GOP beating

I'd be interested in hearing contrary viewpoints, but it seems to me that Republicans took a terrific beating in the legislative session. By scrapping the usual budget process, they put pressure on themselves to deliver on their own plan, then they couldn't deliver. Lange's outburst made them look bad, then they looked even worse for the way they dumped him.

Most fundamentally, Republicans seemed to hitch their fortunes to two nonstarters: opposing enforcement of tax laws and permanent tax relief. Whether the Department of Revenue really needs more employees is a technical question I am not competent to answer, but I know how it looked. It looked like the GOP was endorsing fat-cat tax avoidance. Whether it's fair or not, that's a label nobody needs.

On permanent tax relief, I basically agree with Republicans that permanent tax cuts are better policy than one-time rebates. But it's not a deal breaker. We will all get decent tax relief this year; what we get in two years will depend on who is in office, how the economy is cooking, and what the state's needs are. That would be true no matter what this Legislature did.

Finally, Schweitzer is cleaning up on press indicating that after all the shouting he pretty much got what he wanted out of the session. He never seemed to doubt that he would. That hurts Republicans where it really hurts -- right in their vanity.

Contractual obligations

The Outpost's bank since its inception had been First Citizens until it was absorbed by Western Security Bank. I have no complaints about the new bank, especially since it has been buying some ads from us, but the worst part of the deal has been that we had to change our credit card processor.

The deadline for the change to Nxgen Payment Services was Monday, so naturally I put it off until then. Then I read through the application, which was wickedly obscure and had all of the important provisions printed in type that no doubt was Nxgen's entry in the World's Smallest Typeface contest.

But I waded through it and was about ready to sign off until I reached the cancellation provision. If we change processors in the next year, we have to pay Nxgen $295. If we change in the next three years, we have to pay $195.

Online opinions differ about whether processing companies are justified in asking for cancellation payments, but I wasn't eager to make a three-year commitment to a company that I have yet to transact a single item of business with. I liked this provision even less: "Merchant agrees that the early termination fee is not a penalty, but rather is reasonable in light of the financial harm caused by Merchant's early termination."

Say what? How can I legally bind myself to something that I have absolutely no way to know is true? What's "reasonable"? We don't use processing equipment, so Nxgen has no expense there. So far as I know, the only start-up expense it bears is the cost of telling us what phone number we have to dial to enter credit card transactions. From then on, it makes a profit on every transaction. Beyond that, Nxgen's only risk is that I will cheat my customers and they won't honor their credit card transactions. But we have a 10-year spotless history of meeting those obligations, and I am as likely to win the lottery as to start cheating customers now.

The only real financial harm Nxgen faces is that if I don't sign the contract, it won't get a chance to gig me for 200 or 300 bucks if I don't like its service. I agree that this is financial harm that Nxgen will certainly incur.

Good Brewer

I'm a longtime critic of the Billings Chamber of Commerce, but I agreed with most of this. I used to think that a safe way to figure out a position on any given issue was to just find out where the Chamber stood, then take the opposite stance. Brewer has made it much more complicated.

GOP on GOP

As usual, Brad Molnar's take on the Mike Lange blowup is a bit different than anything else you are likely to read. Funnier, too. I especially liked the Bill Strizich anecdote.

If you look closely, you also can see on this page a cartoon by Paul Driscoll, who is back to drawing Montana-based political cartoons after a few years off. It's too small to read online, so you will just have to pick up a copy of this week's Outpost (it's small there, too, but legible).

UPDATE: In the comments, it's Kemmick vs. Molnar. Won't somebody please stop this fight?

Term limits

During the waning days of the spring semester, I was mentally plotting a post blaming term limits for the Montana Legislature's miserable failure to pass a budget this session. Then I read Kirk Dooley's well considered post at City Lights arguing that the U.S. Congress, without term limits, has much the same problems that the Montana Legislature has with term limits.

How to respond? My first thought was that term limits hurt Montana while the lack of term limits hurts Congress. But I was not willing to walk on so high a wire.

Maybe this is closer: Term limits are simply irrelevant to the problems Congress has. Montana gets the worst of both worlds: The divisiveness and partisanship of Congress, plus the lack of institutional wisdom and seasoning caused by term limits. Add term limits to Congress, and it would be even worse than it is.

Take, for example, the congressional debate over funding the Iraq War. Sean Hannity blasts Democrats every day for "politicizing" the war, but politics is, of course, the way questions like this one are resolved in democracies. And the democratic (Democratic?) process, messy as it is, appears to slowly be working in this case. Nobody wants to leave soldiers in the field without bullets or rations, but Congress has gradually been getting across an inescapable point: The president can't simply have a blank check anymore to do whatever he wants in Iraq for as long as he wants. If Congress gives him that blank check, then voters will fire a lot of members of Congress in the next election -- and they will be replaced by representatives even more hostile to the president's aims. This may not be a message that will penetrate the president's skull, but Republicans in Congress are certainly hearing it.

In other words, in Washington the system is working, in its usual awkward and ugly fashion. In Montana, the whole thing broke down -- and I still blame term limits.

SIDEBAR: One of the most annoying aspects of the debate in Helena over budget surpluses is advanced by groups like this one: The surplus should be returned to the people because the money came from the people. Of course the money came from the people. Every cent the state spends comes from the people. There is no other source. The money came from the people, and it is up to the people to decide how best to dispose of it. That's why we elect legislators.

He's back

The jackpot paid this morning. Final grades were due by noon in all three college classes I was teaching. I had to make a speech at 10 a.m. It was deadline day at The Outpost, and I was up all night getting the paper out.

Got 'er done. Even got a couple of hours of sleep this afternoon. So now school's out, and I'm back contemplating what to do with this sadly underused blog. Having the summer free seems like a vast expanse of unoccupied time, but it isn't that easy. Running this business is easily a couple of full-time jobs, and it has suffered for my absence. Getting the blog going is only one of many possible priorities, and I haven't yet sorted out how I will approach them all. It's not clear to me that blogging is all that good a use of my time. On the whole, I would rather study German grammar.

But this afternoon I got a message from my hometown in Texas: "Your fans down here around Victoria hope you'll update your blog pretty soon." That made my day. And it was enough to get at least this much going on the blog.

War plans

The editor of The Outpost takes a futile stab at ending the war in Iraq. For some reason, the column appears twice on the web, prompting some commenters to observe that the editor's plan is no more cohesive than the president's. But that doesn't mean it is worse.

Fading Green

In this week's Montana Green Bulletin, Paul Stephens asks, "Is there a future for the Green Party?" His answer:

Apparently not in Montana. If young people aren't organizing and joining, we are as doomed as the Communist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World. There are, of course, a few hundred dedicated, middle-aged (or older) adults in the United States who still believe in the Green Party, its values, and its future prospects. California, Wisconsin, Maine, New York, Missouri, and a few other states still have active parties fielding candidates, but it's probably safe to say that there's no hope for the Green Party in Montana.

To me it seems that there is real sentiment for a third party in this country, but none of the available flavors -- Green, Libertarian, Constitution -- seem to satisfy. What would it take?

Nur Englisch

Both Idaho houses have passed and sent to the governor a classically stupid piece of legislation: declaring English the state's official language.

Of all the dumb things government sticks its nose into, surely the dumbest by far is trying to dictate the languages people speak. Language has a power of its own, subservient to no government. If English can't hold its own without official government sanction, then no legislation can save it. And if English can hold its own, then no legislation is needed.

If the Legislature would include useful provisions -- say, for example, criminal prosecution of people who use pronouns that don't match antecedents -- then I could get behind this bill. But the bill does not abridge American freedom to butcher our native tongue. It abridges only the freedom to speak another.

Here's hoping

Every presidential election I stake my bet on some darkhorse candidate, hoping that he (sorry, no women have made the cut yet) will emerge as the nation's great hope. Usually the candidate turns out to be a disappointment, or his campaign goes nowhere, but I keep trying because the major party choices always seem so uniformly dismal.

It's pretty much the same strategy I use on our almost annual visits to the horse races at MetraPark. I like to pick a horse somewhere in the 8-to-1 to 12-to-1 odds range, and I always bet $2 to win, never to place or show. It has worked pretty well at the races -- the last two times we have gone, I won enough on my first bet to cover the cost of the day -- but it has never worked out for president. Horse races are more honest, and horses are generally of higher character.

But I keep betting. This year my money is on Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor from New Mexico. I don't know enough about him yet to say that I would even vote for him, but I like what I've seen and heard: He has cut taxes, he sounds reasonable (and willing to fight) on immigration, he presumably understands Western concerns, and he mostly makes sense on the war.

Two things this week increased my hope that he will turn out to be a good bet. One was his support for medical marijuana legislation. Putting human suffering and freedom above the White House's holy war: what a concept. The other was a speech I saw on C-SPAN that Richardson gave to some college students. It wasn't what he said that impressed me -- it was fairly standard political boilerplate -- nor the way he presented himeself -- slightly rumpled, a bit less articulate than I have seen him in TV interviews, and given to a lot of arm waving.

What I liked was what he did when a student asked him a question he couldn't answer. With C-SPAN's mikes, I couldn't make out exactly what the question was, but it had something to do with some action by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Richardson said he hadn't heard anything about it. He asked an aide if he knew anything about it. He said something like, "You'd think we'd know since that's our neighboring state." He then turned back to the student and asked, "What do you think about it?"

