E-mail down

If you sent an e-mail to editor@billingsnews.com between 7:03 p.m. Tuesday and 2:56 p.m. Wednesday, you had better resend. We were down for a while.

Shield laws

The Outpost editor recently saw "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," a movie in which a key scene involves Uma Thurman placing her finger up a turtle's butt.

We thought the turtle overplayed the scene. He managed to keep a poker face, but stuck his head out of his shell with a bit more alacrity than the script required.

Nevertheless, the Outpost editor was inspired enough to stick his own head out of the shell far enough this week to write about this interesting case involving Montana's shield law.

While you are there, you will want to take a look at Roger Clawson's column, in which he poses his own odd but strangely appropriate entry in the competition to give Billings a new catchphrase. Clawson left his shell behind long ago.

Conservatives at the border

Dave Budge links, with disapproval, to a John Cole post that says, among other things, that conservatism today is is

a joke, an empty suit- it means whatever you want it to mean, and right now it means double Gitmo, permanent war, hating on liberals, and tax cuts forever.

Which brought to mind a conversation I have been having with myself over conservative opposition to John McCain for, among other things, his position on immigration. The nature of the immigration bill that McCain supported has been widely distorted, but set that aside. Let's ask the fundamental question: What principle of conservatism is embodied in opposition to the sort of immigration reforms that McCain has backed?

As best I can figure, the conservative bloc that has dominated American politics for a couple of decades consists, with considerable overlap and disagreement, of four groups: libertarians, who want less and cheaper government; evangelicals, who want government to use its power to enforce certain moral strictures; big business Republicans, who think the business of America is business and anything that helps business is OK; and traditionalists, who are skeptical about and sometimes actively hostile to change of any sort. So how do these groups stack up on immigration?

1. Libertarians think that individuals, not governments, should decide how the world is. Mexicans cross the border not because they are criminals or cantankerous but because this is where the jobs are. It makes no more sense to try to control immigration by blocking the border than it does to try to control pornography by shutting down the internet. People gotta be free.

2. Evangelicals have to believe -- because God tells them to -- that they must love their neighbors as much as they love themselves. If we can improve the lot of a few million of our Mexican neighbors by absorbing them into the American economy, then God will reward us some day.

3. Traditionalists don't want anything messing with what they regard as authentic American culture. That includes a centuries-old tradition of having the longest unguarded borders in the world. When Ronald Reagan signed off on amnesty 20 years ago, he was just acknowledging a reality that already existed. What's different now? Besides, traditionalists already are taking a beating from the current Republican administration, which announced today that it has reversed a 230-year American tradition and has publicly embraced war crimes. Take that, George Washington.

4. Big-business Republicans -- hey, aren't they part of the problem? That's the gripe I hear: We can't get meaningful immigration reform because Democrats are afraid to lose Hispanic votes and Republicans are afraid to lose cheap Hispanic workers. Why would they want to change that?

So what's the conservative argument against immigration? For that matter, what's the liberal argument? Can't we all just get along?

The business of schooling

Somebody forgot to take his smart pills.

Let's see now. Public schools as a business model: You offer a free education to anybody who lives within your geographical area. You hire union employees who want raises every year. You're pressured to keep adding new technology because that's what employers want. You have no source of income except a declining share of state dollars and the support of the public, which includes people who say they have never voted to give you a nickel and never will. Sounds like a business plan to me!

In the meantime, I could buy a Coke for a nickel when I was a kid. Now it's 65 cents at the campus vending machine. When will the Coca-Cola Co. ever learn to live within its means?

The skinny

My take on Constitutional Initiative 100 is at the Outpost website. I think it may be the most detailed look yet in the Montana press at what the amendment is all about.

So what do I think? I think there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the amendment, no matter what one's position on abortion is. Leaving it to the Legislature to decide what the amendment really means doesn't sound like such a hot idea. Making the right to life "paramount" sounds unnecessarily mischievous. If the right to life is paramount, would it be constitutional to send soldiers into combat, knowing that some of them would die?

Indeed, if you read the section on what the amendment actually says, it seems to guarantee all sorts of rights that don't really make much sense for someone who has no brain or detectable body parts. It's just meaningless to say that "all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities" to the rights they enjoy when "persons" include organisms that have utterly no notion of either rights or responsibilities.

You could say the same thing about newborn babies, I suppose, but at least birth draws a neat, bright line that conception doesn't. Babies start to acquire notions of rights and responsibilities so quickly after birth that defining them as "persons" at any point later than birth would open all sorts of cans of ugly worms. Pushing the date of personhood back to the moment of conception isn't much neater.

