Eureka’s Outdoor Quilt Show was a success. Attendance was good. Sales were good.  The weather was beautiful, sunny, in the low 80s with a slight breeze. Over 40 quilters from Lincoln and Flathead Counties brought over 400 quilts to display and sell.  In addition almost sixty miniature quilts were displayed on the main grounds. Quilts were hung on buildings in the Tobacco Valley Historic Village and lined 5 blocks of main street. The display ended at memorial Park with “Quilts for Heroes”.  Bunny Franklin spearheads the “Quilts for Heroes” project. Her patriotic quilts are destined for the PTSD wing at the Veterans Hospital, Fort Harrison, Helena, Montana. -Patches

Fiberfest took place at the fairgrounds- it had numerous events and vendors, even a petting zoo. There were demonstrations on Portuguese knitting, Sketch Looms, Sheep Herding, and various forms of spinning.

There was lots of noise and color, and many helpful people eager to get beginners into their craft. Everyone was very invested in passing knowledge of fiber arts down to the next generation. It was a good place to learn about Alpaca, Goats and Sheep, to pick up fiber for spinning, or yarn for weaving.

I’ve been watching the wrong movie for over half a century.  The gun control argument, when it reached the Supreme Court, was never about guns.  The opinion in Bruen doesn’t deal with assault rifles versus muskets.  It deals with a pair of abstract concepts: strict scrutiny and intermediate scrutiny.  This website walks us through the concept when applied to free speech – a right listed in the first amendment.

“Justice David Souter famously wrote in his dissenting opinion in Alameda Books v. City of Los Angeles (2002), “Strict scrutiny leaves few survivors.” This means when a court evaluates a law using strict scrutiny, the court will usually strike down the law.”

So, if I look at the second amendment, under strict scrutiny, “Shall not be infringed” pretty much means exactly what it says.  The phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” has provided a justification for evaluating the laws based on “intermediate scrutiny.”

With the internet, the definitions are readily available:

“intermediate scrutiny is a term of Constitutional law which refers to a test used in some contexts to determine the constitutionality of a law. The challenged law must advance an important government interest by means that are substantially related to that interest in order to pass intermediate scrutiny. Intermediate scrutiny is less rigorous than strict scrutiny, but more thorough than normal review. Intermediate scrutiny is used in equal protection challenges to gender classifications, as well as in cases where right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference is involved.” 

https://definitions.uslegal.com/i/intermediate-scrutiny/

The strict scrutiny standard is the most thorough analysis. The purpose, objective, or interest being pursued by the government must be “compelling”. Also, the means to achieve the purpose, objective, or interest is reviewed to determine if it is “narrowly tailored” to the accomplishment of the governmental purpose, objective, or interest. There must not be any less restrictive means that would accomplish the government?s objective just as well. Strict scrutiny is applied in cases where there is a real and appreciable impact on, or a significant interference with the exercise of a fundamental right. The language of the court’s opinion indicates the level of scrutiny applied. If the analysis discusses a compelling interest that is narrowly tailored to achieve its goals, it is a strict scrutiny analysis.

Strict scrutiny is at the opposite end of the spectrum for the rational basis test used. Under the rational basis standard, the court determines whether there is any rational justification for the classifications created by a challenged rule, which must further a “legitimate governmental interest”. Under intermediate scrutiny, the government must show that the challenged classification serves an important state interest and that the classification is at least substantially related to serving that interest.”

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the decision:

“the constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’ McDonald, 561 U. S., at 780 (plurality opinion). The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”  

The key words are ‘not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’  Like the first amendment, infringements on the second amendment are now to be subject only to strict scrutiny.  The militia clause is no longer an acceptable reason to bring in intermediate scrutiny. 

I am not an attorney.  My education on constitutional law is a single undergraduate 3 credit course taken over 50 years ago.  Still, the realization that the arguments for and against gun control were based on legal principles that were never legislated opened my eyes.  The second amendment right to keep and bear arms is now evaluated in the same manner as the other enumerated constitutional rights.

Henry Louis Mencken lived from 1880 to 1956.  He wrote with a unique appreciation for America’s political system and politicians.  His reference to Scopes the trial as the “Monkey Trial” became part of our language and history.  Mencken wrote for the Baltimore Sun from 1899 until 1948, when a stroke took him out.  Not necessarily the nation’s most loved journalist, he left us with these observations:

“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

“People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?”

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.”

“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

“A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.”

“For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

“Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.”

“The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people’s money.”

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.”

“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental – men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.”

“There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”

Mencken left us with many other pithy observations.  It seems a bit ironic that a man who observed American politics when Warren G. Harding was president a century ago can still seem timely today.

A great day mowing hay includes two things – no breakdowns and not hitting fawns with the mower.  Larry and Terry took the time to heat and reshape a broken spring on my mower – it took two attempts, but it is running better with the repaired part than it did before the break.

