Every now and then you come across a story that makes you laugh, even if it is with a bit of schadenfreude.
This comes out of Must Read Alaska, where Suzanne Downing writes about Alaska Native opposition to confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh as the next Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). They have been pressuring Senator Lisa Murkowski to oppose the nomination and vote against the confirmation. Rationale? A SCOTUS judge who will follow the law as written will destroy Alaska native rights to subsistence. http://mustreadalaska.com/murkowski-being-pressured-by-natives-note-no-kavanaugh/
Most of us tend to think that judges who actually follow the law rather than making it up as they go are a positive example for the body politic. Not so our neighbors in the Alaska native separatist community. And their rationale is pretty interesting, though a bit convoluted.
As I understand the festivities, here is what is going on and why.
This all goes back to the Katie John case (Phony) Tony Knowles withdrew the state from in 2001. Knowles promised native separatists during his reelection campaign that if reelected, he would withdraw the State of Alaska from an appeal with prejudice. This action would not only allow the creative logic used by the Ninth Circus to let the feds take over management of fish and game on federal lands in Alaska for the purposes of ensuring a rural priority for subsistence but would stop the State of Alaska from fighting this opinion in the future. Cute trick, that.
This made the native separatists and the feds very happy for nearly 30 years.
There are some structural problems with ANILCA. One of which is the rural preference for subsistence, a thinly veiled racial preference for the taking of fish and game, something the Alaska legislature and Alaska Supreme Court have adamantly refused to put into place. Another is a 1999 regulation that removed control of navigable waterways on federal lands from State of Alaska fish and game management. This Clinton-era regulation was upheld by the Ninth Circus. Note that this regulation only applied to Alaska and not to any other state in the union. Interior used the structural contradictions in ANILCA as their excuse. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/alaskas-bid-overturn-latest-ruling-katie-john-case-rejected-supreme-court/2014/03/31/
Along comes John Sturgeon, a moose hunter arrested seven years ago on the Nation River in Yukon Charlie for using a hovercraft. NPS rangers believe they control what happens on navigable waters in federal lands, something that does not exist in federal law. And they are pretty ugly about pushing their supposed authority. OTOH, this was part of the logic the Ninth Circus opinion upholding Katie John in 1996. The Ninth Circus used the same logic to find against Sturgeon’s complaint twice.
The first time the Sturgeon case made it to the SCOTUS, they slapped the Ninth Circus down pretty hard, sending the case back for reconsideration. The Ninth Circus doubled down the second time around and the case will be back in front of the SCOTUS in November.
Our friends and neighbors in the native separatist community are afraid a newly seated constitutionalist judge will not support creative legislating from the Ninth Circus this time around. As well they ought to be.
So why is this funny? Because, the Heather Kendall Miller and other learned minds in the native separatist community may not have (Phony) Tony Knowles or Bruce Botelho around this time around to bail them out as they continue to demand unequal rights under federal law based on their race.
For my part, we either live in this nation with equal rights under the law or we don’t. A rural or racial preference for subsistence is not equal rights under the law. And these people are demanding Lisa Murkowski oppose and obstruct someone who may be more interested in upholding the law as written rather than what the Clinton Interior Department and the Ninth Circus wished it to be nearly 30 years ago.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
