An Alaskan Abroad

Gravel

Gravel just won't quit. This is a heck of a lot funnier than the stones in the lake video, though.

High cost of hygiene

How can a five pack of razor blade refills cost $14.99? If we weren't going into summer, I'd do the Alaskan thing and grow a beard.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Just plain wrong

How in the hell can the Alaskan make Esquire's list of America's best bars and not the Triangle? These people obviously know nothing about Juneau.

Enbridge

The Calgary Herald is reporting that pipeline giant Enbridge is looking to gain a stake in an Alaska natural gas pipeline project.

Enbridge Inc. is looking to gain a large stake in a competing proposal to build an Alaska natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to Alberta, the company's chief executive officer said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the company reported record first-quarter profits of $251 million or 70 cents a share compared to $227 million or 65 cents a share a year earlier.

"We've always said if we were at a position of 10 to 20 per cent, that would be of interest to us," CEO Pat Daniel told reporters following Enbridge's annual general meeting.

"That would be our objective, but of course it's all academic at this point -- we don't have a position in the line yet."

Read the full story at canada.com.

Missteps

Congress Daily has a short summary of Jake Metcalfe's announcement yesterday that he's dropping out of the race for the U.S. House of Representatives. It's unfortunate Metcalfe bowed out, but his campaign made a number of missteps in dealing with the controversy.

First, his aide Bill Scannell continually tried to blame Berkowitz and others instead of addressing the issue directly. That was an immediate red flag. At the very least, the Metcalfe campaign should have denounced the sites and redirected the conversation back to the issues. Metcalfe tried, but Scannell undermined his efforts.

Blaming Berkowitz was silly because he wasn't pushing the issue, we reporters were. Berkowitz was disturbed that the sites mentioned his wife and children, but otherwise he wasn't that concerned about them. I only found out about the specific sites from Brendan Kelley at the Anchorage Press.

Second, when Scannell was linked to the sites, Metcalfe waffled on his promise to take disciplinary action. Scannell's resignation letter only added fuel to the fire. Instead of admitting guilt and rectifying the situation, he melodramatically said he would "leap on his own sword" for Metcalfe, who then said he didn't want to talk about the issue anymore.

Metcalfe failed to grasp that candidates don't get to set the agenda; the media and the public do.

The website controversy wasn't enough to kill Metcalfe's campaign. A poor choice of adviser and his inability to raise money were the real culprits.

Bill McAllister covered Metcalfe's resignation at KTUU.com.

Unfortunately, Metcalfe's future political career may have been permanently bruised by this controversy. That's a real disappointment for the Democratic Party.

Democrats have been unable to recruit the quality of candidates capable of challenging Republicans in the Legislature and the governor's office. Metcalfe could have run an underdog campaign focused on issues important to Alaskans and positioned himself well for a gubernatorial run in 2010. That opportunity now seems to have been squandered.

Metcalfe steps down

Jake Metcalfe released the following statement today announcing he was stepping down from the Democratic race for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Many questions have arisen in the last two weeks about the role my former campaign consultant may have played in engineering the redirection of Ethan Berkowitz domain names to websites intended to harm his candidacy.

I want to clarify, once and for all: I did not order or ask anyone to buy the sites.  I did not ask anyone to redirect the sites.  And I did not know until recently that anyone associated with my campaign had done so.  It appears that a former campaign worker was involved in these acts, and I condemn them.  The buck stops here.  I take responsibility for these acts.  I made a mistake by not taking these allegations more seriously from the beginning, and I called Ethan Berkowitz today to apologize to him for any harm this may have caused.  I regret that Alaskans have been distracted from the real task at hand – replacing Don Young.

I’ve always been proud to be a Democrat.  I share the values of pioneer statesmen like Bill Egan, Ernest Gruening, and Bob Bartlett: I am a moderate, pro-development, union Democrat.

But this race has never been about me. It’s always been about good jobs, health care for all and taking care of those who have served our country—our veterans. It’s been about setting a higher standard for the way we do politics in this state—and about who represents us in D.C.

It’s always been about what’s good for Alaska. That’s what this campaign has tried to focus on—that’s what we all need to focus on if we’re going to win in November and that’s why I’m withdrawing my bid for U.S. Congress today.  This is one of the hardest decisions I’ve made, and I do not take it lightly.

I have been honored to have the support of many Alaskans in my bid for Congress.  Hundreds of individual donors, volunteers, and advisors have pledged their resources to my campaign. I have enjoyed traveling the state, meeting Alaskans, and hearing their honest suggestions for how we can make this nation a better place.

It’s because we need to keep our eyes on the prize and it is because I care so deeply about the future of our state; that I have decided to step aside.  In a few months, my wife Moira and I will welcome a new baby into our family.  It will be wonderful to spend more time with my boys and the precious little girl whose about to join the large Metcalfe clan.

It is now time for me, for all of us, to look forward again and to rally around a Democrat who can defeat Don Young in November.

Reporters asked Metcalfe if he'd determined if the web attacks were the work of his  former adviser Bill Scannell.