But the fawns made the day.  There were six fawns bedded down in the tall grass – very tall grass – and I spotted all of them.  Two sets of twins and two singles.  I could walk into the field and herd them out of harm’s way – and my thoughts went back nearly 50 years, to a time when I did not find the fawn and herd it out of the field.  On Saturday, I had six successes, and no failures. 

This morning, I noticed one set of twins running toward the mowed area, then looking at the short grass with dismay.  I had left a bit of tall grass alongside the drainage channel, so they have moved into it.  I think that, since it is between the ponds and the garden, it is in a place that the new coyote avoids (too close to the house for comfort).  The old coyote would have worried me – he was a lot less concerned about avoiding people.

So now comes raking and baling.  The harvest is late as I waited for the soil to dry.  I already have matched last year’s harvest and stashed it under a roof.  There is a joy to farming – in most of my 25 years with USDA I worked with farmers.  Now, as an old retired guy, I get to have some of the fun of farming.  A friend told me of 43 calves this Spring without problems.  Little calves are part of the fun, the joy, of ranching.  I may not share that part – but the joy of keeping the fawns away from the danger of the mower is a great thing.

The last hatch of goslings has a poor flier – a young goose that can’t gain altitude like his siblings.  The parents have the “No Child Left Behind” attitude, as they work on flight patterns within his limitations.  I suppose I shouldn’t gender the young goose – though the pronouns won’t make any difference.  What does make a difference is the ability to fly long distances, 3,000 feet above the ground – that is the essential ability of a Canada goose.

We’ve had one goose left behind when winter came.  There was the final visit as the parents and siblings stopped for one more chance that she might be able to fly out of the field.  With the help we could give her, she almost made it to Spring – but a gold eagle caught her alone on the ground as the snow was melting.

The parents can’t make the quantum shift in perspective – the wild goose must fly, and they keep attempting to teach flight to a young goose that can almost make it.  Perhaps it’s a joint, or a feather pattern – I don’t know.  I’m hoping that feathers will grow in, and one day the young goose will rise higher than the ground effect allows him, to fly and be free.  The parents can’t realize that there would be some sort of life for a non-flying goose as a domestic goose, and they can’t think of a way to prepare that goose for such a different life.  For some reason that choice isn’t available – yet the extended family of lesser Canada geese lives in extremely close proximity to people.

I watch, and I hope for the breakthrough that will allow the young goose a mainstream life of long distance flight, instead of survival, alone, until a predator gets a perfect opportunity.

And my thoughts go from the pond to the elementary school.  We have built a tremendous support structure into laws regarding special education . . . and I suppose the thing I want most for our students with special needs is the opportunity to live a mainstream life – basically the same thing that is more readily reached by the students in the middle of the bell curve.  

With geese, I’m estimating that one in fifty can’t handle the challenges of flight that permit a mainstream life.  As they go through life, other injuries can lead to still other disabilities that limit life.  But among humans, the limits are more diverse.  I’ve read that the Army effectively cuts out folks with an IQ below 83 – and the “normal” range is 85 to 115.  The difference between 83 and 85 is the couple of feathers, or a slightly better functioning joint to the goose. 

In the community colleges, I fought against telling the poorer students that “You’ll just have to work harder, study harder.”  They know that . . . and they also know that the student at the top doesn’t have to study harder to stay at the top.  Each goose that couldn’t fly worked harder to fail than their siblings did to succeed.

Since the county election administrator informed us that she considers the matter “closed”, the question becomes who is the next level up the bureaucratic ladder.

Greetings Secretary of State Jacobsen;

I believe (strongly) that I have found a single word in the Montana Election Judge Handbook 2020 that allows appointed local election administrators to ignore a portion of state election law.  Since you ran with the slogan “Establishment Politicians Won’t Stop Me  You’ve seen it over and over  Entrenched politicians trying to limit your choices and control elections  Not on my watch” I am optimistic that you will view my take on the law no differently than my college friend and your predecessor Bob Brown did.

On page 99, the handbook states: “Write-in votes for candidates who have not filed a declaration of intent as a write-in may be counted for a position, if the following conditions `are met: 
no candidate’s name appears on the ballot for that position; and
no other candidate has filed a write-in declaration of intent by the applicable deadline.

I strongly encourage you to change the word may to shall.  During the last primary in Lincoln County, our Election Administrator, Paula Buff, assumed the power to ignore these components of the Montana Codes:

13-10-211. Declaration of intent for write-in candidates. (1) Except as provided in subsection (7), a person seeking to become a write-in candidate for an office in any election shall file a declaration of intent . . .

(7) Except as provided in 13-38-201(4)(b), the requirements in subsection (1) do not apply if:
(a) an election is held;
(b) a person’s name is written in on the ballot;
(c) the person is qualified for and seeks election to the office for which the person’s name was written in; and
(d) no other candidate has filed a declaration or petition for nomination or a declaration of intent.

