There’ve been a couple of interesting stories in the paper the past few days about ethical decision making by political leaders.
Senator Max Baucus:
A spokesman for Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said early Saturday that the senator nominated his girlfriend, a lawyer who worked for him at the [...]
Rather than engage in substantive debate, Representative Rehberg has called for a thirty day waiting period after every stage of the health care debate. For the past few months, I’ve assumed that this was nothing more than the garden-variety talking point conservative obstructionism that has characterized Rehberg’s tenure in Washington, [...]
The Lee Watch blog, a great source of information about Lee Enterprises, has a pretty frightening post up about the dangers of posting online when you assume your identity is safe.
It seems the St. Louis Post Dispatch’s “social media editor” (who says papers are hurting for money?) Kurt Greenbaum [...]
It seems that someone in Representative Rehberg’s office got off Twitter long enough to write an impassioned, if misguided op-ed piece for the Billings Gazette. Rehberg’s so angry that the League of Conservation Voters ran a critical ad that he felt the need to respond with a series of [...]
Dennis Rehberg, your aspiring Senator, yesterday:
Montana’s Congressman, Denny Rehberg, today reacted strongly to the release of federal unemployment figures that, for the first time since 1983, breached 10 percent. Last month alone, the economy lost 190,000 jobs bringing the total job losses since the February passage of the “so-called” stimulus [...]
Is Dennis spending all of his time on Facebook and Twitter because he is planning a run against Jon Tester? Politico suggests he might be:
Rehberg, who was seen exiting the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters Thursday morning, is the state’s lone representative in the House.
There’s mutual [...]
I feel like a little sunshine myself today. Let’s take a look at Representative Rehberg’s claim that no private insurance policies will be allowed under the bill. He writes:
"Prohibits the sale of private individual health insurance policies, beginning in 2013, forcing individuals to purchase coverage through the federal government." In [...]
Dennis is so excited about yesterday. He was pretending to have read the House health care bill, doling out bits of “sunshine” as he feverishly read through through the text, exposing its nefarious schemes to socialize American life. Rehberg was excited, the Montana media was excited, and the [...]
Two protracted wars, a deep economic recession, a crumbling health care system. Certainly serious issues for members of Congress to address, but perhaps nothing measures up to the important work Dennis Rehberg did in Washington last month:
Montana’s Congressman Denny Rehberg helped arrange White House tours for 80 Montanans during [...]
It’s well-documented that American health care is a system in crisis. Rapidly escalating costs, personal bankruptcies, and families denied access to preventative care, all while Americans spend more than nation in the world on health care, represent a looming economic threat and an ongoing human tragedy for far too many [...]
I don’t often have the time to catch the comics page in the Independent Record, but today I was fortunate enough to get a couple of good laughs on the Opinion page. It seems that former Attorney General candidate Tim Fox is troubled by the idea of negative campaigning [...]
Fresh news that the public option may still be alive and kicking presents two opportunities to marvel at the craven nature of some Democrats in the Senate.
We’ll start with Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu:
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), for one, dismissed recent polls that show public support for the idea, telling [...]
About a month ago, I decided the best way to become interested in consistent blogging again was to take a full break for a month or so, rather than go through the cycle of feeling guilty about not posting rather than posting. After just over a month of no blog [...]
I have to wonder whether Judge Katherine Curtis routinely issues gag orders for every criminal investigation in Flathead County, especially without the attorney for the investigative target asking for one:
Monday, Corrigan told KCFW-TV that he could no longer discuss the investigation. The District Court administrator says all information in [...]
In an excellent piece, Hendrik Hertzberg explains what is driving the right wing’s lunacy about President Obama and healthcare reform:
Lies and fantasies about health-care reform swirled together with lies and fantasies about the chief executive himself. Obama is plotting to set up “death panels,” government tribunals authorized to euthanize [...]
A week after the rest of the state’s newspapers reported AYP results, the Helena Independent Record finally got around to notifying the community about our test scores. Once again, based on the criteria established by the NCLB Act, the results don’t look very good: 11 out of 15 Helena [...]
Far better sources have already written about the incredibly weak and cynical proposal that Senator Baucus is floating on healthcare (on the slowest news day imaginable), and my position about the Senator has been clear for quite some time. marginally more affordable for some Montanans and less affordable for [...]
Now that the right wing has worked itself up into another frenzy about yet another non-issue, this time the President of the United States encouraging schoolchildren to try harder in school and to work to improve their communities, one has to wonder why people like Senator Baucus feel the need [...]
It’s September once again, and that means two things: students are trudging back to schools and Montana school superintendents are trying to explain why their schools failed the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) testing measures last spring. It also means that education reporters across the state are back at whatever it [...]
I’d say this gem from the Missoulian pretty well encapsulates what’s wrong with both the media and the medical industry in the United States today. Where would the public be without the critical eye of the Fourth Estate and essential positions like Vice Presidents for Public Relations at hospitals?One [...]
They’re certainly working in good faith with you:
Mike Enzi, one of three Republicans ostensibly negotiating health care reform as part of the Senate’s "Gang of Six," told a Wyoming town hall crowd that he had no plans to compromise with Democrats and was merely trying to extract concessions.
"It’s [...]
On May 3, I was very critical of a newspaper story in the Independent Record because I felt it presented a very one-sided view about the need for cutbacks among teachers in the Helena School District. Despite District projections for increased numbers of student at every elementary school, the [...]
Representative Rehberg voted for expensive airplanes to fly members of Congress around the country, but it’s okay, because he didn’t support it:
Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., voted several times in favor of buying elite Air Force jets to fly lawmakers around, but said this week he never supported the purchases [...]