I know that Roe vs. Wade mucked up the abortion debate something fierce, and that's too bad. But at this point there's no real remedy that I can see other than trying to amend the U.S. Constitution to leave abortion in the hands of the states. That wouldn't make anybody happy, probably, including me, but it beats the other options.

Hold on

Yesterday's e-mail from the Republican National Committee seems to attack Hillary Clinton for failing to support efforts to unionize Wal-Mart.

The e-mail quotes an ABC News blog:

In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers. ...

Wait a minute. Doesn't the RNC hate unions? Doesn't the RNC love Wal-Mart? Is the well so poisoned that Republicans attack Clinton even when she takes positions that Republicans support?

Beware of exploding heads.

Winning Wyoming

Dave Barry sums up the Republican race, including the importance of the Wyoming primary:

It's still wide open. Mitt "Mitt" Romney holds a slight edge in delegates, plus a heifer he got for winning Wyoming. Right behind him are John McCain, Chuck Norris and the late Ronald Reagan. Bringing up the rear is Rudy, who needs a win and has been frantically courting Florida voters. He's mowing your lawn right now.

On race

I'm a latecomer to this discussion at mtpolitics and don't want to get involved in the overwrought comments section there. But I would like to make a point or two, especially since this is likely to be a campaign theme.

First, Craig sees no distinction in 2008 between blacks aspiring to build stronger black families and communities and whites expressing similar aspirations. To me, the distinction seems obvious and potent. Whites, of course, spent centuries consciously building strong white communities, often on the backs of people of other skin colors. We finally figured out that was a source of great evil, and we have been trying to get over it.

But we are still top dogs. To refer to the "white community" is not only racist but redundant. The community we all live in is the community whites built, so references to white identity are widely recognized as code for a desire to return to the days when blacks were menial laborers and Indians were savages.

When blacks use similar language, no such code is implied. I read the references Craig refers to as a call for blacks to shake off the bonds of history and assume their rightful place as equals -- not as rulers -- in the world community. I detect no threat in it, and if it works, I am all for it.

Second, Craig asks in comments, "So, now that we’re 5-6 generations removed [from slavery], do we still have to wring our hands over it? When does the statute of limitations expire?"

I do not know the answer to that question, but I would suggest that the statute hasn't tolled yet. We are not nearly so far away from slavery as the chronology suggests. I have made this point before, but it may bear repeating: I grew up in the South in the 1950s. Blacks had to sit in a separate section at the movie theater. Blacks had to attend their own (inferior) schools. Few blacks dared date, much less marry, whites. Blacks couldn't play football in the Southwest Conference and had been in major league baseball for only a handful of years.

(Odd side note: a resident of my hometown was Lou Rochelli, whom I once interviewed and who helped show Jackie Robinson the ropes at second base on the Dodgers; he then became a player-manager in Great Falls.)

My parents, who certainly understood the evils of racism and tried to protect their children from it, still never quite got over the surprise of meeting blacks who were well dressed, well educated, well housed and well spoken. It took them years to fit that idea into their concept of how the world could be.

So I have often wondered: If I had grown up black in my hometown, confined to second-rate jobs, attending a second-rate school, constantly derided by whites who thought I would never be good enough or smart enough to do any better - and who had the weight of law on their side - would I be over that now?

I suspect not. I think I would carry that with me to the grave, and I suspect that many others who say that's all ancient history would feel exactly the same way. We have miles to go.

Long may he flap

I see the Gazette has brought Mallard Fillmore back, although with diminished billing in the classified ad section.

Mallard Fillmore was a discredit to the entire conservative cause when it appeared next to Doonesbury. If one knew nothing of liberals and conservatives except what appeared in those two strips, one would presume that conservatives are humorless, obtuse and draw great ducks.

But it is hard to say that Prickly City has been an improvement. Mallard Fillmore may have been obvious and predictable, but at least it had usually had a point, and that point usually was detectable. If Prickly City has a point, I haven't yet uncovered it.

But at least that puts it a cut above other new strips that have made their way to the Gazette, which uniformly strike me as dark, crude and unpleasant. Am I old enough to be nostalgic yet for Lil Abner and Pogo? Maybe not, but give me a couple of years.

A woman for president?

At least three times in the last week I have hard people say in public that they don't think a woman should be president -- twice on talk radio and once on talk TV. One was a yahoo who apparently just didn't like women; a second thought that putting women into positions of authority over men was a sin; a third said a woman would leave us in a position of weakness in the Mideast.

