News you can use
News you can use
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Editor: After the horrific shootings in Connecticut, we all hope to find a way to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again. Right now — as in the past — many in our nation are looking to gun control, and the pundits are insisting we act now, while emotions are still high. Being a member of the Montana Legislature, I am in a position to enact law to protect my fellow Montanans, the teachers and children in our schools. Over the past week, I have lost sleep due to the heartache and trying to find an answer. Some have sug...
With the 2013 session of the Montana Legislature about to convene, hunters, anglers and those who value Montana's outdoor amenities had better prepare to become involved. The 2011 Legislature gave us fair warning that things like privatizing stream access (House Bill 309), blocking acquisition of wildlife habitat (House Bill 272), liberalizing laws to restore cyanide heap leach mining (Senate Bill 306) and even efforts to dilute our Constitutional right to a clean environment (House Bill 292), remain on the "conservative"...
New Years is always a time to look back at the year that was and what it means for us all going forward. Many other columnists will be counting down their best/worst lists of events over the year. But since this columnist loves writing about all the wonderful things the Internet can do for you, I'm just going to use Google. As in the past several years, this year Google has launched a website, http://www.google.com/zeitgeist, to tally the sum of people's curiosity and endeavours around the entire globe through 2012. A video...
I felt pretty old this year. My wife and I bought a house last fall, just days before having our first child. Now that I'm both a father and a homeowner, I have more kinds of insurance policies than I even knew existed a year ago, and I suddenly have opinions about property taxes and school boards. Caleb Hutchins As a young bachelor, I found it easy to be disdainful of social welfare and government intervention. Now that my responsibilities extend beyond renting an apartment and playing video games, issues that were black...
"Recycle? Are you kidding? I don't have room to store a bunch of junk. How would I get it to wherever it's gotta go? It's too hard." I understood her objections. Where I lived in Washington it was easy. The mega-giant Waste Management distributed recycle bins along with the garbage bins and emptied both on pick-up day. We paid for recycling as part of our garbage bill. I sorted aluminum and metal into one bin, cardboard and paper into another and glass into the third. Since th...
Joe Mazurek was a wise and insightful peacemaker. His passing was not unexpected, but his legacy for fairness and gentle persuasion will live on in the memory of all those who had the good fortune to work with him in the political process of our state. Bob Brown Jim McGarvey was a brave and gallant fighter. He could sometimes be unkind to the King's English, but never to a loyal friend. Montana's legendary union leader, he was the true friend of working class people, and never forgot his common roots in the "sacred city" of...
I would like to congratulate the U.S. Supreme Court for doing more for the economy than all of the executive and legislative branches of our government combined. So don't be hatin' them. The president, the Senate, the House, all those economic advisors, department heads and think tank intellectuals, they're all a bunch of second rank amateurs for creating economic stimulus compared to the nine member of the highest court in the land of the free. Pam Burke When the Supreme...
Zach White's incomplete editorializing in his "Shop the Planet" article in the Havre Daily News on Aug. 7, compels me to write a response. I'm sorry to learn that the local opticians were unable to fulfill his optical needs. I would like to highlight, however, a few facts that are important for the readers to know. Inserting a lens into a spectacle frame carries a small risk of damaging the frame, especially when the frame is brittle. To the credit of all the local opticians they were cautious about working on a very...
The 2011 session in Helena no more than ended and the 2012 campaign season was in full swing. Candidates have hit the ground running. The economy continues to be the number one issue across the nation. The lines can sometimes a get a little blurry as you try to sort out the difference between government's role in growing the economy vs. the government getting out of the way and allowing free enterprise to work at its best. There is one issue, however, that has been brought once again to the forefront, and in this case, there...
I am a bag lady. I am a budding recycling vigilante. Pam Burke I am a jumper-on-er of the "re-use and save" bandwagon. I now shun plastic bags at the store in favor of my newly purchased re-usable bags. It's a non-slackerish and good thing to do. It's totally out of character. Sometimes I don't feel like myself. The people who know me are a little shocked that I have fully embraced an action that requires me to abstain from using a free convenience that makes my life easier because, hey: Free. Easy. Two of my favorite words....
I felt like I threw a party and nobody showed up. Sondra Ashton In an effort to clear out the storage pantry of my life, I decided to have a yard sale. Periodically I cruise my rooms, sort out items I haven't used in a while (10 years?), gather up things I realize I will never use, including once-valuable knicker-knackers and other tchotchkes. Trash or treasure, I have a houseful. If I need to rid my life of just a little junk, I donate the stuff to the Salvation Army. But this time, I sorted out a virtual mountain of things....
It's always great to be an Internet user, but after the Federal Communications Commission released a report called Measuring Broadband America at this month's meeting, it's looking even better. The annual report, published first in August 2011, said in its second edition that broadband speeds for several companies has risen in the past year, in some cases quite dramatically. Zach White A USA Today analysis found that the average speed increased from 87 percent of the advertised speeds to 96 percent since last year. The...
