UPDATED::Retired teacher, pastor, charged with sexual abuse of a minor - KRBD

UPDATE::  Ketchikan pastor, teacher sentenced for sexually abusing minor

Former Ketchikan High School teacher and local pastor Doug Edwards was sentenced Thursday to serve six years in jail for sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl who was a student and member of his congregation.

Edwards was charged last spring with sexual abuse of a minor for abusing a 14-year-old girl at Ketchikan High School, at his home and at the church where he was a pastor. He pleaded guilty in early February to one consolidated charge of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor through a plea agreement.

UPDATE:: Doug Edwards plea deal: 18 years, 12 suspended

A former Ketchikan High School teacher pleaded guilty Wednesday to sexual abuse of a minor through a plea agreement that calls for him to serve six years in jail.

Doug Edwards was charged last spring with six counts of sexual abuse of a minor for groping a then-14-year-old girl’s chest at the school, at his home and at the church where he was a pastor. The plea agreement consolidates those six charges into one Class B felony.
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After he’s served his time in prison, Edwards will be required to register as a sex offender, and update that registration every three months for the rest of his life.

The plea agreement called for a sentence of 18 years with 12 suspended. That leaves six to serve, but with “good time,” Edwards could be released after four years.

Recently retired Ketchikan High School teacher and local pastor Doug Edwards has been arrested and charged with three counts of sexual abuse of a minor.

According to the complaint filed in court by police Detective Devin Miller, the charges stem from incidents last fall with a 14-year-old girl. She knew Edwards through his roles as a pastor with First Baptist Church and as a culinary arts teacher at Ketchikan High School.

Police say Edwards has admitted to the crimes.

Retired teacher, pastor, charged with sexual abuse of a minor - KRBD

UPDATED::Alaska court erupts in laughter as right-wing extremist asks to be deported to heaven

UPDATE::  More on Ramey and his unual views,,,

Ramey, a former member of the Togiak City Council, leads a foundation called Sui Juris Court Angels, a sovereign citizen organization. Because of his diehard views on sovereign citizenry, Ramey believes the state lacks the authority to charge him with a class C felony for failing to pay child support.

Hence that heaven stuff. He went on to say he feels this case is a “far broader issue than not paying child support” and that he is willing to go to jail for his beliefs about the state.

“I’ve been fighting for 20 years to make sure the state doesn’t do to my boys what they did to me,” he said. “That’s the best support I can give them. [The state] has taken from me everything I own.”

Man Asks to Be Deported to Heaven

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An Alaska “sovereign citizen” drew laughs during a court appearance on felony child support charges.

Kevin Francis Ramey, who goes by the name “Birdman” in a series of YouTube videos and other online postings, was indicted on criminal nonsupport charges, reported KDLG-AM.

The 57-year-old Ramey, who claims he is not required to follow U.S. or state laws as a so-called sovereign citizen, was arrested after he failed to show up last week for his arraignment on felony charges.
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The presiding judge asked Ramey if he understood his rights, and the radio station reported that courtroom observers laughed at his convoluted response.

“It says if you’re not a U.S. citizen you could be deported,” Ramey said. “I know I have three citizenships: No. 1, in heaven, No. 2, in America, No. 3, in California — and that my primary citizenship, is of course, in heaven. So I was kind of wondering, are you guys going to deport me to heaven?”

Judge Patricia Douglas, of Dillingham Superior Court, did not undertake any deportation proceedings and instead set bond at $1,000.

Alaska court erupts in laughter as right-wing extremist asks to be deported to heaven

ADDENDUM::Tampon-waving woman demands officials protect her right to speak in tongues amid anti-gay rant

In regards to the troublesome equal rights law proposed by Anchorage Assembly member  Bill Evans:

Evans said that he borrowed the religious conscience provision from elsewhere, and that may refer to the recent nondiscrimination protections passed in Utah. The Utah compromise, however, was unique because religious exemptions already existed under state law, for other civil rights protections. Thus, the carveouts were not unique to LGBT people, but were the same as they were for race, sex, and other classes.

In this proposal, Evans is actually doing the opposite in quite a problematic way. He’s trying to create new exemptions specifically to accommodate the addition of LGBT protections. Moreover, he’s not even qualifying them as LGBT-specific, so all of Anchorage’s civil rights protections would be weakened as a result. Refusing to serve an interracial marriage would hypothetically be just as shielded as refusing to serve a same-sex marriage.

We now have this bit of wackiness,

A failed U.S. Senate candidate known for speaking in tongues spoke out against LGBT rights in a wacky, tampon-waving address to city officials in Anchorage.

Kathleen Tonn, [mentioned here] the former Republican candidate, carried a briefcase stuffed with props and wore a wool hat and flannel sweatshirt Tuesday night to the meeting of the Anchorage assembly, which is considering an LGBT rights ordinance, reported the Joe My God blog.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You like my trumpet? It’s a sound heard around the world,” Tonn said, before pulling a Bible from her briefcase.
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“Since one of my brethren introduced the King James Bible, since I represent the Lord Jesus Christ the great I am, I’m going to add to your public document and your public record from the public document of the great I am,” Tonn told baffled officials.

“Starting with, oh my — a tampon,” she said, pulling a feminine hygiene product from between the pages of her Bible. “Reminds me that little girls in pubescence get periods — female girls.”

