housing Market Analysis found that ‘given the historic density of development and rate of redevelopment, the Anchorage Bowl does not have sufficient vacant buildable residential land to accommodate the demand for housing units forecasted over the next 20 years,’” the members of the Assembly wrote.
The Assembly has been working on develop “diversity, equity, inclusion” zoning in Anchorage since last year when AO 2023-66 was introduced to create densely packed neighborhoods throughout the city. Originally, the plan was to have essentially just two zones — housing of any sort and commercial. That meant someone could build an apartment building in the middle of a single-family neighborhood, thus drastically changing not just the personality of the neighborhood, but the level of noise, traffic, and ability to move snow around cars and trash containers in the long Anchorage winters.
The proposed 2023-87 replaced 2023-66 when the former proposal ran into strong public opposition.
The new version of 2023-87 reverses most of the changes proposed through the original plan, including the consolidation of residential zones, and focuses on a single policy objective: Eliminating all single-family zoning in the Anchorage Bowl.
“Things can quickly become overly complicated between legislative drafting and the robust public process, so let’s keep it simple,” said Assemblyman Volland, who added that the new version will be introduced at the June 25 regular meeting of the Assembly. “This new version makes ‘Two-Family Dwellings’ a permitted use by-right in every residential zone and redefines ‘Two-Family Dwellings’ to include detached structures.”
“There’s a brilliance in simplicity,” said Assembly Vice Chair Zaletel. “By making two simple changes—permitting up to three units (two primary and one accessory) by-right where one unit currently exists and allowing dwelling units to be multiple structures—we provide flexibility in current code that empowers more housing.”
The new version also somewhat addresses the snow-removal and storage problem that was created and never addressed by the old proposed ordinance. Anchorage is a snow city and neighborhoods are already challenged by not having enough places in densely packed neighborhoods for snowplows to store snow.
“The public process behind the HOME Initiative has been enlightening,” said Assemblywoman Brawley. “We set out with an ambitious goal to simplify our residential zoning code and make it easier to build housing. Among points of contention, the public process revealed where stakeholders could find consensus. The new version focuses on our points of consensus and sheds the baggage of our disagreements so we can be bold together.”
The ordinance would have the Planning Commission develop the specific rules around the new zoning plan and the public process may stretch on for many months on this new proposal.
In this age of public school wokeism, with all its pronoun preferences, revisionist history, and gender bending promotions, the last thing one might expect is Bible study during school hours. But that is exactly what LifeWise Academy is doing. In fact, they’re doing it successfully, and if all goes well, they might be doing it right here in Alaska.
How could such a program possibly exist? That is reasonable and expected question.
The short answer is because a 1952 Supreme Court decision found it perfectly legal and not in violation of the First Amendment. InZorach v. Clauson, the court ruled that a school district is allowed to let public school students leave their school ground for part of the day to receive off-site religious instruction.
This type of program is known as “release time religious instruction.”
It was something of a “sleeper” ruling, but in 2018, Joel Penton launched LifeWise Academy in Ohio, with the express purpose of providing Biblical instruction to public school students during school hours. In Van Wert, Ohio, the participation rate of public school students in release time religious instruction is 95 percent.
Currently, there are such programs in 300 schools across 11 states, providing 30,000 public school children with access to Biblical teachings. Churches and individual donors fund the programs. No public funds are used for LifeWise Academy. Penton, who was a guest in May on Jim Minnery’s podcast, “I’m Glad You Said That”, is adamant that LifeWise programs follow three important criteria:
1) The instruction takes place off public school property,
2) The program is privately funded,
3) Participation is only done with parental permission.
Here’s how it works: Students are allowed one class period, typically one per week, when they are excused from school. School administrators work with LifeWise to choose periods that do not interfere with mandatory classes or other extracurricular activities.
Chaperones either walk the students to the offsite location, or a bus arrives to take students and chaperones to the location, which is usually a church or other private business. LifeWise helps choose locations that are close to the public schools, so a minimal amount of time is spent on transportation. If needed, LifeWise will work with local volunteers to remodel or even build meeting spaces. LifeWise instructors – NOT public school teachers – provide a Bible passage and related character trait lesson. At the end of the instruction, the bus picks up the students and takes them back to school to resume their day.