I cut my hair last weekend and, since the moment I put the scissors down, every time I've looked at or gotten distracted by my hair, I've thought this phrase first: "What the ... aaargh!" I spent 20 minutes this morning fixing my hair. I had a PTSD flashback to junior high days and fully expected to burn my forehead with the curling iron, break out in zits, lose my breasts and hear my mom yelling, "You're gonna be late for the bus — again!" — 20 minutes. Tuh-wen-tee min...
Everybody has had this experience. You fill the washer with soap and water and stuff in a load of dirty clothes. The washer chugs, agitates and spins, rinses and spins again, finishes the load of wash. You pull the clean damp clothing from the washer, give each article a brisk shake and throw them one by one into the dryer. You turn on the dryer and go sit with a cup of coffee while it tosses the clothing around through the heated air like bingo balls in a cage. When the dryer...
The United Nations estimated in January 2011 that two billion people were using the Internet. About 300 million have since joined them. With about one-third of the world's population accessing a global communications network, exchanging thoughts and ideas, it will soon be hard to imagine how we built functioning democracies without it. Zach White A recent video from advertising firm Leo Burnett Worldwide describes a campaign to save a library in Troy, Mich., their Detroit office worked on. According to the video, the local...
Earlier this month I was pleased to see Holden's Hotwheels open for business in a new location at 1st Street and 5th Avenue. What pleased me wasn't that it was a new building, but that it was very old. The building at 422 1st St., was built around 1914 by J. K. Bramble, a lawyer and the founder of the weekly newspaper, the Hill County Democrat. Over the the last 98 years the Bramble building has housed a dry goods store, an auto parts store, two different newspapers, and surprisingly, a bordello in the 1960s and '70s. Check o...
We now interrupt your regularly scheduled news and editorials to bring you this special, anti-factual Pamville News Report on the war — the War on Women. ******* Whether the war is real, imagined or just trumped up charges, the so-called War on Women has, thus far, been waged a million miles away from here in states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia and the deep south. Pam Burke However, a recent Republican gathering — billed as "What War on Women?" — in Havre featured forme...
If we assume that this statement is true: That which comes between two true loves is pure evil (and really, what kind of cold-hearted, dirty rotten nogoodnick would think otherwise); we can conclude, then, that stomach flu is pure evil. Only pure evil can come between me and food — my love, my obsession, my four square meals and seven snacks per day. Last week, after explaining to a friend that, no, I could not come out to ride horses because I was violently ill, she c...
If we assume that this statement is true: That which comes between two true loves is pure evil (and really, what kind of cold-hearted, dirty rotten nogoodnick would think otherwise); we can conclude, then, that stomach flu is pure evil. Only pure evil can come between me and food — my love, my obsession, my four square meals and seven snacks per day. Last week, after explaining to a friend that, no, I could not come out to ride horses because I was violently ill, she c...
The only simple explanation I can find for my recent 24-hour flurry of homemaking activity is that the high fever I had a month ago must've caused an important part of my brain to melt, and I was having some kind of delayed seizure-like spastic fit of Betty Crocker-y. Why else, after half of a lifetime of avoiding this particular domestic pastime, would I suddenly construct my own homemade chokecherry syrup using only my own bare hands and a few rudimentary kitchen tools....
A woman walking out in the country sees a rattlesnake close to both her barn and her house. A quick glance tells her no sticks or tools to use as an instrument of reptile death are near enough to fetch without giving the creature ample opportunity to escape. She reaches out to a wooden post buried shallowly in soft, wet ground and discovers that the post is loose. She wiggles the post around to loosen it further, then yanks it from the earth and bludgeons the snake to death...
Montanans hold sacred our right of informed participation in government decisions. This right is now enshrined in our Montana Constitution, one of several provisions intended to help us avoid repeating our history of needless human suffering and environmental degradation that occurred when large out-of-state corporations operated unrestrained by regulatory oversight of government agencies. We learned the hard way that sunlight is the best antiseptic. At the federal level, there are similar mechanisms in place intended to...
I get annoyed with people who wish life could come with an instruction manual because they want their life to be easier. Don't be such a noodle, I say. If you're going to wish for it to be easier, ask for a good script, proper lighting and awesome background music. Maybe a hair and makeup artist. And a custom-made wardrobe. Pam Burke Life would be so much easier if I didn't have to figure out what to say and do and wear. My husband John and I went to two parties over the Labor Day weekend. Count 'em — two. Two social g...
(This guest column was submitted by public health officers from throughout Montana.) It is well known that the United States spends a lot of money on medical care, more than $8,000 for each man, woman and child or about $2.6 trillion in 2010. What do we have to show for our investment? Because we spend twice as much on medical care than what the 14 wealthiest nations in the world spend, does that mean we are healthier? No. The U.S. did not even make the top 20 on Bloomberg's recent "Healthiest Countries" ranking. How do we be...
Sondra Ashton I correspond with a small group of Canadian women. There are six of us. We exchange stories, news and encouragement in facing the vicissitudes of daily life. We look at each other as sisters; sisters by choice rather than by birth and blood. I am honored to belong to this group, and, if asked, claim quasi-citizenship in Saskatchewan South. After all, I live barely a hop and skip from the border. My Canadian sisters celebrate Canada Day on the first of July, and w...
