Latest
-
A Law Proposed to Let Folks Buy New Machine Guns
GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt emphasized the significance in a prepared statement: “For decades, Americans have been told that the 1986 machine gun ban permanently stripped them of access to modern arms. But Congress included an explicit exemption for transfers’ to or by’ a State, and that language matters. West Virginia is demonstrating that states have both the authority and the responsibility to defend the Second Amendment, restore parity between citizens and the government, and lead the way in dismantling unconstitutional federal overreach.” West Virginia has a law proposed that will let people buy machine guns in a state ran…
-
The article in the Mountain Ear condemning the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for its February 24, 2026 decision in Wells v. BNSF Railway Company was thought-provoking. In that decision, three judges of the Ninth Circuit held Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (“BNSF”) not responsible for the deaths of two Libby residents, Thomas E. Wells…
-
I have no war experience. The closest I have to military experience, according to a long stashed away certificate, is as adjunct faculty, from the Navy Graduate School, working with South Dakota’s National Guard. In short, I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Like most folks who are absolutely ignorant about a topic, I…
-
Watching the royal family in England takes a bit of concentration. I liked Queen Elizabeth II – but the crap-storm around her sons does remind me that Elizabeth and Philip were cousins, and problems often occur when close relations have kids. She may have known it – she stayed on to the end, and her…
-
I read that the American male now has a life expectancy of 75.8 years. At 76.3, that seems reassuring – but an average for a population that exceeds 150 million is just an average. Different demographic features hit us differently . . . and the Supreme Court provides individuals I can use to trend into…
local
-
When I went to get some repair work done, the person I was consulting advised fixing the structural issues and then putting the same ancient dilapidated siding back on the building. The rational? Property taxes. Last summer, we joked about how much the nice flowers my mother had on their porch raised their taxes. They…
-
I spent most of a year away from the school after I finished my term. I attended a couple of board meetings because I was asked – on one hand, there was, at the least, the appearance of an unlawful board meeting . . . unlawful because it appeared to violate Montana’s open meeting law.…
-
Historically, independent voters, and voters for minor third parties, do not get a large percentage of votes. Often, they’re considered “spoiler” candidates, who lose the election for someone by dra4wing critical support away during a close race. Or their thought of as simply “protest candidates” with no chance of winning. In Montana, for the presidential…
-
Not many years ago, if you were faced with a cluster of unacceptable clowns on your ballot, you could write a name in and cast a protest vote. Hell, I guess you still can – the thing is, your write-in protest vote won’t be counted or reported. With the elimination of subsection 7 last year,…
-
I’m having trouble summarizing this one, not least because I lost my notes. In short: The meeting did discuss prayer, but did not discuss a four day week. About prayer: The discussion was specifically with regards to having prayer on the agenda as a part of each school board meeting. The result- no. Community presence…
-
The proposed library district has me looking at taxation again. One of the great things about Lincoln County is that, with three high school districts, it’s easy to figure out which communities provide the funds that keep our county going. Market Value Taxable Value Percentage Libby $1,687,186,708 $21,911,499 36.42% Troy $831,354,553 $10,966,329 18.23% Eureka $1,974,407,031…
-
Now it takes a single click to get the data. So what does it mean? I measured the record lows back in 1977 – this chart, from the Grave Creek site, shows how the critical snowfall that brings us up to normal or above occurs between the February measurements and April 1. I don’t know…
-
The USDA has updated plant hardiness zones, and despite last winter’s impressive cold, we’ve jumped up a zone (to 5a from 4b in 2012; the average low went up by 6 degrees) Hardiness zones are a (partial) climate description that’s been in existence for a bit over a century, though the government didn’t get involved…