On rare occasions, I've heard candidates admit to not knowing something. On even rarer ones, I've seen candidates promise to have somebody on the staff look into a question. But I have never seen a candidate turn back to the questioner and ask for advice. Richardson didn't treat the questioner like a student to be patronized, a voter to be wooed or, worse yet, a meaningless obstacle blocking the view of the national C-SPAN audience. He treated the student like a citizen who might be able to advise the governor on something he should know.

That's a quality I wouldn't mind seeing in the White House.

Throwing strikes

Jim Phelps stopped by The Outpost on Friday to pick up a couple of back issues on a topic of public interest. If you don't Phelps, you should. He is 91 now and still active in pursuing civic and environmental goals.

He's one of those old-school guys, shaped by the Depression and World War II, who seem to have everything right: tough, brimming with integrity, selfless, full of life. I'm not sure they make people like that anymore, and it will be a sad day when the last of them are gone.

Phelps, looking frail, had no complaints about his age or health. "I feel like a pitcher throwing a no-hitter," he said. "I don't know how long I can keep it up, but I'm just enjoying every pitch."

Hell of a guy.

What's righter

At long last, What's Right in Montana is taking steps to clear up the disaster that its comments section has become. Judging from the comments on this post, it has a ways to go.

O'Reilly saves Montana

Bill O'Reilly just blasted The Billings Gazette for this "ups and downs" item (third one down). O'Reilly called the item "blatantly dishonest" and said he was perfectly aware that the Montana Legislature meets only every two years but that it can meet in special session at any time.

"Until we got on their case, the state of Montana was dragging its feet," O'Reilly said.

Personally, I wish we had dragged a little harder.

Defending Gore

In comments below, "Frank Dugas" concludes that because I defended Al Gore against a specific second-rate piece of journalism, I am obliged to defend him under all circumstances. Why Dugas thinks that I don't know. But I hate to make a guest to the site look silly, so I will play along.

Gore has taken a beating over the last week over reports that his house uses way more electricity than the average house. The charge is not that Gore wastes energy, but that he is a hypocrite for urging others to save.

I'm not too interested in the question of how big a polluter Gore might be. Supposedly, he buys green energy and carbon offsets. Arguably, his use of electricity in the pursuit of persuading others to quit using so much is electricity well spent. But others can take up those arguments.

Let's focus instead on hypocrisy, a trait that appears to be part and parcel of modern life. Jesus told the rich man to go and sell all he had and give it to the poor. But few rich people who claim to believe in Jesus follow that advice. Warbloggers praise war to the heavens, so long as other lives are at risk. Dedicated greens drive cars to get to wilderness. Shop America first believers spend their dollars buying Chinese-made goods at Wal-Mart. I criticize the consolidated beef industry but munch on Big Macs. We all bear our little hypocrisies.

Where along that spectrum does Gore fit? Not much worse than average, I suspect. I wasn't the only viewer of "An Inconvenient Truth" struck by how modest the proposed solutions appeared to be compared to the enormity of the problem. Gore never asked much more of anybody than that they turn off lights when not in use, support green power and ride a bicycle when feasible. Indeed, Robert Samuelson has credibly argued that nothing we are likely to do about global warming is likely to help much.

Compare Gore's hypocrisy to that of global warming skeptics who seem to believe that they can burn as much energy as they want so long as they refuse to acknowledge that there's any problem. Like all of us, Gore has to answer for the difference between what he claims to believe and what he practices. But will those who foster willful ignorance get off any easier?

UPDATE: Wulfgar has much more here and here.

UPDATE 2: Asked about Ann Coulter's "faggot" bomb at CPAC, Sean Hannity responded:

You know, no other person is responsible for what a person says except that person. And so, if they have a problem with what Ann Coulter says, blame Ann Coulter. You can't blame somebody else for what she said. So I didn't see it.

Hannity, of course, loves to berate Democrats and liberals by demanding that they defend the remarks of other Democrats and liberals. It's one of his major rhetorical devices. That's hypocrisy in big boots.

On trial

I failed to mention that my other adventure on Monday was sitting on the jury panel for this trial. It was the third time I've been called for jury duty in the last four or five months, causing me to miss four German classes. No big deal and not much excitement, just a long slog through a series of fairly predictable questions.

Surprises? Maybe two. One was that even people who have sat on juries before have trouble distinguishing between civil and criminal cases. The other came after the prosecutor mentioned that the defendant was married to a member of the Nava family. When jurors were asked whether anything would keep them from judging the case fairly, the woman sitting next to me mentioned the notoriety of that name. The defendant, who was just a few feet away with his back to us, turned around and gave her a luck that struck me as one of pure menace. The prosecutor even complained to the judge about the defendant's "interaction" with the jurors.

I wasn't picked, and I still think I could have been an impartial juror, but I couldn't help but feel a bit safer for a moment knowing that this guy was in the custody of the state.

And while we are on the crime beat, I thought Greg Tuttle's series on the Beach case was splendid, but I was bugged by a quote from Assistant Attorney General Michael Wellenstein, who wrote that the parole board must "keep in mind that while it is indeed a travesty for an innocent man to spend his life in prison, it is a greater injustice for a guilty man to be set free when his victim and her family can never be set free from her brutal death."

Doesn't he have that exactly backward? And shouldn't he know better?

Woe is me

Last week, the Outpost printer messed up and left four pages out of the paper. The printer had to redo the whole run, and we didn't start putting them on racks until Thursday night.

This morning, my e-mail crashed and destroyed everything in the in-box. If you sent something to me recently, please resend. Otherwise, it's gone.

Then I had jury duty, 4 1/2 hours of waiting to not get picked. So tonight I'm trying to do the work I should have started last Friday when I was out delivering Thursday's papers. The merry-go-round keeps turning.

Sunni-Shiite

I just got eight out of eight right on this quiz. Does that mean I get to be president?

GOP dinner

I went to the Republican's Party's Lincoln Reagan Day Dinner last night, largely to see Stephen Moore, who writes for the Wall Street Journal and advocates for free enterprise. His message was predictable enough, and you can read Jim Gransbery's account here, or mine on Thursday or, since this is such a great country, you can read both. I asked Moore afterward about the Iraq War, which he hadn't mentioned among his reasons why Republicans lost out in the 2006 election. He acknowledged that the war probably had been the biggest issue in the election and mentioned, a bit surprisingly, that he had opposed the war. Or maybe not surprisingly, since he has been affiliated with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that opposed the war, just as it opposes most government enterprises.

There were no discouraging words about the war from Tamara Hall, who was the mistress of ceremonies for the event. She praised Bush and the war, and said she looked on the president as a "Christian brother who's carrying a load that no single person should have to carry." In what struck me as an odd bit of timing, she also screened a tribute to soldiers, complete with battlefield suffering, just as the Republicans were digging into their salads. It nearly put me off my feed. Maybe she was just being consistent with what appears to be the modern American ideal that war is just fine, so long as we don't have to pay for it.

She said a few other off-putting things. One was a story about a college professor who supposedly offered to prove to students that God doesn't exist by daring God to knock him off his lectern. God chose not to get involved, apparently, but a war veteran, so the story goes, obliged by tackling the professor, explaining himself by saying that God was awfully busy, what with the war and all, and had asked the veteran to act on His behalf.

She swore twice that the story was true, which I doubt. But even if it were, it would seem to say less about atheism among academics than about how quickly people can become violent when they fool themselves into thinking they are carrying out God's will.

But that was not the oddest story she told. That story was about some debate or another that she was in where a student asked what she would do to help students get through college. She said, approximately, that she replied, "It's not my job to get you through school." She said she told the student that it was up to him to get through college, taking on outside jobs and even dropping out for a time if necessary to save enough money to pay his own way.

The response had a self-reliant ring to it, and it drew a nice round of applause. But I couldn't help but think that talk like that also had something to do with Republican setbacks in 2006. After all, almost no students truly pay their own way through college. They go to state schools, they get scholarships and grants, they borrow money through government-backed loan programs, they (or their parents) benefit from favorable tax treatment. The government has its foot in the game every step of the way.

So unless one is seriously making the case (as Rick Jore might) that there should be no government support of any kind for higher education, then it misses the point to pretend that one is taking a principled stand against helping students get through school. All one is really doing is quibbling over the price.

It's easy to mistake a dollar sign for a principle. And if that is what Republicans are doing, then 2008 could be another long year.

Hannity vs. Gore

In a moment of temporary insanity, I watched a segment of "Sean Hannity's America" last weekend in which he attacked Al Gore and other "limousine liberals" for using private jets while bloviating about global warming.

Even by Hannity's standards, this was thin gruel. The only examples he had of Gore actually using a private plane dated from the 2000 election campaign, when Gore was the vice president of the United States. I wondered why I never noticed him back then on any commercial airliners, sharing a couple of rows of seats with the Secret Service.

And, of course, Hannity's concern wasn't that Gore might have been endangering the planet. It was that he might have been diluting the purity of American political discourse with the base alloy of hypocrisy.

President Bush is, of course, exempt from the charge. In 2000, he was in blithe denial about global warming, although by 2001, he was ready to admit that there might be something to it after all. That's OK. Bush didn't get global warming during the campaign, so he could fly however he wanted. Gore, who did get it, had to play by different rules.