The curriculum takes students through the whole Bible in five years, but the instructors have flexibility to adjust it as needed, and students may join the program at any time.
So, how’s it going with teachers and parents? According to their website, LifeWisesurveyed educators and 90% of them answered that the program benefited their students and school. When asked about the program’s impact on behavior, decisions and relationships, school schedules, student excitement, and positive attitudes, responses to all the areas scored 82 to 87 percent positive. As for the parents’ reactions, 99 percent of them responded that LifeWise helped their children make better decisions, engage in faith-based conversations, and grow in their understanding of the Bible. Less than one percent of the parents surveyed did not recommend the program to other parents.
Those numbers signify success, and in today’s academic environment, positive student outcomes should be welcomed with open arms. And that leads us to backlash. It’s fair to suspect that Bible-based curriculum resulting in positive character outcomes would surely garner the ire of the leftist forces that dominate public education and bow to teachers’ unions, but that has not really been the case.
This can be implemented in Alaska. It will meet with some opposition, as it has in the Lower 48, but the fight will be worth it. As public schools push against parental rights and proselytize their theologies of climate change and social justice, it will provide some relief to allow students to take time – off campus and without using public funds – to learn the values of the Bible.
Tim Barto is vice president at Alaska Family Council.
The State of Alaska filed its reply brief in its appeal of the Alaska Superior Court’s ruling in April, which found the correspondence study program unconstitutional and sent parents of students in such programs scrambling for answers.
In April, Judge Adolf Zeman ruled that the State of Alaska cannot reimburse parents for classes taken outside government schools.
The State has asked the Alaska Supreme Court to reverse the Superior Court ruling because it fails to properly apply the standard for holding that a statute is unconstitutional, the Department of Law wrote in a statement.
Striking down a duly enacted statute as unconstitutional is a serious and extraordinary exercise of the judicial power and a ruling of unconstitutionality frustrates the intent of the elected representatives of the people, the reply brief says.
Superior Court Judge Zemen has thrown the good out with the bad, the State argued. There are more refined tools—including a properly filed as-applied challenge—that allow courts to “avoid interfering with the lawmaking process any more than is necessary,” the brief says.
Further, Zeman’s ruling would render unconstitutional far more than just the student allotment program, and sweep into the unconstitutional category the millions of dollars that the State pays annually to private organizations like Amazon or Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for textbooks and other services and materials for brick-and-mortar schools, as well as numerous long- uncontroversial public-private partnerships that work with the neighborhood schools.
“The State’s briefing exposes the absurdity of the lower court’s decision,” said Alaska Deputy Attorney General Cori Mills. “For decades, State money has been spent on correspondence schools using private vendors to ensure students who don’t (or can’t) attend a traditional neighborhood school still have access to a top-quality public education. The lower court’s decision upended that decades-long precedent, ignoring the vast majority of constitutional spending on educational materials and services purchased by parents to support their child’s public education.”
The State has teamed up with a non-profit legal organization, First Liberty, which reached out on the case offering legal support for free.
“The absurdity of the decision has garnered national attention, so much so that First Liberty, a non-profit legal organization, experienced in constitutional issues, reached out to the State to offer legal assistance on a pro bono basis. With the understanding that the State is firmly in the driver’s seat on what and how this case is argued, it seemed prudent to take the offer of free help from other legal experts,” the State wrote in a statement.
Anchorage Mayor-elect Suzanne LaFrance has created a new position in city government: chief administrative officer. For the role, she has chosen Bill Falsey, former municipal attorney under former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, who resigned in disgrace in 2020.
Falsey ran for election for mayor of Anchorage but lost in the general election on April 6, 2021; Dave Bronson and Forrest Dunbar advanced to the runoff, and Bronson won.
Falsey was a supporter of LaFrance’s since the time she announced her run for mayor and before that led opposition to outgoing Mayor Bronson, who was beat by LaFrance in the May, 2024 runoff.
LaFrance also announced that the next municipal attorney will be Eva Gardner, who will lead the city’s Law Department.
