On occasion I think of Alaska as more Canadian than American - a place in the frozen hinterlands where a socialist plan to redistribute oil money has been relatively successful, and where political clowns occasionally crop up to give us all a laugh (Palin, Stevens, etc.). Then they go and do something like this (via the Tribune ): Several Alaskans from the salmon-dependent Bristol Bay region toured Utah’s Bingham Canyon Mine on Monday for a look at the kind of tourist attraction they hope never to see back home. They came with a village association, Nunamta Aulukestai, which represents Alaska Native corporations that oppose development of the massive Pebble mineral prospect on a remote and largely roadless mountain area southwest of Anchorage. The headwaters there feed spawning grounds that support commercial and sport fisheries valued at up to half a billion dollars a year... [Tribal representative Karen] Williams fears Pebble, with an estimated 81 billion pounds of copper and signifi...