Hannity doesn't object to all travel in private jets, just travel by people who suspect that private jets add to global climate degradation. Ignorance is bliss. And a much more convenient way to travel.

Bad blogger

As if I were not a lazy enough blogger, my comments section now has become overrun by spam. Every day, I delete a dozen or so pure spam comments, so now I am officially getting more comments from people who don't read the blog than from people who do.

I see papyrus in my future.

You say Iraq, I say Iran; let's call the whole thing off

The reprobate editor of The Outpost, having singularly failed to stop one Mideast war, waves his tiny sword in a futile gesture aimed at fending off another.

Molly Ivins, R.I.P.

Like many of us, I had a soft spot for Molly Ivins. She grew up in Crockett, Texas, a displaced liberal in the conservative piney woods where I cut my own journalistic teeth. I have met her and interviewed her a couple of times over the years. She even interviewed me once, when she was looking for tips on Texas women to write about.

Her first book was dedicated to another East Texan, who was a friend of mine. He occasionally sent her my columns, and in response to one of them she sent me what is still one of my prized possessions: a postcard of Ralph the Diving Pig with the note, “This is fan mail.”

None of that is to say that I knew her well, but I appreciated her courage and wit, and I will miss her. Now that she has died, maybe it’s time I went public with my favorite Molly Ivins story.

She started it in Texas, where she addressed a full house – perhaps 300 people -- in College Station (turn on George Bush Drive, past the Clayton Williams Alumni Center). She was talking about Kent Caperton, a popular Bryan senator who had announced that he would not run for re-election to the Texas Legislature. Caperton was a Democrat who managed to remain electable in his conservative district by his rational approach to difficult issues and his impressive negotiating skills. His most likely successor was a prominent Bryan official who was a rock-ribbed Republican.

After swearing the entire audience to secrecy, Molly Ivins told this story: She said that Carl Parker, another Texas Democratic senator who shared Caperton’s passion for politics but lacked his tact, was trying desperately to persuade Caperton to run again. Caperton was adamant; Parker began pleading. Finally, Parker said, “Look, if you’ll run again, I swear that I will go into every bar in north Bryan and tell everybody there that I, personally, have sucked [the prominent Bryan official’s] dick, and it’s small.”

Despite promises of secrecy, the story quickly made its way all over town and into nearby Bryan. Eventually, it reached the ex-wife of the city official’s brother, who was himself a prominent attorney in Brazos County. Her reaction: “Hmm. Must run in the family.”

When I saw Ivins a couple of months later in Austin, where we both had gone to shake hands with the queen of England, I told her that part of the story. Her response was a full-throated cackle – no other word could describe it – that I expect to carry with me to my own grave. May she rest in peace, if not perfect quiet.

Just asking

A news release from U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg says he is introducing federal legislation that "would put the House on record in support of maintaining 500 land-based intercontinental missiles."

His overriding goal, as the news release makes clear, is to protect jobs at Malmstrom Air Force Base: "'Malmstrom is a key player in terms of U.S. missile defense,' said Rehberg, a member of the House Appropriations Committee. 'Additionally, Great Falls and the surrounding community depend on the jobs and revenue Malmstrom provides.'"

He rests his case by mentioning "threats from countries like Iran and North Korea." I'm not sure what countries are "like Iran and North Korea." Between them, those countries may have -- what? -- one or two missiles, none of which may, in fact, work.

So even if those two countries ganged up against us, plus all the countries like them, plus all the rest of the countries in the world, is there still any conceivable reason why we would ever need 500 land-based intercontinental missiles? And is there any chance at all that those 500 missiles provide greater security than they do risk to us because of the chance that one might get fired or explode unintentionally? And how much risk are we willing to bear to preserve a few government jobs in Great Falls?

Just wondering.

UPDATE: When I wrote the above, I had not yet seen this news release from Sen. Jon Tester: “I was disappointed to learn that the Air Force is targeting the elimination of fifty Minuteman III missiles from Malmstrom Air Force Base. Malmstrom is critical to our national security and the economy of North Central Montana. I will continue to fight for Malmstrom and the Air Force in the United States Senate and I will work toward getting another mission at the base."

We need a thousand missiles! More jobs!

Montana headlines

I'm behind the curve as usual, I suppose, but an e-mail just brought my attention to Montana Headlines, a blog devoted to commenting on The Billings Gazette "and beyond." It's an interesting idea, although I can't say I'm terribly impressed by the early entries (except for the one that says my analysis of a recent Gazette editorial "can't really be improved on").

The most recent post says The Gazette used quotation marks to make Republicans look bad in a recent op-ed piece. It's true that quotation marks can be used to indicate skepticism or disbelief, but I sure didn't see that in the ones here. Well, it will be fun to watch.

Minimum wage

The Democrats are beating up on Denny Rehberg for failing to back a minimum wage increase to $7.25. For once, I'm leaning to Denny's side.

It's not that I'm against a minimum wage. I would even support a modest increase and would have supported Montana's increase in November if not for the indexing provisions. But for my tiny business, $7.25 is a chunk. We've been struggling to overcome the Autopost disaster and essentially have broken even over the last 16 months. When money's that tight, every dollar counts. This would be a big hit.

Can't we pass it along to customers? No, because the big boys don't have to. So where would it come from? Either somebody goes away, or it comes out of my pocket. And believe me, as the business owner and all around drudge, I make nowhere near minimum wage.

Some people would say that people who can't afford to pay anymore than we do probably shouldn't be in business. Maybe they're right. But there are plenty of people who would rather make less money working for somebody like us than flipping burgers for McDonald's. Soon, they may not have that choice.

UPDATE: In comments, Dave Rye approvingly quotes a George Will column from a couple of weeks ago. Kevin Drum spanked Will for that here.

Fishing with Max

From the Washington Post:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the new chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, is offering special interests a chance next month to go skiing and snowmobiling in Big Sky country. All it takes is a $2,000 donation per person or a $5,000 donation from a political action committee, according to a "Save the Date" solicitation his Glacier PAC sent out to lobbyists.

If lobbyists miss the first outing, they can still catch Baucus this summer for fly-fishing or horseback riding at "Camp Baucus," the invitation promises.

Wrong, wrong

The Gazette editorial board is wrong today about Dan McGee (scroll to the bottom). I'm sure McGee is sincere in his belief that the ethics initiative was unconstitutional, and he may even be right. His obligation to uphold the Constitution outweighs his obligation to uphold the majority opinion of Montana voters, so he is right to try to change a bill he thinks is unconstitutional, no matter where the bill originated. And he should try to change that bill in the least disruptive way -- that is, through the legislative process rather than through a lenghty lawsuit, which he probably in any case lacks standing to bring.

Congress and the Constitution

I'm really interested in the question of how much power Congress has to use its control of the purse strings to manage a war. Clearly, the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, although it never does that anymore. It seems clear to me also that Congress has the power to end war. But what about all of the points in between?

If Congress can, for example, restrict funds from being used to build up troop levels in Iraq, could it also pass a law requiring that, for instance, no money may be used to pay the salary of a general Congress considers incompetent?

Mind you, I'm not interested (yet) in whether it would be smart for Congress to try to micro-manage a war. I'm just interested in how much power it has to do so. I'm sure there is bound to be some good commentary out there on the topic, but I haven't found it, and I don't have much time to look. Any suggestions?

Fiasco finale

I stayed home from work for a couple of hours this morning to finish Thomas Ricks' "Fiasco." Time was running out: I started teaching a professional writing class at Rocky last week and MSU-Billings starts tomorrow (for me, anyway; students start on Wednesday).

It's quite a book. At times it's possible to imagine that it isn't about current events at all. Rather, it's a military history of some distant conflict that need no longer concern us. Ricks describes military operations in great detail and with great skill, and even he acknowledges in his notes at the end that he was amazed at how much information already is available: official unit reports, on-the-record interviews with soldiers and commanders, PowerPoint presentations, blogs, e-mails, transcripts.

The book essentially ends at the end of 2005, with only a brief afterword to bring matters up to the middle of 2006. That means we don't get Ricks' view of the latest "surge," but it's not hard to guess what his critique would be. His basic complaint is that both civilian and military leadership used the wrong kind of tactics to fight the wrong kind of war. Doing more of something that already isn't working is unlikely to lead to better results.

Still, there are notes of optimism near the end. One is improved training in counterinsurgency; another is at least slightly improved performance by Iraqi soldiers. Most important may have been improved tactics that led to successful operations in Fallujah and Tall Afar. At the same time, improved logistics have led to much better conditions for American soldiers. That cuts both ways: It boosts safety and morale but makes soldiers less likely to mingle with ordinary Iraqis, who will ultimately choose the victors.

But a grim tone hangs over the entire volume. The successful operations may not translate well to Baghdad, which is much larger and would require far more troops. And Ricks ends with four possible scenarios for the long term, each more frightening than the one before. The best would be a result similar to the Philippines, where Americans learned in a year or two to adapt to local conditions and effectively ended the war while leaving behind an occupying force for decades. The nightmare scenario is that a modern-day Saladin could arise who would combine popular support with huge oil revenues to pose a threat to the entire Western world. Gulp.

SIDEBAR: Edward Luttwak writes in the new Harper's that improved counterinsurgency tactics are irrelevant. The most effective way to deal with insurgents has been known since at least the Romans: brutal retaliation against any civilians who happen to be anywhere that attacks originate. It worked great for the Nazis. Of course, Luttwak says, those tactics are unacceptable in 21st century America, so we should not expect to be winning any wars against insurgents.