Gloria Steinem took a lot of heat for this op-ed piece. All the same, I can't imagine anybody saying publicly that a black man should not be president. People may think that, and they may vote that way, but saying it out loud has been pretty much out of the public picture since Al Campanis.

Publicly expressed racism is intolerable. Misogyny? Not so much.

Fighting words

Christopher Hitchens is so smart and mean that sometimes I get the queasy feeling that he might somehow ram his arm through the computer screen and grab me by the throat for even thinking about disagreeing with him. No such danger here; his attack on Mike Huckabee's cynical defense of the Confederate battle flag is perfectly on target.

My own argument about the Confederate flag has boiled down over the years to a single sentence: The side that wins the war gets to choose the flag. But you can't get a thousand words out of that, and they wouldn't be as forceful as Hitchens' if you could.

Good point

This letter writer to the Gazette has a good point. I don't know about MUS scholarships, but I do run into a lot of college students who are worried about not getting grades high enough to keep scholarship money coming in.

That's too bad. One message I try to get across to students is not to freak out too much about grades; they don't matter that much in the long run, and they can distract students from getting out of college the most useful things that are there. But it's a lame message to students who will have to drop out if their grades drop even a little bit.

The result is that some of the best students are among the most timid -- afraid to stick with a course that proves challenging, afraid to explore outside their major, afraid to take an innovative approach to an assignment. I especially see it in German classes, where the skills needed to learn a language don't match up all that well with the skills needed to succeed in college overall. I hate it when students quit because they are afraid they may not get the A they need.

It's a bum way to run an educational system.

Going to the middle

Talk yakker Bill Cunningham continues referring to Barack Obama as Barack Hussein Obama, demonstrating a passion for journalistic thoroughness that he shows for no other candidate. In fairness -- and I'm sure he wants to be fair -- he should also use middle names when referring to other presidential candidates. As a handy guide, here they are: Willard Mitt Romney, Ronald Ernest Paul, Johnny Reid Edwards, John Sidney McCain III, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, Michael Dale Huckabee, Fred Dalton Thompson and Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.

Let the campaign begin!

Global burn

This post at Left in the West oversimplifies matters a bit. Steven Running argues that global warming is "just plain facts." So far as that goes, it's true enough. Even the global warming debunkers I have read do not dispute that carbon dioxide levels are increasing, that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that greenhouse gases produce a warming effect. After all, greenhouses work, don't they?

The dispute is over two other matters:

1. What effect will all of this ultimately have on the world's climate? Since climate is so complex, it's understandable that there should be disagreement even among the best scientists about exactly how serious the effects of global warming will be. The fact is, nobody knows for sure.

2. Given that uncertainty, how much should we rationally try to do to prevent the effects of global warming? Again, it's a complicated question since the results of global warming will no doubt be mixed. As a good conservative, I argue that it makes sense to take modest steps that would make sense even if global warming turns out to be no big deal: energy conservation, alternative energy sources, pollution cleanup measures, and so on.

Radical extremists on the left think that's not enough; they may be right, but it isn't clear that we could do enough even if we wanted to. Radical extremists on the right think we should do nothing at all until we are sure it's too late. That's just suicidal.

Global warming skeptics make a key mistake: They point out that uncertainty over the effects of global warming means that it may not be as bad as the more extreme scenarios anticipate. But they forget that the uncertainty also means that the effects could be far worse. They play a dangerous game. No wonder they get so angry when the debate doesn't go their way.

As long as we are on the subject, let's take a shot at another point global warming skeptics make over and over again. They point out that climate has changed radically for natural causes in the past. That's true. But then they leap to the conclusion that all global temperature change must be the result of something other than human causes. Sorry, that doesn't compute. And even if it did, it still wouldn't mean that we should do nothing.

Silly bill

In the category of dumb legislation falls this news release from Denny Rehberg, who is sponsoring a bill "allowing employers to require employees to speak English while engaged in work activities."

Says Rehberg: “The English language is one of the common denominators that unites our diverse nation. So, it’s only fitting U.S. employers should be able to require their employees to speak it."

I thought one of the common denominators that unites our diverse nation was our right to say any damn thing we pleased, whether or not it fits the prejudices of our elected representatives.

He adds, "Immigrants wanting to be a part of America’s workforce should be willing to engage in the basic act of learning English. This bill gives employers the ability to insist they do so.”

