News you can use
News you can use
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AP Photo/National Park Service, MacNeil Lyons A gray wolf walks in the wilds of Yellowstone National Park. A U.S. Judge is hearing a challenge to a federal law that stripped the endangered species status from wolves in five states across the Northern Rockies, including in Montana. BILLINGS — Wildlife advocates went to federal court Tuesday to challenge a move by Congress that stripped endangered species status from more than 1,300 gray wolves across five states in the Northern Rockies. The two-hour hearing before U. S. D...
WASHINGTON — Crossroads GPS, a conservative group connected to Republican strategist Karl Rove, is releasing a new ad campaign that targets five Democratic senators up for re-election in 2012 on taxes and spending, potent issues as President Barack Obama and Congress attempt to address the federal debt. The group said it would spend $1.6 million to run ads through Aug. 6 that focus on Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The D...
HELENA — The turmoil at the Public Service Commission continued Tuesday with the ousted vice chairman seeking the personal cell phone records of the commissioners who staged a leadership coup last month. Republican Brad Molnar was rebuffed in his attempts to immediately get the personal cell phone records of new Republican chairman Travis Kavulla and Democrat Gail Gutsche, his second in command. The new majority on the panel postponed the matter to some point in the future, without setting a date. Molnar said he wants to see...
HELENA — An attorney for a medical marijuana industry group is asking a judge to block a new Montana law eliminating the sale of medical pot before it takes effect next month. James Goetz, attorney for the Montana Cannabis Industry Association, told Helena District Judge James Reynolds Monday that the law is unconstitutional. Assistant attorney general Jim Molloy defended the new law, saying it is in line with what voters intended when they authorized medical marijuana use in 2004. Molloy says the plaintiffs are trying to p...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is entering a $40 million dispute between an energy company and Montana that could turn on the experiences of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The justices said Monday they will hear an appeal from PPL Montana of a state court decision ordering the company to pay $40 million in rent for placing its hydroelectric dams in riverbeds owned by the state. The ownership of the waterways turns on whether they were navigable when Montana became a state in 1889. Both the company and the state base part o...
Most Montanans would be shocked to see yellow crystals of meth and a glass pipe on a neighbor's kitchen counter. But they wouldn't think twice about seeing an orange bottle of painkillers such as hydrocodone or oxycodone. Yet prescription drugs contribute to more than 300 deaths in Montana each year – nearly a death a day – while methamphetamine killed 20 in 2008. That's why the state Legislature passed two bills last week to combat the growing abuse of prescription drugs. Both bills need approval from the governor bef...
Most Montanans would be shocked to see yellow crystals of meth and a glass pipe on a neighbor's kitchen counter. But they wouldn't think twice about seeing an orange bottle of painkillers such as hydrocodone or oxycodone. Yet prescription drugs contribute to more than 300 deaths in Montana each year – nearly a death a day – while methamphetamine killed 20 in 2008. That's why the state Legislature passed two bills last week to combat the growing abuse of prescription drugs. Both bills need approval from the governor bef...
(Editor's note: This is the first of two stories looking at transparency in Montana. This story looks at what some believe are the obstacles from getting information put online. On Thursday, we will have a story on what happens when the wrong information gets posted.) It's a mixed bag at best for Montana when it comes to transparency and it's not likely to get better any time soon, at least according to bills vetoed in the last legislative session and other recent attempts to get information posted online that would make it...
BOISE, Idaho — Environmentalists have asked a federal appeals court for an emergency injunction to halt wolf hunts scheduled to start in a few weeks in Idaho and Montana. The request filed by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and other groups with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was made public Saturday. The groups want the hunts canceled until the court issues a decision in an appeal filed Monday challenging a federal judge's ruling allowing the hunts to go forward. "We think if we don't get an injunction, the wolf p...
BUTTE (AP) — The FBI is investigating whether a Montana bank robbery is related to at least 18 bank robberies in Washington and Oregon attributed to the "bad hair bandit." A woman wearing a short, dark-haired wig robbed the Bank of Butte Thursday, getting away with an undisclosed amount of cash. The robber implied she had a gun. Butte-Silver Bow County Sheriff John Walsh tells The Montana Standard (http://bit.ly/qbhTue) the FBI is looking into whether the bad hair bandit is involved. An FBI spokeswoman wouldn't comment. T...
HELENA — Gov. Brian Schweitzer confirmed Friday that his Department of Transportation director resigned after the governor's office learned the agency head's daughter was given a DOT job. DOT director Jim Lynch resigned Thursday, but no reason was given for the departure. The agency's legal chief was quickly named the new director. The departure was a surprise to many, since Lynch and Schweitzer had often worked closely on issues and the governor had even recently appointed Lynch to the newly formed oil spill council. The g...
BOZEMAN — Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau is rejecting the latest federal requirements for school testing. Juneau said she wrote a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan saying she would not raise the state's target test scores to meet benchmarks for No Child Left Behind, the national education overhaul. She told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that the current federal requirements are unrealistic for schools to meet while they also wait for new education standards from the Obama a...
BILLINGS — Emergency workers ferried supplies to more than 300 people cut off Friday by flooding that has overwhelmed Montana towns and caused an estimated $8.6 million in damages to date. Heavy rain and the runoff from record mountain snowpacks have caused rivers over much of the West to spill from their banks. Montana has been hit particularly hard over the past few weeks, with hundreds of homes inundated and scores of roadways swamped. Glasgow Courier photo An underpass in downtown Glasgow is flooded Wednesday by water o...
HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court is backing a utility and the state Legislature in an eminent domain case surrounding a wind-power transmission line. The case brought by landowners whose property lies in the path of the transmission line challenged whether utilities had the power to take private land. A lower court ruled in the landowners' favor and the Montana Alberta Tie Limited appealed. MATL asked the high court to send the case back to the district judge after lawmakers passed a retroactive law that ensures u...
HELENA — Severe thunderstorms dumped up to 4 inches of rain and golf ball-sized hailstones across Montana, likely causing already swollen rivers to hit major flood stage in eastern and central parts of the state by the end of the week. Meteorologists said Tuesday a number of funnel clouds were spotted near Billings from a storm system that moved in Monday night. The National Weather Service received several reports of tornadoes. The tornado reports came nearly a year after a twister ripped off the roof of the city's sports a...
HELENA — Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock will enter the race to be the state's next governor with a speech Wednesday to supporters, two people close to the Democrat said Tuesday. Bullock, a rising star within the Democratic party, will leave the attorney general's office after one term and shift his re-election campaign to the governor's race for 2012, according to one person involved in his campaign and another who is a top Bullock adviser. AP Photo/Matt Brown This Oct. 4, 2008 photo shows Steve Bullock, Democratic ca...
Schyweitzer says GOP budget dead on arrival MATT GOURAS, Associated Press HELENA — Gov. Brian Schweitzer is making it clear he will veto the Republican spending plan without some big changes. Perhaps the biggest sticking point is the way the GOP budget crafters are spurning as much as $100 million in federal money, primarily for social services administered by the state. Schweitzer argues the unused federal money won't be used to reduce federal spending. Instead it will just be re-allocated to other states. The governor s...
World's oldest man hospitalized in Montana GREAT FALLS — Officials at a Montana retirement home say the world's oldest man has been hospitalized. Walter Breuning is 114, making him the oldest man and the second oldest person in the world. Breuning lives at the Rainbow Senior Living retirement home in Great Falls The Great Falls Tribune reports that the retirement home confirmed Monday that Breuning had been hospitalized but declined to comment on his condition, citing privacy rights. Breuning was born on Sept. 21, 1896, in M...
Schweitzer vetoes Hutton-sponsored abortion insurance ban HELENA — The governor has vetoed a Republican bill aimed at making sure abortion isn't covered by insurance offered under the federal health care overhaul. Gov. Brian Schweitzer vetoed Senate Bill 176 on Monday. He says the measure violates Montana's constitutional guarantee of a right to privacy and access to reproductive health care. The federal law calls for state-run health care exchanges that offer people a choice of health plans. The bill proposed prohibiting t...
Idaho RadioShack owner adds gun promotion BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The owner of a RadioShack in Idaho is taking a cue from a Montana store and offering a free shotgun with the purchase of a satellite television package. Mountain Home store owner John Marshall tells KBOI-TV that business is down and he's willing to try anything to survive. After hearing that a southwestern Montana RadioShack tripled its business by offering a coupon for a free gun with the purchase of Dish Network, Marshall decided to give it a try. He began the p...
AP Photo/Matt Gouras Barry Beach sits during his hearing Tuesday in Lewistown, where witnesses testified a gang of girls was actually responsible for the 1979 murder for which Beach was convicted. LEWISTOWN — A judge said Tuesday he will weigh the testimony of previously unheard witnesses who could help implicate a gang of girls in the 1979 beating death of a Poplar teenager — and not the man serving a 100-year sentence for the crime. Barry Beach long ago confessed to killing Kim Nees, describing how he forcibly tried to kis...
AP Photo/Matthew Brown ExxonMobil contractors clean up oil along the banks of the Yellowstone River in Billings Sunday. A company pipeline about 20 miles upriver near Laurel, Mont., ruptured and spilled an estimated 1,000 barrels of crude into the Yellowstone on Saturday. LAUREL — Authorities struggled Sunday to gauge the environmental and crop damage from tens of thousands of gallons of oil that spilled into the legendary Yellowstone River, as Montana's governor criticized Exxon Mobil for downplaying the possible scope of th...
SEATTLE — The wolves came within howling distance of the house, but were gone by the time Kim Jacobs found dead lambs on her family's eastern Oregon ranch that spring morning. While many conservationists welcome the return of gray wolves into the Pacific Northwest, Jacobs wants to shoot them if they harm her livestock. "A lot of (people) can't wrap their mind around what wolves are capable of," said the fourth-generation rancher from Baker City, Ore., whose family lost at least 26 sheep to wolves in 2009. AP Photo/Elaine T...
HELENA — Republicans are seeking a court's intervention in their ongoing dispute with Attorney General Steve Bullock and his campaign fundraising methods. Bullock, a Democrat, has not formally declared if he will seek re-election or run for governor. Bullock has been raising money without specifying which office he is seeking. But his campaign website lets donors send in donations of up to $1,200 — an amount only a candidate for governor can accept. The past and present commissioners of political practice have said that not...
BILLINGS — A state prison inmate can withdraw his guilty plea to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl after successfully arguing he made the plea only because his attorney told him a Hispanic man could not get a fair trial in Musselshell County, the Montana Supreme Court has ruled. One Supreme Court justice suggested the man's defense attorney be investigated for her failure to adequately investigate the case, The Billings Gazette reported (http://bit.ly/otVeqP) in Thursday's editions. Hector Valdez-Mendoza, 26, was charged...