Dumber and dumber

Rarely has a letter to the editor disptuing global warming (or anything else) left itself so vulnerable to point-by-point demoliton:

1. The earth is always changing. For example, many areas of Montana were covered by water millions of years ago as evidenced by many rimrocks showing sediment layers deposited by water.

True but irrelevant. The fact that the planet changes naturally doesn't make it immutable to change by humans.

2. Twelve thousand years ago, a glacier stretched across northern Montana and into Minnesota. The glacier melted and changed the flow of the Missouri River from the Big Sag of Chouteau County to the Big Bend towards Big Sandy.

True, I guess, but utterly irrelevant. See Point 1.

3. Gore enormously simplifies the relationship of cause and effect.

For example?

4. Many, many weather scientists do not believe that human activity has anything to do with climate change. Blaming humans is a sensational news story; giving credit to Mother Nature isn't.

No. Not many.

5. Global weather is far more complex and mysterious than we have the ability to understand. A couple hundred years of observation by us humans isn't long enough to gain a meaningful understanding.

Since knowledge is incomplete, we must refuse to act. So if an armed intruder enters your house and you can't tell whether or not his gun is loaded, you should ignore him.

6. Forest and prairie fires, volcanoes and dust storms generate thousands of times more atmospheric pollution than human activity.

Irrelevant, especially if, as Gore predicts, the effects of human activity are increasing.


7. During the 1960s, weather "experts" were warning of global cooling.

Not true. Some popular articles in the '60s did make this claim, but scientists were always more cautious. The mostly widely cited scientific study that suggested this hypothesis, in fact, specifically excluded any possible effects of human activity.

I thought all of that was just about the dumbest thing I had read until I looked at the comments beneath it. Man, oh man.

Straight facts

Ed links to a post that dissects (and mocks) the "new jouralism." It's a piece well worth reading, but I was most struck by this reader comment: "I'm willing to forgive a lot of grammar and punctuation mistakes - as long as the facts are straight."

True enough, I suppose, but not often found in the real world. In my experience, the traits that make people good at grammar and punctuation also make them good at getting facts straight. I don't trust sloppy writers to have straight facts. I may have known an exception or two over the years, but damn few.

Fiasco II

I had to lay off "Fiasco" for a few days to catch up on getting out the paper and the end-of-the-year billing, but I invested a couple of more hours in it this morning.

The most remarkable thing about the book is the hard look it takes at the military's failures during the war. All but the most rabid war supporters have conceded that civilian mistakes made the war much harder than it had to be, but Ricks is the first I have read who holds the military's feet so close to the fire.

His basic critique: The military was so traumatized by Vietnam that instead of learning that war's lessons about how to fight counterinsurgency it simply ignored those lessons. Hard-won wisdom about waging war on insurgents gathered in Southeast Asia, as well as by the French in Algeria and the British in colonial wars, simply was unknown in much of the U.S. military, Ricks said.

The result was that tactical successes have not translated into strategic gains. The real battle is not between U.S. soldiers and insurgents; the real battle is for the support of the Iraqi people. U.S. ignorance about Iraqi language and customs, and its insistence on using overwhelming force to minimize casualties, have helped fuel civil war.

Ricks quotes one commander who in unapologetically defending his unit's ruthless tactics pointed out that he had lost no soldiers in combat. But Ricks argues that commanders must place their highest priority on winning the war, not just on avoiding casualties. If the only goal is to keep soldiers from getting hurt, then everybody could have just stayed home.

It's a bit bracing to read such a stern critique from someone who obviously knows his stuff. I've always been amazed at right wingers who readily assume that every single government employee, from the Cabinet down through Congress to the lowliest clerk in the Social Security office, is lazy and incompetent -- with one huge exception: the military. There every soldier is a hardworking hero and every officer is fearless and wise.

The reality, of course, is that the military is plagued by many of the same obstacles that make other aspects of government function so inefficiently. It's refreshing to hear from a journalist who has the guts to say so openly.

Balanced budget

U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg says he is sponsoring legislation to amend the U.S. Constitution to require the federal government to balance its budget.

"The spirit of the Balanced Budget Amendment is to stop using budget gimmicks to mislead the public about how taxpayer dollars are being spent," he said in a news release. "We balanced the budget in the Montana Legislature and there is no reason Congress shouldn't be able to do the same."

Actually, there are plenty of reasons, as Rehberg well knows. Just look at what the Bush administration did with the balanced budget it inherited. Regardless of what you thought of the tax cuts, do you suppose that a single American would have argued on Sept. 12, 2001, that we couldn't retaliate against Osama Bin Laden because there wasn't enough money in the budget?

Running the country just ain't the same as running Montana. Yes, Congress ought to do a far better job of balancing spending and revenues than it does. And it ought to cut out the budget gimmicks. No constitutional amendment is required for it do that -- just integrity and leadership.

Propaganda hacks

I have tried to be a good boy, but I felt particularly low and mean yesterday and visited Daily Pundit, Bill Quick's daily summary of all things incoherent.

His New Year's Eve text was the way MSM covered the 3,000th death of a U.S. soldier in Iraq. Quick surveyed the vast range of thousands of international newspaper and broadcast outlets and found nine that somewhere in their coverage used the phrase "grim milestone" to describe the death total. His conclusion: "Another Carnival of Originality brought to you by the propaganda hacks of the mainstream media."

Sure enough, if you enter "grim milestone" into Google, you get more than 600,000 hits. But if you enter "propaganda hacks," you get 1.3 million hits -- and two of the first three come from Daily Pundit. And those two don't include yesterday's entry.

Hacks of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your cliches.

Fiasco

My mother turned 94 on Thursday, and I am just back from visiting her and other family in South Texas for a few days. New fact I learned: My great-grandfather, who is buried in Nursery, Texas, fought for the 30th Kentucky Infantry during the Civil War. My brother Joe, who has done some research on all this, says that Crisps were fairly well represented on both sides of the war. So I come by my moderate extremism naturally.

I took the occasion of the trip to spend some birthday money on two books: "The Wal-Mart Effect" by Charles Fishman and "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks. "Fiasco," an account of how things got so screwed up in Iraq, kept me occupied yesterday through 10 hours of airport layovers. Powerful stuff, about which more later.

Atheist's holiday

I, too, was tempted to respond to Russ Bray's Dec. 11 letter in the Gazette, but this writer has done so with such grace and goodwill that I am glad to have stayed out of it.

It is odd, and significant, when people are tolerant of other religions but intolerant of those with none at all. To me, unbelief is like inability to fly. I can flap my arms all I want, but it won't get me off the ground. No doubt, it is a great benefit to have faith in some organized religion, but belief has to come from deep within, and if it isn't there, I know of no way to make it show up. Perhaps unbelief is genetic, like homosexual orientation.

And no good Christian would ever belittle a gay man for being the way God made him, right?

Dim wit

The sad opportunists at the MT GOP E-brief quote with apparent approval a letter to the editor (newspaper unnamed) attacking Gov. Schweitzer for his "assertion that Christians, believing in the biblical account of creation, should not be allowed to serve in the state legislature."

The letter writer may have been dim enough to think he was telling the truth. Later in the letter, he writes, "In the Governor’s view, if you are a Christian, you are not as worthy as the non-Christian members within your own or other races, and that, my friends, is racism." The writer's inability to distinguish between religious discrimination and racism can hardly be the product of a rigorous mind.

But the E-briefers surely ought to know better. The writer's apparent reference was to Schweitzer's brief run-in with Roger Koopman, who made the case for a 6,000-year-old Earth. Schweitzer supposedly said that Montana didn't need people like that in the Legislature. Koopman saw that as an attack on his religion, but he had specifically argued that he didn't believe in a young Earth for religious reasons but based on scientific evidence.

That destroys his case. Mr. Koopman is entitled to whatever religious beliefs he wants. But he can't claim a religious exemption from attacks on his scientific beliefs. By their nature, scientific claims are open to challenge. If they aren't, then they aren't science.

Mr. Koopman, and the E-Briefers, want to be able to put up any old thing they fancy as unassailable scientific fact. And they want to be label anyone who disagrees as a religious bigot. But the dishonesty of their tactics shows who the real bigots are.

Whew

The Outpost has been put to bed for the week. I turned in final grades for Rocky Mountain College this morning, and I have a week before final grades are due for MSU-Billings. So I'm getting a bit of a breather today. I wasn't sure I would be able to hold my breath for a whole semester, but somehow I managed it.

So what will I do with today's break? Well, I won't waste it blogging!

Perfect solution

A student paper I read the other day said that one cause of teacher retention problems is a "lack of insufficient funding." And I thought, this man can fix that problem!

Easy pickings

Why Republicans lost the election.

No thanks

I'm too dispirited to link to the numerous stories about retailers opening early on the day after Christmas (some as early as midnight) or even staying open on Thanksgiving itself. I never minded the old Blue Laws in Texas that kept most businesses closed at least one day every weekend. Taking an occasional respite from the demands of commerce has got to be good for the soul, and this nation could use a bit more soul.

The day before Thanksgiving, I ran into a convenience store clerk who was preparing to work the 3:30-11:30 p.m. shift on Thanksgiving Day. She wasn't happy, and I don't blame her. What's the value in losing a day of rest and peace with friends and family compared to the value of having one more place open where somebody can pick up a six pack or a pack of cigarettes on the holiday? There's no comparison.