When I read statements like that one, I suspect that the speaker has absolutely no clue what he is talking about. When I worked at Bueroeinrichtungshaus Finkenzeller in Munich, Germany, I spoke German probably 95 percent of the time. My boss, a Spaniard, spoke slightly broken German (as did I), but his German was better than his English, and my German was better than my Spanish, so German was the nearest thing we had to a common language.

But there were occasions when it made sense on the job to speak in English. Mostly it was because a co-worker wanted to make me feel at home or to practice his own English, a request I was happy to oblige. Occasionally English helped -- or could have helped, if it had been available to all involved -- to get around an unfamiliar phrase or an arcane bit of vocabulary.

On other occasions, it just felt good to speak a little English. No matter how hard one works to learn another language, it never quite comes as naturally as the native tongue. I remember scouring the tiny English language section at the nearby branch library, hungry for a familiar voice. I read every Sherlock Holmes story ever written, just because I loved hearing the language in my head.

Obviously, immigrants should learn English. Obviously, English is the preferred language in most American workplaces. But employers should not use English to control or weed out workers who are still trying to learn. And the federal government should not give employers the cudgel that allows them to do that.

The real goal seems clear: Our congressmen don't want immigrants to feel at home or to be able to speak the language most likely to help them succeed. Congressmen want to look like tough guys. Instead, they look like bullies.

UPDATE: I didn't know when I wrote this that Roger Clawson was writing on the same issue (and on English only) for the Jan. 24 Outpost. I can't give the column away, but here's a quote: "English-Only laws are, at best, empty symbolism and, at worst, xenophobic, race-tinged proposals that imperil programs that can help non-English students and adults attain English proficiency."

Back to school

Got a call this morning from Dennis Unsworth, commissioner of political practice, to let me know that his office has accepted the formal complaint filed last week against Celebrate Billings by Janet Green.

If you read today's Gazette, you already know that. But it won't be in The Outpost this week. I was on the story early Tuesday but am back in school most of the day now and couldn't get back in time to get it nailed down before deadline. Dagnabit it.

The full class load started today: professional writing at Rocky, two German classes at MSU Billings and some part-time tutoring. So the blog is likely to go mostly fallow again for a while. To the extent that I have writing time, I need to devote it to the Outpost -- all the options are inadequate, but that is the best of a bad lot.

Side note to Greg Tuttle: I know you read this blog from time to time, so this is just to let you know that I have a number for Janet Green that you may not have. It apparently was added to the complaint after you got your copy.

Since the Montana Newspaper Association has refused to talk to me for years, I don't think the number will do me any good. It does seem to be a working number, but my call hasn't been returned. Of course, MNA probably won't talk to you either, but you are welcome to the number if you want to give it a try.

By any other name

I'm working on the Outpost calendar and listening to Bill Cunningham on talk radio. Every time he refers to Barack Obama, he refers to him as "Barack Hussein Obama." I see that Rush Limbaugh is doing the same thing. And now What's Right in Montana is picking it up.

It's similar to, although worse than, Republicans' habit of referring to their opposition as the "Democrat Party" rather than by its actual name, which is the Democratic Party (nobody ever refers to the Republic Party).

Hussein is part of Obama's actual name, of course, but it isn't the name he uses. In fact, none of the candidates in the presidential primaries goes by first and middle name, and Obama is the only one referred to that way.

By the age of 5 or 6, most Americans learn to refer to people by the names they use to refer to themselves. Some Americans never grow up.

Lee falling

More bad news for Lee Enterprises. $2.44 billion of goodwill? Dang, if they had just one more dollar, they could buy a cup of coffee.

E-mail of the day

A spam message pushing online medications included this testimonial:

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Happy Minion Day!

Burns on primaries

Conrad Burns was interviewed Friday on David Berg's "Voices of Montana" radio talk show. Most of the discussion was about how wonderful Burns is and what meanies the Democrats and media were for mentioning his ties to Jack Abramoff. But there also was this: Burns raised doubts about using primaries to select presidential candidates rather than picking candidates at political conventions as in the old days.

I wasn't taking notes or even listening very carefully, but his argument seemed to be that the old method picked candidates who best represented the political party and its interests. In the current system, all candidates essentially are running a national campaign in every state and genuine differences in policy and ideology tend to stay beneath the surface.

It seemed like a reasonable point, and I, too, have wondered whether all these primaries really serve the national interest. If nothing else, conventions certainly were more exciting in the old days. But it also would have been hard to top the New Hampshire primary for excitement.

Still, I wonder if it could be true that by obscuring party differences in the primaries we wind up exaggerating them when it comes to actual governance.