Alaska Senate

In a stunning verdict that imperils the tenure of the Senate's longest-serving Republican, a federal jury Monday found Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska guilty of concealing tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and improvements to his home. Stevens, 84, reacted pugnaciously, attacking the Justice Department and vowing to continue campaigning for reelection to his seventh term next Tuesday.

Just because a federal judge dismissed all charges Tuesday against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens doesn't mean he's not a crook.

A federal judge Tuesday ordered a highly unusual criminal inquiry of prosecutors in the case against former Sen. Ted Stevens, delivering a blistering rebuke of the Justice Department's actions and asserting that its failures extended beyond the inability to give the Alaska Republican a fair trial. In dismissing the public corruption case against Stevens, U.S. District Judge Emmet G.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was spared her position as the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday as her colleagues declined to oust her, despite her independent campaign for reelection in Alaska after losing the Republican Senate primary last month. Murkowski had already submitted her resignation in party leadership as vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference after losing her primary in Alaska to "tea party" candidate Joe Miller.

The U.S. Senate race in Alaska was turned on its head in August, when Tea Party Express-backed candidate Joe Miller upset incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary. On Friday evening, Murkowski stunned the state again with a decision to mount a write-in campaign to hold on to her seat. "This is a statement we must make for Alaskans. Together we can do what they say cannot be done. Alaska is not fair game for outside extremists. We are smarter than that … and we will not be had," Murkowski said as cheering supporters in Anchorage shouted, "Run, Lisa, run!"

The Alaska Senate laid to rest a move to impeach Gov. Bill Sheffield and gutted a resolution questioning the governor's actions. The Senate signaled the impeachment issue was dead when, without debate, it placed in the Senate Journal a rules committee report saying there was insufficient evidence of wrongdoing to impeach the Democratic governor, accused of steering a lease to a political supporter and lying about it under oath.

In his closing statement in the Alaska Senate's impeachment hearing against Gov. Bill Sheffield, special prosecutor Samuel Dash charged Friday that the chief executive's lapses of memory about a state office building lease could constitute perjury.