Tonn, who is probably best known for a video she posted online showing herself fully clothed and speaking in tongues in a sauna, then angrily read a lengthy passage from the Second Epistle of Peter describing God’s wrathful judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah.

WATCH: Tampon-waving woman demands officials protect her right to speak in tongues amid anti-gay rant

How An Alaska Lawmaker Is Trying To Sneak Anti-LGBT Discrimination Into The Law | ThinkProgress

Three years ago, Proposition 5, which would have created LGBT nondiscrimination protections, failed to pass in Anchorage, Alaska. The defeat followed a very ugly campaign that demonized LGBT people with warnings of “tranvestites who want to work with toddlers” and men sneaking into women’s locker rooms. Now, a member of the city’s Assembly says that he wants to pass those protections into law — or so he claims.

Anchorage Assembly member Bill Evans has proposed an expansion to the city’s equal rights law to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the protected classes, but there’s a catch. His bill has a gaping exemption that will allow religion to continue to justify anti-LGBT discrimination.
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Evans said that he borrowed the religious conscience provision from elsewhere, and that may refer to the recent nondiscrimination protections passed in Utah. The Utah compromise, however, was unique because religious exemptions already existed under state law, for other civil rights protections. Thus, the carveouts were not unique to LGBT people, but were the same as they were for race, sex, and other classes.

In this proposal, Evans is actually doing the opposite in quite a problematic way. He’s trying to create new exemptions specifically to accommodate the addition of LGBT protections. Moreover, he’s not even qualifying them as LGBT-specific, so all of Anchorage’s civil rights protections would be weakened as a result. Refusing to serve an interracial marriage would hypothetically be just as shielded as refusing to serve a same-sex marriage.

How An Alaska Lawmaker Is Trying To Sneak Anti-LGBT Discrimination Into The Law | ThinkProgress

Will the residents of Kivalina, Alaska be the first climate change refugees in the US?

Scientists estimate that due to climate change, the village of Kivalina, in northwestern Alaska, will be underwater by the year 2025.

In 2008, the Inupiat village sued 24 of the world's biggest fossil fuel companies for damages. In 2013, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case and the village has declared it will not file a new claim in state court.

Meanwhile, nature, heedless of humankind’s eternal squabbles, goes about its business: the sea around Kivalina continues to rise, the storms get stronger, the ice gets thinner — and Kivalina's 400 residents must grapple with how to relocate in the decade they're estimated to have left.
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Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited Kivalina earlier this year and Colleen Swan sees some hope in that. Jewell’s visit was intended to raise awareness of Kivalina’s plight and to highlight that in the coming decades numerous other towns along US coastlines may face the same problem.


“More communities, more cities, more states, more tribes are going to have to deal with trying to help people who are being affected by climate change,” Christine Shearer says. “I think more lawsuits will be filed, and I think it might get to a point where fossil fuel companies might find it's less costly to settle than to keep fighting these lawsuits.”

Will the residents of Kivalina, Alaska be the first climate change refugees in the US?

See also:

Legal Battle Ends, But Seas Continue to Rise in Kivalina, Alaska

Court Denies Offshore Oil Drilling Lease Sale in Arctic | EcoWatch

Yesterday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the Department of the Interior violated the law when it opened almost 30 million acres of the outer continental shelf in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska to oil and gas drilling.

The court concluded the Department’s estimate of one billion barrels of recoverable oil under the frozen Arctic ocean was “chosen arbitrarily” and that the Interior Department “based its decision on inadequate information about the amount of oil to be produced pursuant to the lease sale.”

It went on to say that the agency had analyzed “only the best case scenario for environmental harm, assuming oil development,” and that this analysis “skews the data toward fewer environmental impacts, and thus impedes a full and fair discussion of the potential effects of the project.”

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“Drilling for oil in the Chukchi Sea poses an enormous risk to the region’s people and wildlife,” said Greenpeace Arctic Campaign Leader Gustavo Ampugnani. “It locks us into a dangerous and dirty fossil fuel future, and it pushes us far closer to global climate catastrophe and the imminent hazards of extreme weather.”



Court Denies Offshore Oil Drilling Lease Sale in Arctic | EcoWatch

GOP Senate Candidate Kathleen Tonn Delivers Message in 'The Holy Ghost and Tongues' to Unsaved Woman in Steam Room to Confuse Satan

Alaskan GOP candidate for the US Senate Kathleen Tonn recently published a video showing her delivering a message in "the Holy Ghost and tongues" to an unsaved woman in a local steam room in an effort to confuse Satan, and some critics are attacking her for it.

In the video published on YouTube Saturday, Tonn is shown singing and witnessing to the woman she identified as Suzie in the steam room at the Alaska Club West.

"I'm at the Alaska Club West and I'm spending a little time in the steam room with Suzie. Suzie doesn't know Jesus Christ as her savior, but ironically she has a pastor/priest who is her neighbor. So she has allowed me to sing and deliver a message in the Holy Ghost and tongues," said Tonn in the video.

GOP Senate Candidate Kathleen Tonn Delivers Message in 'The Holy Ghost and Tongues' to Unsaved Woman in Steam Room to Confuse Satan