The Thanksgiving retail crush is another instance of how traditional values have been reversed. Conservatives and Christians were the ones who pushed for the old Blue Laws in hopes that the idle time would turn people toward the spiritual or at least give the small business owner respite for one day a week from the grind of fighting big retailers.

Now the fight against holiday commercialization, to the extent that it is fought at all, seems to be another one of those hopeless causes taken on by liberals trying to shape the world in their own image. But for all those workers forced to work on Thanksgiving or to cut short their day off to resume the grind before dawn on Friday, what's lost is more than a day of peace and thanksgiving. It's another chunk of shared experience, of community and solidarity, chipped away.

And, I suspect, most of those Wal-Mart shoppers still think they are conservatives.

Good bet

Anyone who has ever wagered on the results of political races or football games knows how risky predictions are. But sometimes you can bet the farm, if you have one. At the writing lab, for example, I got a paper by e-mail with a note attached that said this: "I might have a lot of mistakes with grammers."

I would have bet a million bucks that the student's prediction was accurate. And it was.

Ben's big ones

Over at City Lights, Ed Kemmick comments about comments he made in response to comments about his Sunday column.

I liked the column and mostly agreed with it. But Ed errs when he says in his response to Mark that Ben Bagdikian sounds like a "chin-scratching sociologist."

Long before he became a chin-scratcher, Bagdikian was national editor of The Washington Post during the Pentagon Papers days. He was, according to David Halberstam's "The Powers That Be," the most eloquent voice at the Post in support of publishing the papers. Halberstam also reports that when Bagdikian served the Post as ombudsman he once told a group of blacks at Harvard that the purpose of the media wasn't to oppress black people, it was to make money. He told them that if they really wanted to have an impact, they should boycott the paper.

AP picked up the story, and Ben Bradlee threw it on Bagdikian's desk. Bagdikian admitted that he had said what was in the story and typed a letter of resignation, but Bradlee called him to apologize before he turned it in. On another occasion, when Bagdikian voluntarily entered prison to work on a series of stories, Bradlee said, "I've got to hand it to you, buddy. You've really got big ones."

"The Media Monopoly" is the classic in its field, and Bagdikian is required reading.

Crimes against humanity

So here is an American citizen, held for three years without charges, publicly defamed, possibly tortured and now quite likely not even guilty.

If impeachment is off the table, then who will answer for the crimes of this administration?

(hat tip to Andrew Sullivan).

The media future

Just a reminder: The Rimrock Foundation and The Outpost are sponsoring a seminar at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Mansfield Health Education Center. Panels will look at all aspects of the media, and Jerry Brown, dean of the University of Montana journalism school. is keynote speaker. It's free, and some food will be available. Don't worry about the RSVP mentioned in the paper. Just come ahead.

Pony up

Gee, I wonder if this piece of news will affect The Outpost's chances of cashing in on a chunk of change from the state's largest advertiser.

Small timer

It's no secret, I suppose, that I've never much cared for Conrad Burns. Some of the duller lights in the Montana blogosphere assume that's because he was too conservative, but that's not it. I like plenty of conservative Republicans and would be pleased to vote for quite a few. Last week I was trying to put my finger on why I felt the way I did, and I wondered if his atrocious grammar had something to do with it. Sounds petty, I know, but we form opinions about people based on all sorts of petty, irrelevant things, often without even knowing why we do it. The grammar was of a piece with what bugged me: I grew up in the country, around lots of country people, and his good ol' boy shtick just never sounded real to me (same with Bush).

Then I read this and remembered the real reason. He just always seemed too small for the job. Now that he's lost, he seems even smaller.

Habeas corpse

Before they pass minimum wage legislation, before they appoint new committee chairmen, even before they unpack the knick-knacks for their rolltop desks, the newly elected Congress persons need to push through a bill to eliminate this sort of violation of fundamental human rights. It's shameful.

Libertaricrats

I'm skeptical of stories like this one that cite "conventional wisdom" to suggest that Libertarian candidates draw votes from Republicans. Once upon a time, maybe, but I'm not so sure that's true this year. No doubt, Libertarians will never be comfortable voting for Democrats, but in this race at least Tester stood up for civil liberties, a balanced budget and more restraint in foreign adventurism. That's more than Burns could say.

Tester for president?

Jon Tester got more positive buzz last night on "Real Time with Bill Maher" than Conrad Burns probably got in three terms. I was too dog-tired to get up and write it down, but it went something like this:

First, Rainn Wilson said something like Tester is 7 feet tall and weighs 400 pounds. Just on presence alone, he should be the Democrats' candidate for president in 2008. Perhaps a Tester-Pelosi ticket.

Then, in New Rules (which should eventually be posted on the website) Maher singled out Tester's haircut. Not only does the hair make Tester look sincere and responsible, Maher said (or words to that effect), it makes him the one person in Congress who is literally level-headed.

As for why Tester won, I can't say that I have much to add to the usual punditry, except perhaps to point out that in a race this close almost anything could have done it. Perhaps if Burns had said "piss-poor" one less time in his life, he might have won. Perhaps if he had cast one less vote that helped Abramoff, he would have won. Perhaps if Burns had stood up even once against the president's misguided policies, he would have won. Perhaps if the Burns campaign had wasted a few less dollars pounding on his base in afternoon talk radio and had instead dumped an ad or two in less hospitable quarters, such as the Outpost, he might have won. Who knows?

The temptation is always to read too much into election results. But I can't recall a year in which I have heard so many members of the losing party admit at the national level that they deserved to get beat. I won't quarrel with that.

UPDATE: Maher's best joke: A fake political ad at the beginning of the show lambasted Democrats for the failures of their first three days of control of the Congress. Among their shortcomings: They have failed to find a way out of the endless quagmire in Iraq.

UPDATE TWO: Here's the actual New Rules quote: There's just something about a crew cut that says, "You can trust me." There's your boy. This is Montana's new senator, Jon Tester. I don't know much about him. And I don't need to. His hair says it all. "I'm friendly, I'm dependable, I'm literally level-headed." If hair could smile, it would look like this. And most importantly, it's hair that says, "You will never ever, ever, ever find me snorting meth with a gay hooker."

Politics tonight

I will be helping out with Community Seven's election coverage from 8-10 p.m. today before returning to finish this week's Outpost. See you on the other side.

Tighten up

Why Burns is closing the gap.

One vote for Burns

Rebecca Tescher Robison, publisher of the Yellowstone County News, has written the one newspaper editorial I have seen endorsing Conrad Burns. It was reprinted in the Big Sky Business Journal, so you can find it here.

I like Becky and respect her work. I have called her the best newspaper editor in Yellowstone County. I think that we both want similar results from government. So how can we disagree so thoroughly on Burns vs. Tester? Let's take a closer look at why she backs Burns.

He's against raising taxes.

True, but he certainly doesn't seem to be against spending tax dollars. Fiscal conservatism means spending no more than necessary and paying for what you buy. That ain't Burns.

He does NOT support a 23 percent sales tax. He supports a national sales tax but won’t support a tax increase but will consider it only as a replacement tax. No one is sure where his opponent got the 23 percent figure.

The 23 percent is, presumably, what it would cost to use a national sales tax as a replacement tax. I think Tester is silly to make an issue of this ridiculous proposal, but, let's face it: Burns did say he supported it.


Tester does not support the Patriot Act – Burns does.

Fair enough. I'm not one of those who thinks the Patriot Act is the disaster that some civil libertarians fear. Even the ACLU now thinks the act isn't so bad. But Burns also supports the far more damaging Military Commissions Act, which gives the government powers unimagined in the Patriot Act.

Burns is pro economic growth. State Senate President Jon Tester, apparently, is anti-growth and anti-jobs.

The sole evidence offered for this assertion is that Tester voted against allowing the Bull Mountain mine permit to be passed along to a new owner without further government review. The potential for abuse in such transactions seems obvious, and the state's risk, particularly for reclamation, is substantial. Tester's vote may or may not have been wise, but it doesn't sound anti-growth.

Burns is anti-abortion, pro-marriage. Tester is a die-hard supporter of abortion.

I've seen no evidence that Tester is a die-hard supporter of abortion. He does oppose a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Good for him. The Constitution should not be the place where Americans resolve controversial moral debates. It is the place we go once those debates have been resolved.

"Pro-marriage" appears to be code for "anti-gay marriage." Again, Tester opposes a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Again, he is right to do so, for the reason cited above.

Burn is for a less intrusive government, smaller government.

Even six years ago, I might still have believed that. But no more. Burns has faithfully backed an administration that has plunged this country into massive deficits, ill-considered foreign wars and an unprecedented expansion of executive power. Even Burns' campaign ads, which focus on his skill in steering tax dollars our way, sound like they could have been written for a liberal Democrat. Tester won my vote when I heard him tell Yellowstone County Democrats that if all they cared about was bringing more tax dollars to Montana, then they probably shouldn't vote for him.

The rest of the editorial focuses on the Abramoff allegations. The thrust is that no evidence has surfaced to prove that Burns has committed a crime. True enough, and I don't really much care about Abramoff. Only Burns can know in his heart whether Abramoff's dollars influenced his votes. But I do think that the Abramoff allegations add to the perception that Burns has been in Washington too long, to too little good effect.