Metcalfe: I haven’t determined that, I talked to bill, bill denies it, but it appears that evidence shows he may have something to do with it. The reason why I decided to step down is I think this has been a major distraction. I think we need to get back to talking about the issues; for the past couple weeks we haven’t been able to talk about the 
issues. We have to talk about good jobs, good health care for all, we have to talk about taking care of veterans. The reason I’m stepping aside today is so we can get back to those issues.

Presser Update*

OK, now we have the press release announcing the 1 p.m. Metcalfe press conference today, but there's still no phone number for journalists outside of Anchorage. C'est la vie.

*The Metcalfe campaign just called to say when and where today's press conference is happening. However, they had to apologize that they don't have the capability to teleconference the event.

Metcalfe press conference

The 1 p.m. press conference called by Jake Metcalfe may be a conference of one. It seems the ADN is the only news outlet in the state that actually received the press release. I've left a message for Metcalfe on his cell phone and at his campaign headquarters but so far no response.

LB&A TC questions

LB&A has released the eighth request for information on the TransCanada gas pipeline application. TransCanada's response is here.

More Metcalfe

KTUU Channel 2 summed up the controversy over the anti-Berkowitz websites pretty well in their broadcast last night. Jake Metcalfe has scheduled a press conference for 1 p.m. Alaska Standard Time today. My sources say he's going to quit the race. I guess we'll know for sure soon enough.

ADN on Metcalfe

         Peter Dunlap-Shohl's political cartoon in today's ADN.

Metcalfe

Jake Metcalfe is reportedly going to announce tonight tomorrow that he's dropping out of the race for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Metcalfe has been under pressure to drop out since his political adviser was linked to websites attacking fellow Democratic candidate Ethan Berkowitz. The adviser, Bill Scannell, resigned last week but never admitted guilt and the websites have remained online.

The controversy over the websites damaged Metcalfe's reputation, but the real campaign killer was his inability to raise the kind of money necessary to be considered a serious contender. Metcalfe raised less than $50,000 in the first quarter.

Democratic and undeclared voters will now pick between Diane Benson and Ethan Berkowitz in the August primary.

Back in DC

Back from Baltimore. The Irish finished second in the Rites of Spring tournament. Good weekend, but now I'm trying to catch up on work.

Baltimore

This is the last rugby weekend of the spring season. I'm driving up to Baltimore this morning for the Rites of Spring tournament, but after Sunday I'll have to find another excuse to overindulge in cheap beer.

We have a month off before the start of sevens, after which fifteens start again sometime in August. Thinking about sitting out the sevens season  and playing some social softball instead. I'll decide that after this weekend.

It's been a hectic week. I filed three to four stories a day almost every day; you'd think I worked for a wire. But my Sunday column is finished – an interview with Mike Burns, executive director of the Alaska Permanent Fund – and now it's time to give in to my inner caveman.

Under the rainbow

Anchorage blogger E. Ross of BentAlaska.com takes me to task today for incorrectly referring to an LGBT website in my story about anonymous attacks on congressional candidate Ethan Berkowitz. I obviously didn't have my politically correct guidebook open when I referred to it as a "gay lifestyle site." No offense meant.

I'm not much for excuses, but I'm going to take the easy out here and blame my editor. My copy of the AP Stylebook may be out of date, too.

As for why I didn't delve deeper into the homophobia aspect of the attack, I honestly don't know. Perhaps I thought "California liberal" implied "gay." (That's a joke, by the way.)

Luckily, I've been set straight and the next time a politician is attacked for being gay (cue Larry Craig) I'll know what to do. Though now I'm unsure about using an acronym on the first reference.

Young vs Mack

There's an interesting side story going on between Reps. Don Young and Connie Mack of Florida in relation to the Coconut Road earmark. CQ talks about it a little in their coverage of Young's speech on Wednesday.

The local Bonita Springs, Florida News-Press has an editorial calling for an investigation into which congressman is telling the truth about the Coconut Road earmark. The same paper ran an article Wednesday saying Florida Gulf Coast University continues to support the interchange project.

Thanks

Thanks to all the reporters who shared credit with their colleagues on the Scannell story.  It's always nice when we can work together and share information to better inform the public. I'm as competitive as the next guy, but I've always enjoyed working with the AK press corps.

The advice of my fellow reporters has been an immense help to me over the years -- starting with Terry Badger at the Times. I'm always happy to return the favor.

I'm looking forward to buying everyone a round when I'm up there this summer. Until then, keep up the good work.

GOP view of Dem's energy policy

From Investors.com.

Click on cartoon for bigger version of the image.

ANWR

From Investors.com.

Click on the image to view bigger version.

Lucky boy

A song from the '80s came on the radio while I was driving home tonight from rugby practice that made me a wee nostalgic. I don't know what it was but a flood of memories came on that just made me smile.

Maybe it was just because I owe a lot of old friends an email. (Which I'm going to catch up on soon, promise.) Whatever, I realized it's been a good ride so far. Nah, a great one.

No matter if it was Toksook Bay, Wenceslas Namnesti, the Arbat, Temple Bar or Maidan Nezalezhnosti – every adventure was a blessing. They still are. 

Perhaps I didn't fully appreciate them as much as I should have at the time – c'est la vie. 

You'll get no complaints from me.

OK, it's after 1 a.m. Only a few hours before the roller coaster begins again.

(The emails are coming.)