News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1779 - 1803 of 3221
One of the best things about Montana is that we always step up and help each other when our communities are in need. We roll up our sleeves, set aside our differences, and help one another. The creator always humbles us and reminds us that one of our greatest assets is each other. Last summer, people from across the state stepped up to help our agricultural communities when some farmers and ranchers suffered crop and livestock losses due to fire and drought. It reminded us that we are a big state with a big heart. That is...
Can you believe it? My third spring in Etzatlan? And, my third year fighting with a squirrel. Truth to tell, there might be more than one, but the one I see seems to have the same face and the same cheeky attitude. My first year, when the surround of my casita was all dirt, she burrowed beneath the east corner to build a nest for birthing babies. Squirrels are cute. Cute when they are “over there.” When underfoot, I tend to view her as a rodent with longer hair. Imagine a nest of rodents making comfort under MY house, mak...
Montana’s farms and ranches are an essential part of our state’s economy. They also provide important habitat for wildlife and, often, public access for hunting and other recreation. Working lands support big game, upland birds and waterfowl, as well as numerous nongame species. That abundance didn’t happen by chance. For decades, Montana hunters and landowners have worked together to restore and manage the public’s wildlife on private habitat. Hunters and landowners don’t always agree, but our cooperation has given Montana t...
Nature is all around us, and sometimes it’s a little too much in-your-face. A Cooper’s hawk in upstate New York is helping one city with its pigeon problem, but not everyone is appreciative. A red-eyed, crow-sized raptor, the Cooper’s hawk normally feasts on birds like pigeons and mourning doves, which are often found in urban and suburban areas — so now the hawks are, too. NYup.com reports that a bank in Dewitt, New York, had a Cooper’s hawk move into the area in the first...
Thomas Jefferson favored amending the Constitution by “taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.” He also favored a requirement that taxes would have to be sufficient for each generation to pay its own debts. Managing debt has always been a fundamental problem of American Democracy. In the early 1990’s there was a widespread movement to amend the constitution through a “convention of the states” to require that in balancing the budget, the federal government could not do so by passing on “unfunded...
First serving: soup. When I hug friends goodbye, friends whom I see once a year or less frequently, I go into a three-day funk. My life feels like metaphorical soup, seasoned with a dollop of melancholy and a pinch of abandonment. The day after Jerry and Lola left, I came the closest to a panic attack that I’ve been since the ’80s. Jerry and Lola are innocent. All they did was go home to Idaho. My friends, whom I love, were tasty ingredients in my soup. I’d been six weeks...
Partisanship has taken hold of our political lives from Washington to right here in Northwest Montana. Despite all the political ill will, there appears to be one issue that Republicans and Democrats can agree on — promoting local economic growth through our nation’s community banks. At a time of political polarization, it was encouraging to learn that the Senate Banking Committee recently accomplished something rare: passing a bill developed by Republicans and Democrats on a bipartisan basis. Designed to tailor fin...
A federal budget reflects our values and vision for America. President Trump’s FY19 budget, released last Monday, abandons our long-held values of caring for our neighbors, helping people during hard times, and the belief that no one in this country should go hungry. Instead, the budget presents a vision in which struggling families face more and more obstacles just to get by, weakening the very programs that provide stability and opportunity in our communities. The proposals included in the president’s budget would dra...
Clearly, building the wall on our southern border is high on President Trump’s agenda, and it should be. There has been a lot of controversy and political rhetoric over expense, feasibility, etc. Often the rhetoric turns to marginalizing the President and his supporters as xenophobes, racists, or worse. Whether the wall is meant to be a real, physical barrier or a combination of electronic tools and boots on the ground, border security is of paramount importance to the continuation of the United States of America as we k...
Washington, D.C., is broken. Our representatives choose time and again to bend to the interests of lobbyists and corporate donors at our expense. I have spent my entire career as a consumer protection advocate, fighting for people who have been bullied and harmed by big banks and powerful corporations. I am running for U.S. House of Representatives to fight for all Montanans the same way that I have fought for my clients. Shortly after I announced my campaign, 58 innocent concertgoers were murdered in Las Vegas. Hundreds...
When I was elected to Congress, the people of Montana sent a clear message: they wanted more jobs and less government. But the bloated budget deal passed by Congress last week is the very definition of more government. As Montana’s voice in the U.S. Senate, I’ve been fighting for positive reforms that rein in Washington’s out-of-control spending and regulations that threaten more jobs and bigger paychecks for Montanans. And we’ve had success — in the past year alone, Congress has cut red tape, put qualified judges on the be...
I always said the quickest way to kill a joke was to explain it, but I think scientists have discovered, unbeknownst to themselves, that the most efficient way to kill a joke is to research it and explain the research. Thoroughly. Apparently, academic study of jokes and laughter is a real thing. Salvatore Attardo and Lucy Pickering at Texas A&M University Commerce wrote a study called “Timing in the performance of jokes” that I would like to share with you in part today. In...