It's time for him to go.

UPDATE: Here's Keith Olbermann's blistering take on the Military Commissions Act.

Kerry on, men

The most interesting aspect of the Kerry flap has been the outrage, some of it presumably authentic, some dismally fake. But the notion that armies draw disproportionately from the ranks of the poor and uneducated is hardly a novel assertion, least of all among soldiers themselves.

An old Chinese proverb said, "Just as one does not use good metal to make nails, one does not use good men to make soldiers." When I was a soldier in 1970, I kept that slogan on the wall of my room in the barracks in Monterey, Calif. If anyone ever took offense, I never heard about it. I remember riding in a car full of soldiers as it drove by a hitchhiking soldier thumbing for a ride. "Suck out, GI," the driver said as we roared past.

The notion that most of us were serving because we were too poor, too dumb or too politically naive to manage to stay out was such a given that suggesting otherwise rarely raised an eyebrow, much less anyone's ire. And the notion persisted despite the obvious fact that it simply wasn't true for lots of soldiers. It was more of a grim, ongoing joke than a statement of reality.

Those were draftee days, of course, and I have no doubt that the Army has changed. It already was changing by the time I was discharged in 1973. But things haven't changed entirely. I heard a soldier on NPR talk about seeing "Forrest Gump" at a military base with an audience full of soldiers. In the scene where Gump met the military recruiter, someone in the audience shouted out, "Run, Forrest, run."

And there's this, which suggests that the old tradition still hasn't died. Some have seen this as an angry attack on Kerry; others have suggested that it actually defends Kerry. I can't know the soldiers' motives, but I suspect that it may not really convey any particular political message at all. It may just be new soldiers picking up on an old riff and turning it into a laugh, the way soldiers have done for centuries. Too bad Kerry couldn't have told his joke this well.

Bloggadocio

Sean Hannity has practically built his career by taking John Kerry out of context, so it was hard to endure Hannity's shameless delight in making constant Kerry attacks on Thursday while I was delivering The Outpost. But I felt obligated to listen: I thought I might get a chance to file an FCC complaint if I could catch Hannity having an on-air orgasm.

But what really struck me was the relentless onslaught of Burns and Tester ads. I bet I heard 50 in two hours. Amazing. How many undecided voters do you suppose there are listening to Sean Hannity on KBLG on a Thursday afternoon five days before the election? Three dozen? An awful lot of money is chasing an awfully small pot of voters.

Today reminds me of what the opening day of hunting season used to be like when we lived in the country: Random shots going off all around, making us both afraid to leave the house and afraid to stay home. The only difference is that this time we really are the prey. The phone's ringing, fliers are piling up in the mailbox, handbills are hanging from the doorknob, canvassers are knocking on the door.

Just stand back, everybody. No reason why anybody needs to get hurt.

Comments down

Just got an e-mail from someone wondering why we decactivated comments on the Outpost website. I looked and, sure enough, comments were down.

We didn't do it on purpose and will try to get it fixed as soon as possible. But it explains why we have had no reader reaction to our endorsements last week -- an unusual development.

What it doesn't explain is why spam comments continued to get through. For the last week, we have had a website that blocks reader comments but allows spam to pass through. Now that's technology.

Push polled

I keep trying to listen to one of these automated push polls all the way through to the end, but I always get mad and hang up. It happened again Saturday. The poll asked if I intended to vote for Tester. Then it asked if I intended to vote for Burns. Then it asked if I would prefer lower or higher taxes.

OK so far. But the next question got to me. It was, approximately: "Do you believe that terrorists should have the same constitutional rights as American citizens?" (If anybody else who was called got the question down more exactly, please let me know.)

I said, "What do you mean?"

Of course, the automaton on the other end couldn't handle that. It said that the call would be terminated unless I answered "yes" or "no."

I shouted into the phone.

"Good!" I said. "Then stop asking such moronic questions."

So I never got to hear the rest of the poll. But what the heck? Suspected terrorists who are Americans obviously have the same constitutional rights as other Americans. You can't deprive someone of constitutional rights simply by hanging on a label. Only Americans who have been caught actually carrying out or plotting acts of terror, or who have actively taken up arms against the country, lose any constitutional rights.

Terrorists who aren't Americans don't have the same constitutional rights as American citizens, but then neither does, say, Tony Blair. So what's the point of the question?

Sounds to me like a subtle way of asking if I'm OK with torturing terror suspects and eliminating habeas corpus and locking people away forever with no charges, no trial and no lawyer. And no, I'm not OK with that. On that point, the push-poll recording was as dense as the president.

Endorsements

Outpost endorsements are here. By far the toughest was the Rehberg-Lindeen race.

On one hand, I've gotten to know and respect Rehberg a bit over the years. I think he has gotten better as time has gone by, and I think he listens to his constituents. On the other hand, I have a very tough time endorsing anyone who voted for the war in Iraq and who sat by as the Bush administration assaulted liberty and institutionalized torture. The entire Montana delegation has been pathetically weak in standing up for liberty.

I guess the consolation is that our endorsement is likely to have little effect either way. But in my heart, I still am not sure how I will vote.

CBS in the dumps

CBS reached a low tonight that makes the Bush fake documents story look like Pulitzer quality work. Katie Couric introduced Sean Hannity as guest commentator.

Sean Hannity! Don't we get enough of this blowhard? Three hours a day on the radio, an hour on cable TV, a couple of crappy books -- what insight into the political world could Hannity possibly have that we haven't already heard a hundred times?

None, actually. He used his time to decry the politicization of the war on terror. Incredibly, the only examples he could find of politicians who have tried to exploit the war for political purposes were Democrats. Amazing. It's the same theme he has pounded on his radio show virtually every single day for the last five years. And he still hasn't found a single Republican who has had anything but the highest possible, thoroughly apolitical motives in discussing the war. Edward R. Murrow would be spinning in his grave if he hadn't already burrowed his way to the other side of the earth.

Tuesday night: Arianna Huffington. I can't wait!

Profiling

The Montana Department of Transportation just got a $644,000 federal grant to deter racial profiling. Just asking: Is racial profiling really a $644,000 question in Montana?

One for Tester

In tonight's debate, Jon Tester nailed Conrad Burns on Iraq. Burns' implication that a secret plan exists that will tell us when we have won the war is the most ludicrous thing I've heard in any of the debates. Tester responded with real eloquence and passion, and may have salted the election away right there.

No surprises in the first debate. I like both candidates and thought they both acquitted themselves well. Denny Rehberg came across as a tad more polished and knowledgeable, but Monica Lindeen may have won just for beating expectations. I can't see that the debate will put any dent into Rehberg's lead.

Guns for Burns

From the National Rifle Association comes a news release touting its campaign support for Conrad Burns: seven billboards, 4,143 radio ads on 88 stations, 1,824 cable TV ads, inserts in 11 newspapers.

I wonder why? Jon Tester claims he's a strong Second Amendment guy, and I haven't heard any reason to dispute that. Why isn't the NRA spending its money where it might make a real difference?

I can think of only three reasons:

1. The NRA is supporting Republicans everywhere.

2. The NRA thinks Burns will win and wants him to be happy.

3. It's payback time.

Votes for Tester

I had my journalism students at Rocky Mountain College watch last week's Burns-Tester debate and write a brief story about it. When I asked for a show of hands on who they thought won the debate, they favored Tester by about 4-1.

Bear in mind: This is a group of busy college students. None had seen any of the other debates and none has followed the race closely (on a recent editing quiz, no one caught the error in this phrase: U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, D-Mont.). Their responses to the debate seemed to be based less on the candidates' positions than on how they answered questions and stated their positions.

I don't know that any of that means anything, but I thought the edge the students gave to Tester was striking. I've seen three of the debates and rated them all roughly as draws.

Tough talk

Even by the standards of this year's Montana Senate campaign, the latest news release from the Montana Democratic Party seems harsh. The release goes after ads in which former Gov. Marc Racicot backs Conrad Burns' candidacy.

"Marc Racicot, fondly recalled by some in Montana who have lost track of his career, is at the very heart of the culture of corruption in Washington under Republican control," the release says. The release goes on to call Racicot a "Jack Abramoff-type figure in Washington" and adds, "Racicot is a paid agent of big corporate special interests who game the system in Burns and Rehberg’s Washington everyday.”

Next target: Abe Lincoln, another Republican who came to a bad end in Washington.

Torturous

One of my Democratic friends was railing again last week against the ruination of America brought on by Bush and his minions. My usual response to this tirade is to advise her, in various ways, to chill out. Things aren't that bad, I say. Stick around a bit and watch them change.

But last week I didn't have it in me to argue. What brought me down was passage of the administration's pro-torture bill. As time allows, I've been struggling to understand the full impact of the bill. I haven't got through it all yet, and I still hold out some hope that I am misunderstanding much of this. But the search is profoundly discouraging, and I am losing hope. I keep thinking: The war on terror is over, and we have surrendered.

I've been critical of this country at times, but I have never felt ashamed to be an American. Now I feel shame.

Tester online

My Jon Tester profile for Montana Quarterly is now available to those of us in the cheap seats. In case your computer-generated ADD prevents you from reading the whole thing, Ed Kemmick has a spot-on summary.

