Independently owned since 1905
Independently owned since 1905
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Attorney General Bill Barr and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have been using extraordinary means to advance their goal; confirming a Supreme Court nominee before the election when four years ago they refused to even hold a hearing for Obama’s nominee, suppression of fact, encouraging violence, threatening to refuse to accept defeat—it goes on and on. This, I can only assume, they are rationalizing with the old lie, “The ends justify the means.” So, since I can see what the means a...
It is hard for me to understand why many politicians are able to abandon principle in order to get re-elected. I know that they want to be re-elected above all else — I understand that. As a legislator I wanted to win re-election, but I like to think I didn’t have to sell my soul to do it. There is something that drives public officials to seek election in the first place, whether it is a sense of obligation to a nation that has treated them well or a belief that they can make America a bet...
It was a stirring sight to see the beautifully illuminated White House from the South Lawn, all awash with American flags and the President of the United States standing before it at the podium. If the occasion had been, say, a memorial for American victims of the COVID pandemic or a recognition of America’s servicemen and servicewomen, it could have been truly inspiring. However, it was nothing more than an opportunity to use the “people’s house,” as Ronald Reagan used to call it, as a prop fo...
I love the Post Office as much as I love the flag that flies over it. In every city or small town in Montana, the American flag flies proudly over the buildings that house the oldest public service in America. It was founded in 1775 and Benjamin Franklin was its first postmaster. I do not understand the attacks on a public institution that is older than America, itself, whose people go the extra mile to deliver service promptly and pleasantly. The only objection I can fathom some people having...
As I read of the use of federal officers sent to Portland against the wishes of the Governor of Oregon and the Mayor of Portland for the purpose of “protecting federal property,” I thought of these words from the Declaration of Independence enumerating one of the reasons for rejecting the rule of the British King; “He [King George III] has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” The few hundred federal agents sent might not constitute standin...
Pretty soon it looks like we are going to have to add a new group of people to the increasingly long list of those who can’t be discriminated against. I am talking, of course, of those hardy Americans who refuse to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are being refused service at private businesses where masks are mandated such as Costco, Walmart and many more, and to add icing to the cake the State of Montana now requires masks in all indoor businesses and venues. True, all they w...
“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” – William Shakespeare Time passes, morals change and statues fall. In direct contradiction of Shakespeare’s words, for two centuries the founders of the American experiment had nothing but good said about them, their evil ways were buried with their bones. The truth has been slow to come out, but it has come out; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me d...
nd I were playing pool and drinking beer in a bar in South Florida. We were both 17, and should not have been in the bar, nor were we wanted in the bar, but we were not asked to leave. The bar was in the “colored town” section of Boynton Beach, and we were two northern white boys taking advantage of our skin color. That put the bartender in a very awkward position; he was breaking the law by serving us, but kicking us out might have caused him unpleasant repercussions. We knew this, tha...
We are at a good place in history, and we are at that good place because we are facing adversity together. It is sad to think that many had to die to spur us to action, but good times don’t seem to move us forward as a people, bad times do. Getting through the pandemic of COVID-19 requires working together as a people, so people are wearing face masks, not to protect themselves, but to protect others. Recognizing the injustices done to others, exemplified by the deaths of George Floyd and m...
Do you remember that day — March 30, 1981 — when President Ronald Reagan was shot? Do you remember that when he was wheeled into surgery he looked up at the doctors and said, “Please tell me you’re Republicans.” And that the lead surgeon, a Democrat, said to him, “Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans.” Later, during his early recovery Nancy Reagan allowed only two politicians in to see him, Howard Baker, the Republican Senate Minority Leader and Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Spea...
President Trump doesn’t like the Post Office. It isn’t because he doesn’t like standing in line to buy a stamp, in fact I doubt if he has ever had to stand in line, let alone ever had to buy a stamp. No, he doesn’t like the Post Office because they do business with Amazon. A lot of business. He doesn’t like Amazon because it is owned by Jeff Bezos. He doesn’t like Jeff Bezos because Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. He doesn’t like the Washington Post because they say nasty things about...
I cribbed — and modified — that line from an old radio show, the Jack Benny Hour. Benny was a notorious skinflint who, in one episode, was the victim of a hold-up. “Your money or your life!” says the bandit. No answer. “I said, your money or your life!” “I’M THINKING!” says Benny. That, in a sense is the kind of scenario we are facing with opening up the economy by relaxing restrictions on human contact while still faced with increasing deaths from COVID-19. It is a hard, but simple choice; whic...