I’m glad that we pay Representative Rehberg $174,000 annually and fund a staff that costs millions. How else would we gain insight like this?
Rehberg said that he is not advocating not reforming the system, and that he thinks changes will be made. “I don’t think anyone is saying it isn’t [...]
I happened to catch an excellent interview of Senator Baucus by a Montana Public Radio reporter as I was driving through another late afternoon hailstorm. Once again, Senator Baucus demonstrated the kind of courage that has come to characterize his efforts to “lead” health care reform: none at all.
In the [...]
Well, it certainly didn’t take long for Krayton Kerns’s crazy bill to start having an impact on law enforcement. Already, police have had to release a man who shot another man in the head because of this misguided legislation, designed to appeal to the fringe of the NRA and [...]
As I am sure many of you did, I received an e-mail this evening from Senator Baucus about health care reform. In a 1200 word e-mail, Senator Baucus used the phrase “health care reform” sixteen times, without ever giving any specific information about what his proposal would do to reform [...]
I think Nick Lough definitely felt a thrill going up his leg when he wrote this fine piece of news copy about a Rehberg town hall:
The town hall brought Americans from all walks of life together in the same room. A small business owner working through the pains of [...]
While Helena may be doing better than the nation during the Bush Recession, times are tough,and it’s important for government agencies to spend their money wisely. State workers saw a pay freeze, Helena teachers received a very small raise, and county workers have averaged a little more than a 1 [...]
While John Edwards’ campaign and personal judgment certainly left a lot to be desired, I admired him for being the Presidential candidate most interested in the issue of poverty in the United States. It’s an issue that certainly hasn’t received the political attention it deserves, other than attacks on the [...]
Ed Kemmick is impressed with Representative Rehberg’s idea to benefit the Stillwater Mine and its Russian parent company by mandating the creation of a collectible palladium coin. He’s so impressed that he’d like the Gazette to get in on the deal:
If Rehberg sponsors a bill directing the government to [...]
I just came across this piece by E.J Dionne about the hypocrisy practiced by members of Congess when it comes to gun laws. How to solve their hypocrisy? Let people bring guns into Congress:
Isn’t it time to dismantle the metal detectors, send the guards at the doors away, and [...]
Mike Dennison has a fascinating story about what Senator Baucus won’t say about his magical health care reform bill. As far as I can tell, the plan won’t actually do anything that might threaten one nickel of corporate profit. Along the way, it will magically provide benefits, though those [...]
Matt Yglesias is unimpressed by the latest substance-free self-promotion coming from Senator Baucus on health care reform. Today, Baucus is announcing that he and the rest of his secret bipartisan handshake clubhouse have come up with yet another plan, this one purporting to “cover 95% of legal U.S. residents,” [...]
How does Dennis Rehberg deal with all the contradictions in his positions? Now I see that he is upset that stimulus money isn’t getting to Montana fast enough to create jobs, even though he doesn’t believe that the stimulus will create jobs.
Spending the past six hours (and far too much [...]
When he’s not authoring resolutions honoring the city of Billings, Representative Rehberg is hard at work, making symbolic gestures to appeal to his rabid base. Is he working on a solution to the health care crisis? Does he know one exists? Probably not. He does, however, know how to grandstand [...]
Greg Kauffman of the Nation is unimpressed with Senator Baucus:
The party has a popular president, a strong majority in the House and a filibuster-proof sixty-member caucus in the Senate. It also has 72 percent of all Americans–including 87 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans–saying they want a [...]
While some might be tempted to believe the Competitive Enterprise Institute penned editorial that Representative Rehberg has been peddling around the state’s newspapers, looking at it while a tiny degree of scrutiny might change your perspective.
Representative Rehberg:
While the eyes of the nation are on the health care debate in [...]
Kudos to Gazette reporter Ed Kemmick for an excellent set of stories about the Montana Meth Project in the Billings Gazette today.
In the stories, Kemmick does what should have been done in the past few years: critically examine the results of the Montana Meth Project, listening to and [...]
I’m never going to enjoy a Toby Keith song about America, nor demand that my neighbors "love or leave" this country. It’s unlikely that I will ever refer to an American media outlet as traitorous, or demand that we build a fenced wall between the United States and Mexico. I [...]
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Thursday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, allowing her to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
Ms. Palin, who was Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running mate in [...]
It’s excellent news that the Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows a decline in the use of meth in Montana. What’s less outstanding is the coverage that the Billings Gazette (and presumably other Lee Newspapers) chose to give the story:
The 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a national survey designed [...]
Just as I had been thinking that the Democratic primary had been quiet on the issues front, I read that Dennis McDonald issued a press release advocating a single-payer health plan:
According to McDonald, “Families in Montana are struggling, and right now we have the chance to seize on health [...]
Remember The Hardliner? A blog that is so transparently a GOP astroturf operation that it resorted to manufacturing comments to make it appear like it had a vibrant community reading it? And then banning my IP from the site when I called them out on it?
Well, they are [...]
Justice Thomas and his supporters like to repeat that they, and not liberals, uphold the original intent of the Constitution. In their worldview, any expansion (or even protection) of civil liberties goes beyond the vision of the founders. I wonder how these “originalists” can even pretend that Justice Thomas has [...]
Matt already mentioned Bozeman’s insane policy requiring potential job applicants to hand over their login names (and passwords!) for all web sites they belong to, but I thought I would take a look at the requirement and the city’s response.
Reading the form is bizarre.