In the Outpost comments, Rocky Smith says we should now bill ourselves as the "Democrat party weekly." Funny thing is, because of various deadlines, I did most of the reporting for that piece a couple of months ago, so I just sort of assumed that its fundamental assertion -- that Tester is a decent, likeable guy who may (or may not) have the stuff to make a good senator -- would have been called into question by now. But it hasn't. No matter how hard Burns attacks, I haven't heard him or anyone else go after Tester's basic integrity and decency.

So when a report of a near universal consensus that a human being is an OK guy is dismissed as partisan fluff, I am left to wonder what could possibly remain that isn't partisan.

Segregated swimming

Occasionally, a student nails it. In the business class I sit in on at Rocky, discussion yesterday turned to laws banning smoking in restaurants and other public places. One student expressed frustration over restaurants that place non-smoking areas just a table or two away from smoking areas.

One student chimed in: "That's like having a 'peeing area' in a pool."

Richards vs. Keenan

I watched the Butte debate between Burns and Tester this a.m., and I came out wishing that Bob Keenan and Paul Richards had been slugging it out instead. Keenan, at least, would have given us honest talk about the government's pitiful record on deficit spending, and Richards would have made sense about Iraq.

Instead we get Burns hypothesizing that we will grow our way out of the deficit, just the way Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did it. Except, of course, that what Kennedy and Reagan did didn't work. Tax cuts were followed by revenue increases, to be sure, but that didn't stop deficits from growing. Now, with a wildly expensive war going on, we get deficits piled upon deficits, with no end in sight.

And from Tester we get - what exactly? - about Iraq. I don't hear him flip-flopping, the way Republicans claim they do. I just don't hear any clear position at all. Richards would have pointed out that, if in fact the war in Iraq is leading to more terrorism, not less, then "stay the course" is not only expensive and impractical, it's downright stupid. We need a change of course, and fast. Creating the first pro-torture presidential administration in U.S. history isn't going to get the job done.

So we get a lame, watered-down debate, a greatest-hits edition of sound bites and conventional wisdom. I'm holding out for Keenan-Richards.

UPDATE: Interesting comments below about the merits of staying and leaving Iraq. This month's Harper's magazine has a plan by George McGovern and William R. Polk on how to get out of the war. I'm not expert enough to judge the merits of the plan, but what strikes me is that it is at least a plan. Why can't we get a plan from our own government? All we get are "stay the course" and "cut and run," neither of which makes any sense. Everybody knows we have to leave Iraq sometime -- my grandkids may have to fight there, but their grandkids won't -- so why not plan for it? And why not have that discussion in a public forum among representatives chosen by the people to stand up for our interests -- say, Congress, for example?

Bob Lyon

I was sorry to see in the Gazette this morning that Bob Lyon had died. He was one of a disappearing breed: a tireless Democratic loyalist with a keen sense of the larger needs of the nation and the community.

I didn't always agree with him, and he didn't always agree with me. He subscribed to The Outpost from its inception until we began running Rob Natelson's column in The Outpost -- that was too much for his liberal sensibilities. As a letter writer, he was an indefatigable jewel: His letters were varied, succinct, and capably written. Although he often wrote both to The Outpost and The Gazette on the same topics, he always recast his message so we each got a fresh letter.

He had been ill for some time, and his death is no surprise. But it is a loss.

Punch the clock

I like this idea.

R but not quite IP

What's Right in Montana takes note of the general lack of posting here and draws the usual sort of comments. I can't apologize for not posting more; with my schedule, it would be irresponsible to even try. I started this blog (the first by a working journalist in Montana) in part out of a hope to supplement the Outpost's weekly news coverage with daily updates and commentary. That still sounds like a good idea to me, but it just isn't practical at the moment. I've got to earn some cash.

Infrequent posting does mean that I will miss commenting on some things of which I might otherwise have taken note, including a couple of things on What's Right in Montana:

1. The remarkable discovery that "disavowed" implies liberal bias.

2. This enlightening essay on how much Jon Tester and Conrad Burns "like" taxes. The post misses an obvious point: In my 2 1/2 decades around politicians, I don't believe that I have ever met one who "likes" taxes. What politicians like is spending because spending allows them to keep constitutents happy and make election-year claims about how successful they are at bringing home the bacon. Responsible conservatives resist the urge to spend; responsible liberals have the political courage to tax. That natural tug of war is supposed to keep the system in balance.

But Tester, whose experience is in state government, doesn't have the same luxury that Burns has in Congress. The Montana Legislature has to balance its budget, so if Tester wants to spend money, he has to find revenues somewhere. Burns just has to tack a few hundred billion more onto the deficit.

What I'm waiting for is some genuine conservative to explain to me how it is fiscally responsible for a senator to support, say, a war that costs a billion or so bucks a day and then not only refuse to levy the taxes to pay for it but actually support tax cuts that dig the hole even deeper. Any takers?

Finally, I might just note that my interest in the whole blogging phenomenon has waned in recent months. I'm not persuaded that it is a good use of my time, and I'm not persuaded that I have the temperament for it. This may sound odd coming from a guy who has probably a million words in print, but writing always has been a struggle for me, and adding it to the responsibility of running a business and teaching doesn't make it any easier. Lots of days I just look at that blank computer screen and think, not my job to fill it.

P.S. I did a profile on Tester for Montana Quarterly that is now hitting the stands. Look for it everywhere!

Dem bloggers

Get your blogger kit today!

So long as you are a Democrat.

Blogging up

I asked my journalism students my usual questions about blogging, something I have done for about five years now. The first couple of years few students had even heard of blogging; now they all have. But none read any of the prominent political blogs (although one blogs here) and only a scattered few had heard of any of them. Instapundit, Daily Kos, etc., all pretty much drew a blank. They do their blogging, if any, at myspace.com.

Where do they get their news? Nothing got a majority of votes, but local TV news appeared to be the main source. The Gazette probably ran second, especially when online reading is counted. Comedy Central and radio got a few scattered votes, but national TV, including the 24-hour news channels, didn't get much. I didn't ask about the Outpost; no need to give anyone an incentive to lie.

So how much do they know about the news? Too early to tell, but not much, if past experience holds. Not that that's a bad thing: My days on the road and my college days were the only two times in my life when I didn't read a paper every day.

And there's this: Of the 35 students in my two classes, only one had seen "An Inconvenient Truth." So you ideologues who worry that Al Gore is corrupting young minds can rest easy.

UPDATE: In comments, someone asks how many of my students had seen a Michael Moore movie. Just for the heck of it, I asked my 15 English students that question this morning. About four hands went up.

blogged down

There actually are good reasons why you don't see me blogging here. School started at Rocky Mountain College on Aug. 22, so I've been teaching my journalism and first-year writing courses out there. MSU-Billings begins Wednesday, and I will be teaching two German courses there. And I'm teaching a community outreach course on media issues at MSU-Billings beginning in late September. And tutoring for a few hours a week.

On top of all that, the Outpost just had one of its most profitable months ever. That's good news, but bigger papers mean a lot more work. So I've been a busy boy.

And, as a final note, we also are working on a pretty dramatic overhaul of the Outpost website that could make it far more useful than it has been up to now. When that happens, the blog, at least in this form, is likely to go away forever.

So if you are wondering why there is nothing to see here, that's why.

Rethnking executions

A colleague takes me to task for my comments on the Gazette's coverage of the Dawson execution. This required me to actually think about what I wanted to say, rather than just mouthing off in grand blogger fashion. So here are the relevant parts of my response to him:

Please understand that much of my reaction to this story was as a citizen and a reader rather than as an editor. As an editor, I understand the arguments Dave Rye made on my blog, and I would have taken that into account if I had been the one making the calls at the Gazette. I would have played the story down some but would have run most of the same stories. Most of those stories are almost obligatory in a case like this: the last meal, the witness to the execution, the recounting of the crime, the protests, etc. I probably even would have run the story about Dawson not giving interviews, but I would have boiled it down and buried it inside. Also (in one other specific example that comes to mind) on the day that the Brits broke up the terrorist plot, I would have played that above Dawson.

In short, as a reader and citizen I probably would have been just as appalled by the Gazette's coverage if I had been directing it. I have no moral objections to the death penalty, but I do object to the wall-to-wall coverage that these cases always seem to generate. Some people say the death penalty deters criminals. I doubt that, and I suspect that the extensive coverage these cases generate actually appeals to a certain sort of sick criminal mind -- the sort that is, in fact, most likely to commit such hideous crimes. If I were to make a case against capital punishment, media coverage of any recent execution would be Exhibit No. 1.

When I say that I really don't care whether a character like Dawson lives or dies, I mean that. I doubt that I read 10 percent of the Gazette's coverage, and I don't think I read any of the stories about legal efforts to stop his execution. I just didn't want to know.

So my real complaint is not that the Gazette abused journalistic discretion. The Gazette did, by and large, what the tenets of daily journalism compelled it to do. It's the tenets of journalism that worry me, both as a reader and a citizen, and I should have made that clearer in my comments.

Not smart

This strikes me as a major screwup by the Tester campaign (thanks, as usual, to Jackie Corr).

Every child left behind

This Denver Post editorial does a good job of summing up the problems with No Child Left Behind but then draws the odd conclusion that the legislation can be fixed, as if it were a good idea that simply needed tweaking.

Wrong. It was a bad idea whose problems arise from its very nature -- the idea that the federal government in Washington, D.C., can run schools better than the states and cities where schools actually exist. It was bound to fail, it has failed, and it ought to be scrapped.

