Philip Munger

After a talk with one of my friends at firedoglake this afternoon, I visited the Occupy Anchorage encampment this (Saturday) evening. All I can say after visiting it is that two tents and some signs are there. It was almost 11:00 pm, so I didn’t find any occupiers present. The signs indicate upcoming events.

There are many alternative names you might consider. In honor of Sen. Linda Menard’s hallmark legislation from the 2009 session, you might consider the new name “Winged Marmot”

Other suggestions already put forward by Patriotic Americans have been “Freedom Fowl” and ‘Pilgrim Pullet.”

Occupy Anchorage is real. I was depressed after attending the last one I went to. I left this one singing from Nabucco.

On Wednesday, Dr. Jeffrey Gleason, currently an avian ecologist for the the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement, was questioned by agents from the the Obama Interior Department Office of Inspector General about aspects of his involvement with Dr. Charles Monnett’s 2006 peer-reviewed scientific paper that linked Polar bear mortality while swimming in the Arctic to climate change. Dr. Monnett has been under investigation since late 2010. Scrutiny of Dr. Gleason’s actions related to the Polar bear findings dates back to his first interview, held on January 26th. His questioning on Wednesday resulted in a request by the investigators for him to undergo a lie detector test regarding a misplaced routing slip:

Longtime journalist and award-winning author Joe McGinniss’ newest book, The Rogue, is the latest – but by no means last – book about Sarah Palin. Palin is not only the most famous Alaskan in history, she has uniquely combined political activity, celebrity, motherhood, grandmotherhood, a spousal relationship, borderline religious beliefs, professional victimhood, the American gossip universe, pop culture, legal obfuscation, new media and social networking. Increasingly known for being thin-skinned and somewhat lacking in spatial awareness, Palin, more than any American politician in a generation or so, almost begged McGinniss – or any investigative author – to move next door.

Climate change skeptics have been after Dr. Monnett since Al Gore used information about his research in the movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Judging from the attacks launched since the last week of July on his 2005 paper and how environmentalists used that information to heighten awareness of rapid changes in the polar ice cap, the investigation of the scientist will continue to be misrepresented by the anti-science community, even as he goes back to work.

In 2005, the most important court decision on evolution since the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Edwards v. Aguillard, came about: the Pennsylvania case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Edwards had nailed the door shut on teaching “creationism” as science in schools. Kitzmiller nailed it shut on trying to the same with “intelligent design.” Both were definitive. Perry should know that, as should the entire field of GOP 2012 hopefuls.

To me, this is an important subject, and has been for some time. Science education is vital to our future as a nation, as a planet. Whenever I read, watch or listen to a media person bringing up creationism, intelligent design or evolution as if there might be a scientific component to more than one of those three ideas, I just shake my head.

Two more organizations, neither from Alaska, have joined Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in search of more transparency in the Obama administration’s pursuit of Anchorage-based Polar bear expert, Dr. Charles Monnett. Greenpeace US and the Center for Biological Diversity sent a letter on Thursday to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and White House Office of Science & Technology Policy Director, Dr. John Holdren, raising their grave concerns that Dr. Monnett is being pursued as part of a political agenda.

In midsummer 2006, while my wife and kids were on our yearly trip down to Seattle, to be with our extended Norwegian-Jewish-Cambodian-Icelandic-Swedish-Texan family, the so-called Israel-Hezbollah War was in full rage. My brother-in-law and I were watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN, as he interviewed one pro-Israel talking head expert after another, describing the war not just from the Israeli point of view, but from a right-wing Israeli standpoint.

After the program, he lamented that the voice for Israel in the American media, in public affairs and in politics is almost always from a perspective much further from the right than it should be to reflect the views of the average Israeli, or those of the American Jewish community. He longed for a new organization, based from the positions of moderates, to counter the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other hawkish pro-Israel groups.

“But,” Lee lamented, “that’ll never happen.”

Some say it has now happened.

The Copper River is under increasing pressure from every direction, but the number of fish caught annually there over the past 40 years has stayed remarkably close to the same from decade to decade. The first year I caught a salmon at the Copper River, was as a commercial gillnetter, in 1974. The most recent ones were on Thursday, as a personal use dipnetter.