Lisa Murkowski's Biggest Reason To Oppose Brett Kavanaugh May Not Be Abortion Rights

[steve2470]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lisa-murkowski-brett-kavanaugh-native-alaska_us_5b92bed6e4b0511db3e20921

WASHINGTON ― For all the speculation about Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and whether she’ll vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, there is an issue beyond abortion rights perhaps weighing more heavily on her as she makes her decision: protections for Alaska Natives.

Advocates for Alaska Natives, who were crucial to Murkowski’s re-election in 2010, tell HuffPost they’ve been flooding her office all week and urging her to oppose Kavanaugh.

They’re raising concerns about his record on climate change, which is already causing real damage in Alaska. As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh in 2017 held that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the authority to regulate hydrofluorocarbons, chemicals linked to global warming. They’re also unhappy with his record on voting rights. Kavanaugh voted in 2012 to uphold a South Carolina voter ID law that disenfranchised more than 80,000 minority registered voters.

The most pressing matter, however, is a case the Supreme Court is reviewing on Nov. 5 that could devastate Alaska Natives’ subsistence fishing rights. The case, Sturgeon v. Frost, raises questions about who has the authority to regulate water in national parks in the state ― the federal government or the state of Alaska. The case arose after Alaska resident John Sturgeon, who was on an annual moose-hunting trip, was riding a hovercraft on a river running through a national park when Park Service officials threatened to give him a citation. Sturgeon is arguing that his ability to use his hovercraft in this scenario is about states’ rights and that federal authority should be eliminated.

[secondwind]

1. K&R

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

2. The noise makers have always hated the pristine quietness of national parks.

During winter in Alaska snowmobilers have tried every excuse possible to take their smelly, noisy machines into Denali so they can chase animals, criss-cross the virgin snow with track marks, and "high mark" the mountains. The last reason I heard them use was that snowmobiles should be allowed because injured veterans are being kept from enjoying Denali NP. This is curiously similar to the arguments made to allow hunters to go to Santa Rosa Island -- part of California's Channel Islands National Park -- to kill deer and elk. They wanted to use wounded veterans as their"beard," claiming, "They've given so much for our country and now you want to deny them this small amount of joy?"

Ironically, the person in Congress pushing this scheme was Rep. Duncan Hunter. I wonder what he would have been championing had he been named "Duncan Shithead"?