Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor bowed to right-wing demands to cripple the role of prosecutors in a secret grand jury proceeding that became a “vigilante circus,” as the lawyer for the chief target of a runaway grand jury puts it.
Other circuses may follow, as the Dunleavy administration is now asking to spend $502,000 a year to hire a lawyer, a paralegal and an assistant to work with “investigative grand juries.”
Read MoreFormer Attorney General Craig Richards, now the Dunleavy administration’s statehood defense coordinator, and Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor have signed an amended contract that violates state procurement regulations, paying Richards $12,000 a month,
Read MoreRetired Alaska District Court Judge Margaret Murphy of Homer should not become a victim of mob rule.
But she already has had to suffer through what her attorney rightly calls an “inappropriate, illegal and an unfair proceeding.”
Read MoreThe U.S. Supreme Court found that the overreach claim brought by Consovoy McCarthy for Dunleavy and AG Tregarrick Taylor was an ordinary challenge to the action of a federal agency, in this case the EPA veto of the Pebble Mine.
Read MoreIn a report kept secret by the state for years, an independent lawyer hired by former Gov. Bill Walker to review the Fairbanks Four case in 2015 concluded that the wrong men had been jailed for the 1997 killing of John Hartman.
“I have come to the firm belief,” wrote attorney James N. Reeves on October 1, 2015, “that the Fairbanks Four did not commit the crimes of which they were convicted. In other words, in my view the information I reviewed constitutes clear and convincing evidence that they are innocent.”
Read MoreBrian O’Donoghue, one of the best investigative reporters in Alaska, is nearing completion of his long-awaited book “The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice and the Birth of a Movement.”
O’Donoghue is to speak Friday at 3 p.m. at the Morris Thompson Center auditorium. His book, to be published by Sourcebooks, is available for advance ordering now at major outlets.
Read MoreAnyone who runs for the Legislature this year against an incumbent has a ready-made campaign issue—the underhanded manner by which legislators raised their pay from $50,400 to $84,000, starting this week.
They can thank Gov. Mike Dunleavy and incumbents in both parties for this 67 percent gift.
Read MoreSomeone once said that whether auld acquaintances should be forgot really depends on what kind of old acquaintances you have.
On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, “Auld Lang Syne” gets ritualized or loving attention that is denied auld acquaintances 363 days a year.
Read MoreIn the middle of the last century, Larry Fanning was a premier editor in San Francisco and Chicago. After he moved to Alaska in 1966, newly married to Kay, his third wife, the only thing he didn’t have much left of was time.
Read MoreTim Ames was desperate that December day in 1988.
“I was in a blind panic,” he wrote. “I had been asked to paint a cover for Heartland magazine; the theme was ‘Christmas in Fairbanks.’”
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