Cold and dead

I guess I have no news sense, but this strikes me as the most overblown story in years.

Somewhere deep inside, I suppose I should care whether David Dawson lives or dies, but the fact is that I don't. He died unrepentant and unmourned. Let him lie.

UPDATE: In comments, Dave Rye makes good points about the newsworthiness of the event, but he doesn't change my assessment. Too much, too often. Where it started to run off the rails for me was with this story. The lead story in the City-State section was that Dawson wasn't giving interviews. That isn't news. That's milking the story.

So long

Congratulations, Wal-Mart shoppers. You bagged another one.

Rack Wars revisited

The latest on the ongoing battle for rack space in Montana is in this week's Outpost. Be sure to read the first reader comment at the bottom (he says, self-servingly).

A few hours after the column came out, I got a phone call from Billings Gazette Publisher Mike Gulledge. I was delivering papers all day, so we haven't connected yet, and I've had time to think about what he might want. I don't get many calls from the Gazette publisher, so I've narrowed it to a few possibilities.

1. He wants to buy a subscription, or perhaps the entire paper.

2. He wants to offer me a job.

3. He wants to congratulate me on another fine issue of The Outpost and wish me continued success in future journalistic endeavors.

4. He wants to offer to join in solidarity in our mutual fight against the evil predator Gannett.

5. He has a complaint about my column.

After thinking it over, I've concluded that 1 through 4 aren't too likely. So I'm expecting 5. Stay tuned.

Thursday's Outpost delivery epiphany

The following 100-percent true live-action scene is presented here precisely as it will be depicted in the soon-to-be-acclaimed upcoming feature motion picture "Burger King Dude."

SCENE: A motorist approaches a Burger King drive-through. On the drive-through menu are a Fish Filet Sandwich and a Big Fish Sandwich. Each sells for $2.69.

MOTORIST (into the drive-through speaker): So what's the difference between a Fish Filet Sandwich and a Big Fish Sandwich?

BURGER KING DUDE: Nothing.

MOTORIST: In that case, I'll have one.

BURGER KING DUDE: Which one?

Hines update

Silly me. I thought T.L. Hines had given up blogging. But he has instead moved to classier digs and will be reading from his new novel at Barnes & Noble at 2 p.m. Saturday. Way to go.

Sayonara Cine 3

Tough times for Carmike.

Heating up

As its name suggests, the Fire Fact Sheet from the Bureau of Indian Affairs normally is a no-nonsense report. But with high temperatures, gusty winds and dry lightning storms in the forecast today, the BIA waxes a bit lyrical:

Forest areas smell good this week; it's been so hot and dry that even the trees' aromatic oils are evaporating. Logs hold only 4% fuel moisture, only half as damp as kiln-dried lumber. Fires are burning actively all through the night.

Fuels Specialist Randy Pretty On Top said, "We're hanging in there, but with the weather they're predicting, I can hear the tune 'Garryowen' playing in my left ear."

Time to get Sen. Burns on the fireline!

Bound to lose

A real estate agent called who was upset about Roger Clawson's column on the possibility of fire in the Emerald Hills. That's fine. I wasn't too crazy about the tone of the column myself, but Roger gets a lot of rope in my shop. She acknowledged that the fire danger is real but said that the column should have taken a positive and constructive approach.

Here's what bugged me: She said she would urge other real estate agents not to advertise in the Outpost. She herself has never, to my knowledge, run an ad in the Outpost, and she also said that she doesn't normally read it.

The Outpost, of course, runs many positive and constructive articles. To cite just one example, we run a weekly Calendar of Events, typically 4,000 to 6,000 words long, that is chock full of fund-raisers, benefits and nonprofit events. And we don't charge a nickel for it.

So here's a woman who ignores the Outpost when it publishes positive news. She reads it only when she can find something to be angry about, and she uses that anger to try to hurt our business.

So if we're positive, we lose. If we're negative, we lose. No wonder newspapers are in trouble.

Outlawed

The last time I went to a Billings Outlaws game, I said someone would have to pay me a hundred bucks to go again. Well, someone did, so I went.

The Fayetteville, N.C., Observer came up short a stringer a couple of hours before game time on Friday and called in desperation. The sports editor offered me $100, so I borrowed a laptop and headed out.

I hated it. From the moment I walked in the door at a quarter to six, until the last bit of recorded music faded at 10:30 p.m., it was an unrelenting onslaught of noise and hype. Everything I wrote before still applies, with at least one new twist. The public address announcer, instead of simply saying, "Third down," has adopted the habit of yelling, "Third down! Third down! Third down! Third down! Third down!" He is trying to create a once-in-a-lifetime "Giants win the pennant!" moment every time two passes fall incomplete. In 39 states, this is a capital offense.

I'm an old sports writer, but my skills have rusted, and the Observer is two hours east of here, so I had a tight deadline. Also, MetraPark's internet was down. So I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out a way to get my story to North Carolina. Then the contact number I had stopped working.

By the time the third quarter rolled around, I was typing play-by-play directly into my story, polishing the top of the story between plays, keeping notes on the action and trying every couple of minutes to place a phone call. Those blogging jerks who think reporters are lazy ought to give it a try sometime.

I wound up doing the story the old-fashioned way: With the game still in progress, I called in the story to a rewrite man, who turned it into serviceable English. With all the noise, he could barely hear me, and I couldn't hear him at all. I literally shouted myself hoarse into a cell phone. But we got it done, and someday I may get up the courage to actually read the story.

But the next time somebody offers me a hundred bucks to see an Outlaws game, I may just say that my price has gone up. I would rather spend a night in Abu Ghraib.

UPDATE: The Gazette story today emphasizes poor sportsmanship on the part of the Fayetteville Guard. But the worst case of poor sportsmanship I saw was when the execrable PA announcer went down onto the field (which should be a violation in itself) with about five minutes to go and the game still technically possible for either team to win. He urged fans to stick around after the game for the presentation of the championship trophy to YOUR BILLINGS OUTLAWS!

Is there a class below no-class? That's the class he's in. I thought the Guard showed admirable restraint by not dismembering him on the spot. If they had, I would have contributed to their legal defense fund.

Professional courtesy

The Daily Kos has been tracking spending on initiatives similar to those on the ballot in Montana this fall. One outfit this post examines is called America at Its Best out of Boise, Idaho.

The head of that group is Duncan Scott, who, the AP says, is "a former Republican state senator from New Mexico who once sponsored a bill there to require a psychologist testifying at a defendant's competency hearing to wear a two-foot-tall cone-shaped hat imprinted with stars or lightning bolts."

And New Mexico legislators should have to wear cone-shaped hats imprinted with the letters "D-U-N-C-E."

Occupation or liberation?

In one of Sen. Conrad Burns' latest radio ads, he says that Jon Tester has inaccurately referred to U.S. troops in Iraq as an occupying force. It's as though he thinks that occupying forces are bad things. Why?

We had occupying forces in Germany and Japan for years. It had its rough points here and there, but I think you would find very few Germans, Japanese or Americans who would say that it was bad. We removed despotic governments, established democracies, helped rebuild vibrant economies and provided a bulwark of protection against outside threats. I doubt that you could find more successful examples of military occupations in world history.

At some level, Sen. Burns knows that, so he doesn't come out and say that it's bad to call what we're doing in Iraq an occupation. He just says that it's inaccurate. Instead, it is an army of liberation. Really?

Let's look at a couple of undisputed examples, both from World War II.

A. An invading army conquers France. U.S. forces counterattack, drive out the invading force and, in effect, tell the French, "Here's your country back, to do with as you please, no matter how much you may annoy us." That's liberation.

B. We invade Germany, dismantle its government, and, in effect, tell the Germans, "You can't have your old government back. You have to form a new government, and we aren't leaving until you get it right, and we decide that it's safe to go." That's occupation.

So does what we are doing in Iraq more closely resemble A or B? And is the senator really all that concerned about semantic accuracy?

UPDATE: Apparently I was wrong when I said the above examples were undisputed. David Berg on "Berg in the Morning" just said that U.S. forces in Germany were an army of liberation, not of occupation. So Burns was right to criticize Tester, not because what he said was inaccurate but because what he said was impossible: Armies of occupation do not exist (at least not American armies).

Burns: not so bad

In recent days, I've been getting a pile of e-mails from the office of U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns about appropriations he has wrangled for Montana. It's no mystery why: His seat is crucial, and he is in danger of losing it, just as he was against Brian Schweitzer six years ago. So the Republican-controlled Congress will be shooting money Montana's way with great alacrity.

I wonder how much of Burns' vaunted ability to bring home the pork for Montana relies on the fact that he is such a vulnerable candidate? In fact, it occurs to me that if you love big government (and who doesn't?) Burns is the ideal senator for this state: weak enough that he always needs help and strong enough that he can't be written off entirely.

I'm not sure how you work that notion into a political campaign. Here's my best slogan so far: Conrad Burns -- just good enough. Better submissions are welcome.

UPDATE: How about this one? Conrad Burns: Good enough for government work.

Election officially over

That wily Outpost editor has figured out how the Democrats can win.

UPDATE: Between the time I wrote that column and the time The Outpost hit the streets, the court-stripping vote on the Pledge of Allegiance did, in fact, come before the House again, and it passed. Of the 260 votes for the bill, 221 were cast by Republicans.