Briefs spent an entertaining few hours at the annual Governor’s Family Picnic on the Delaney Park Strip last Saturday. Besides saying hi to Governor Sean Parnell and his wife Sandy as they doled out burgers and sloppy joes, alongside his commissioners, Briefs took enjoyed observing some local wildlife on that uncharacteristically sunny day—and we don’t mean the bald eagle on display.

The picnic was teeming with political candidates working the crowd. Jack Powers, running for lieutenant governor, was the only Democrat we spotted. But Republicans were out in full force. Fairbanks Representative Jay Ramras, running against Eddie Burke and Mead Treadwell in the primary for lieutenant governor, was spotted chatting with Anchorage Assemblywoman Jennifer Johnston, who’s running for the state senate seat vacated by Con Bunde. Sheldon Fisher, who’s taking on Congressman Don Young in the primary, was working the extremely long lines for the free grub. And Tea Party Express darling Joe Miller, the Fairbanksan who thinks he can take out Senator Lisa Murkowski, was holding court with a crowd of supporters rocking his logo on their white t-shirts.

At one point a friend of Briefs, who’s active in the immigration reform cause, asked his wife to hold his place in line and approached Miller, asking him what he planned to do with the 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. “First we secure the border,” Miller told him. “No, I’m asking about the undocumented immigrants who are already here,” the friend replied. “Repatriation” was Miller’s eventual reply, to which the friend said, “You mean deportation? Breaking up American families with American children?” Agitated, Miller got louder—perhaps a harbinger of things to come whenever he and Senator Murkowski get to debate one another? Conservative-leaning polling outfit Rasmussen Reports has just released the results of a new survey from July 15. It shows pretty much what its last poll, on May 6, had to say about the various matchups between the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor—in any of the matchups, the Republican wins. Still, in every theoretical general election race, between 14 and 20 percent of those polled preferred another candidate or were undecided.

In other news from Rasmussen, Governor Parnell scored a 61 percent approval rating, while President Barack Obama was only at 40 percent. Sixty percent thought Obama’s health care bill should be repealed, and 59 percent favored Alaska adopting an immigration law like Arizona’s controversial SB 1070. The majority also thought offshore and deepwater oil drilling should be allowed. And the one zero on the board was the percentage of those who thought the U.S. economy was “excellent.”

Mercede Johnston, sister to Levi, and apparently soon to be sister-in-law to Bristol Palin, has taken to her blog to attack Levi’s attorney Rex Butler, and private investigator/Levi’s body man Tank Jones—“Team Levi,” as they call themselves.

She claims Butler tried to get her and her mom, Sherry Johnston, to sign a three-year contract with him, which they refused. “What I do know is that Tank and Rex sure did get a lot of opportunities from their association with Levi. They got to be featured in magazines, walked the red carpet, and Tank even made a commercial for television while standing next to Levi,” Mercede writes.

Briefs isn’t surprised. When Levi appeared on the cover of this paper just under a year ago, Tank Jones called afterwards, royally pissed off that he and Butler weren’t featured on the cover alongside Levi.

You might remember the Sarah Palin condoms brought to you in 2008 by Practice Safe Policy (the package read, “When abortion is not an option”). The company also made several Obama condoms (“Use with good judgement [sic],” “The ultimate stimulus package” and “Hope is not a form of protection”) and McCain rubbers (“Old but not expired”). Now comes another one, which Palin likely approves of as well—oil spill condoms, with a package that reads, “Drill without the spill” and has an asterisk where it reads, “Great for Plugging Holes.” The manufacturers say 20 percent of the proceeds from sales of the oil spill condoms will go to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund.

bjk@anchoragepress.com