Through with Chew Week is observed in Montana Feb. 19-23. The Bullhook Dental Clinic is partnering with the North Montana Tobacco-Free Coalition to provide free oral cancer screenings to spit tobacco users during this week. Early detection is a key to successful treatment. Health risks of spit tobacco and other forms of smokeless tobacco The Mayo Clinic concludes that while there is evidence that smokeless tobacco may be less dangerous than cigarettes are, long–term use of chewing tobacco and other smokeless tobacco p...
Ai-yi-yi, what a week this has been. A few days ago, tongue in cheek, I mentioned to my friend Dan in Fort Worth that I would be returning to my “quiet and uneventful life.” Dan thought I was serious and took me to task and rightly so. After three weeks with my friends Don and Denise from Oregon, plus another week on the coast, seeing old friends from the years Mazatlan was my home, I am back home, in Etzatlan, in my casita. Jerry and Lola from Idaho, who were here with my...
February must be a month to revisit topics because I’m back with marijuana-infused news, this time home-grown here in the U.S. and as wholesome as a Girl Scout working the annual cookie sales gig. Last week I reported on two Canadian cops who allegedly took marijuana from a drug bust, then proceeded to get very allegedly high — like panicked enough to call for help, but too messed up to explain the problem high and so high the problem turned out to be the other uniformed off...
Last night, Don and Dorothy, former neighbors, made arrangements to meet me to go to Loony Beans in Cerritos for breakfast. I went to the lobby at 8:50. I like to be prompt. I waited until 9:45 before I gave up; figured my wires had gotten crossed. Things had gone bump in the night. I had left my simple, cheap, adequate Mexican cellphone on the bed where I was lounging with a book. I always, always, always put said phone away in my bag in its pocket. Later in the night, when...
Montanans are now seeing the real-life consequences of budget decisions made by the Republican legislators who make up the majority of our state legislature. Over the next year, 28 property assessment offices will be closing their doors in addition to the 19 public assistance offices that have already turned off their lights — impacting thousands of Montanans in rural areas of our state. As many as 14,000 health care providers will have to reduce care for the mentally ill and disabled, some even shuttering their own doors. S...
Toronto newspapers are reporting that two of the city’s police officers have been suspended with pay pending an investigation on allegations that they consumed cannibis edibles while on duty. No charges have been filed and any criminal activities are only alleged at this time. But one officer called for assistance early Sunday morning because he said he thought he was hallucinating and going to pass out, and his partner was found holed up in a tree nearby. This was a few hours...
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke long has long claimed to be a “Roosevelt Republican.” He has said time and again that he will stand with the West and not allow the overreaching arm of Washington, D.C., to hold us within its grasp. But his recent actions have indicated a different approach. In 2015, a diverse group of stakeholders including governors, resource managers, ranchers, farmers, sportsmen and women, business owners, scientists, and energy developers came together as a community to openly and honestly discuss how bes...
This afternoon I waved goodbye to Don and Denise, with hugs and kisses and tears, as they got into the taxi to carry them to the airport. Now I’ll feel an empty place inside me for the next couple days. I’m still in Mazatlan. I was supposed to take the bus back to Etzatlan today. Phone conversations this week went like this: “Sondra, it is Leo. You stay. Is cold and storm every night, just like rainy season. Too cold for you. You stay.” And this from Josue, “If you can, stay...
Much to my surprise, a North 40 column from a few weeks ago created a confused hullabaloo among a few readers who were concerned that President Donald Trump actually might be, as I suggested, authorizing a wall of such grand proportions between the U.S. and Canada that the wall would be able to keep the cold northerly winds of Canada from crossing the border into the U.S. Yes, I was writing about a weather-stopping wall. Let me assure you, dear readers, that this notion is...
After a week on the beach, my guests, Don and Denise, and I, boarded the Primera Plus Autobus in Mazatlan, and climbed across the Sierras to my home in Etzatlan. In a country where not everyone has acquired a car and where some people with cars chose to take advantage of the excellent public transportation, I’ve got to tell you, my friends, we are impressed. We used to have pretty decent public transit in our country, too, until every family “needed” two cars in the garag...
During National School Choice, it is important to recognize and celebrate academic innovation that is happening in public schools across Montana. Our state’s education system is unique. We have over 400 hundred school districts and over 800 schools spread out over our vast geographic area. Many districts across our state are creating new programs outside of the traditional school model that prepare students for the future. Montana only has two formal charter schools, The Bridger Charter Academy in Bozeman and the Lincoln C...
The first news stories of each New Year usually feature people working around the clock to make our communities great. Routine coverage includes the men and women who protect our neighborhoods, maintain our roadways and make it possible to access health care at any time of the day or night. It’s a subtle reminder that Montanans value their way of life and are working together to protect it. Health care workers will continue to advance progress as the state’s largest labor force. They are the doctors and nurses who del...
In the final hours of 2017, when most of us were with our families enjoying the holiday season, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and the Trump administration announced that they were making major changes to the sage-grouse land management plans. Before the New Year’s ball dropped, the Bureau of Land Management released six instructional memorandums to state and field offices outlining how to implement significant changes to state-based sage-grouse management plans. These radical changes, made by Zinke and the BLM, gut s...