An election was held.  So that I could test how the law was being followed, my daughter and I asked a few friends to write us in.  I was written in for county administrator, and Samantha on the democratic ticket for county superintendent of schools.  (This was a test, but each of us was willing to serve in the event of election.  Both of us met the qualifications for the positions.)  No other candidate had filed a declaration or petition to the best of my knowledge.

Paula’s reply was:

“Also, just so you are aware, because neither of you were a declared write-in or candidate for either of these positions you cannot be “elected” to those positions. The write in counts are just a count – not a nomination if that makes sense.

Because these positions are essentially still open, they will be filled by appointment by the County Commissioners and in conjunction with the rules / recommendation by the Republican Central Committee, specifically for the Superintendent of Schools.”

Paula’s interpretation removes SubSection 7’s exemptions from filing a declaration out of the law entirely.  That is not allowed under the rules of statutory interpretation.  I hold that, in the cases where subsection 7 applies, any voter can write-in an eligible citizen’s name and that does constitute a nomination.  Paula’s interpretation makes sense only if she, as an appointed bureaucrat, is empowered to ignore the law as written.

It took until July 26 for Paula to respond to my repeated requests for write-in vote numbers by party in the primary election, when she finally admitted, “We were not required to count write-ins for all positions, however because we were conducting a hand-count I did instruct the counting board to count all write-ins. They were not separated according to party ballot when being counted.”  In short, the Lincoln County primary election results were delayed because of her blunder in getting the ballots printed in a size that the machinery could handle, the county went to the extra expense of a hand count, and the parties were ignored as they counted ballots.  Essentially, we had a party-free primary election .

Should you need copies of our exchange as I asked her for information, finally invoking the Freedom of Information Act and the Montana Constitution, I can share – but it was just a hoop one has to jump through when a junior bureaucrat errs and is unwilling to admit the error.

My greatest motivator here is that I have a great distaste for choiceless elections with a single candidate.  There were no Lincoln County Democrat candidates . . . and while I may generally vote republican, I prefer to have a choice.  Our election administrator, because the election judge handbook uses the word “may” has assumed the power to mandate a general election where candidates run without opponents.  I think this is likely the case in other Montana counties.  Please let me know if I have not made the case for replacing “may” with “shall” strong enough to convince you.  Your campaign homepage has given me hope that you will look at the arguments fairly.

Thanks,

Michael McCurry
Trego, MT 

With the current price of 32 ACP, I decided it was time to change my Heckler & Koch back to 22 rimfire.  I got it when I taught at Trinidad State, and liked the idea of being able to use the HK-4 in 22 (spare magazines were cheap in 32, but have always been a bit spendy in 22).  The picture below shows the reason for the 4 in the name – if you got all the bells and whistles, you had 4 different barrels and magazines. 

My HK-4 doesn’t have 4 barrels – just two.  The box shows its first user’s name – a West German customs agent named Lamke.  He took good care of it, but it didn’t include all the tools for the conversion – it was, after all, government property, and sold on a competitive bid. 

I developed my own set of tools for this task – a bent ballpoint spring to move the firing pin from rimfire to centerfire, and a straight pin I curved to hold the extractor out of the way.  These are tools that worked well when I could still see without reading glasses and had good neural sensitivity in my fingers.  The neural sensitivity has been gone for a dozen years, and I have really good distance vision.  I found out that I can’t distinguish the ballpoint spring from the firing pin, and I discovered that I was bleeding from multiple stabs from my customized straight pin.

So the task that was a couple minutes with much younger eyes and fingers wound up taking me 35 minutes.  It works just as well as ever.  The frame is marked with the manufacturing date – September 1971.  It was one of 12,000 that went to work for West German police, as a P11.  The whole story on the HK-4 is available at unblinkingeye.com

It doesn’t make the “use enough gun” guidelines for most – but I don’t usually carry a pistol for bear encounters.  More often, I run across something like a coyote or cougar, and occasionally they don’t understand that my Pomeranian sidekicks threaten them because they know they have human backup.  After 40 years, the HK-4 is still comfortable, and definitely adequate for the small tasks where I may need it.  And it’s back in a caliber where I can buy more cartridges.

At the start of August, we’ve found ourselves writing about Fiber Fest, Knapweed, the Definition of a Farm, Wildfire Resources and more.

Before I retired, I had to sit through an “Active Shooter Training.”  The most memorable moment was when the instructor commented “Some of you may have a pocket knife” every grad student looked at me, so I passed it to the instructor as he explained “stab, don’t slash.”  I didn’t have this sort of data available that day, but I do as the school board looks at school safety now.

So what did I learn?  June is the lead month for active shooters.  Saturday is the most popular day.  Active shooters are most active between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. – which makes sense to me.  The pdf shows 6 incidents in California, five each in Georgia and Texas, four each in Colorado and Florida, then three each in Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Tennessee. 

The report covers 30 pages.  The most unanticipated fact it presented (to me, at least) was that in “2021 witnessed an increase in incidents where citizen involvement impacted the engagement.” p.13