It is not often that we, as a nation, are able to come together to help each other—those we know and those we don’t know. Yes, we do come together to help in disasters like floods and hurricanes, but those are essentially local or regional events and lack the universal sense of purpose that a nation-wide disaster can instill in a people. Of course, I am talking about the Covid-19 pandemic and America’s response to it, and frankly, I am heartened by what I hear. In the 1990s I would talk to pe...
“A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.” — George W. Bush September 11, 2001 There is no symbolic date like September 11, 2001, that we can use to define the Coronavirus pandemic. If there were, the tragedy unrolling before our eyes might allow us to be more united in fighting it. In the suddenness of 9/11, there was no time to second guess what had happened because it was so immediate and awful. The only thought was to come together for the benefit of all. But with the almost...
I could write about coronavirus about which I know little, or politics about which I know too much, or the weather about which you know as much as I do, but they are all depressing topics so I am going to tell you about my uncle, Davey Maitland. He was my mother’s uncle, actually, and was born and raised on the family farm in Southern Ontario with his brother Frank and his three sisters, Robena, Gert and my grandmother, Margaret. Their own grandfather had bought the farm in 1837 when he and h...
It was in 1991, I think, when I was a member of the Montana House of Representatives, there was a bill to outlaw capital punishment. One of the proponents made a very thought-provoking argument for the bill. He challenged each of us to imagine we were the executioner. His argument was that you only had the right to vote to keep capital punishment if you were personally willing to “drop the trap.” (Hanging was a legal form of execution in Montana then, and the condemned stood on a trap door with...
“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” – Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas There is a time when people become willing agents of their own destruction. We follow the wrong path because we are told by those we trust that it is a good...
Well, it has come to this; President Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives and this week the trial is taking place that will determine whether he stays on as president or leaves in disgrace. Of course, by the time you read this it will all be over, and the outcome determined. I am not necessarily a betting person, but on this I would lay good odds: he stays. After all, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said — not indicated, but said — that the Republican Senate wil...
As you know, the impartiality of decisions and observations of members of the U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the FBI, have been questioned because members of those agencies have privately expressed political views not in accordance with the political views of Members of Congress. The most obvious of these were the emails of two FBI members who were critical, in their personal correspondence, of the President. That they were dumb about thinking that their views would go unnoticed by the...
A Washington state representative, Matt Shea, a Republican representing Spokane Valley, has been accused of acts of domestic terrorism by an independent investigative report commissioned by the state’s house of representatives. In response to the report the Republican leadership of the legislature has stripped Shea of his leadership duties, committee assignments, membership in the Republican caucus, and called upon him to resign from the Legislature. The seriousness of the accusation is r...
How can two different people have totally opposite opinions on the same thing? Well, it’s pretty easy, as we can see in the impeachment hearings going on in Congress. You are not going to be able to talk either side into taking what you have you say into consideration after they have formed their own opinion on what they accept as the facts of the matter. The fact is that the more solid the argument is against their belief, the more certain it will make them that they are right. In short, c...
There was once a colorful character named Bat O’Callahan who lived near my home town of Trout Creek, Montana. He and his wife Jessie worked on the Silver Creek Ranch in Riley, Oregon, in the 1950s. Jessie was the ranch cook, and one day a fight broke out in the dining hall among the young buckaroos (which is what cowboys are called in that part of America) and weapons were drawn. Bat shouted, “Guns in the hands of greenhorns!” and took cover. We now have greenhorn political appointees who,...
Of all the petty annoyances in life, few things seem to set people to fuming and fussing more than having to adjust their lives to the change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time and vice-versa. Imagine, then, how people felt in 1883 when cities and small towns, each of which had its own time system, were forced to set their local times to a national standard. But it wasn’t government that forced the change on this most fundamental example of local control, it was the railroads which m...
The worst thing about a Congressional closed-door hearing is that the opposition does not get any press when they posture and pontificate on the unfairness of whatever. The best thing about closed-door hearings is that, “The private ones always produce better results.” That’s not my opinion, it’s the opinion of former Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy referring to criticism of his holding closed-door hearings on the Clinton-Benghazi issue. I can attest to the fact that many politicians speak t...
Maybe the most interesting thing about Columbus’s “discovery” of America was that he thought he had landed in India, which was where he was headed when he began his trip in 1492. The Italian explorer, sailing under a Spanish flag, missed India by thousands of miles, landing on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, now home to the nations of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. But for better or worse it was Columbus who early on was believed to be the first European to discover America. Today, the s...
