Subject line on the e-mail I am least likely to read this week: "There is 'Life After Hair Color.'"

Thane Peterson makes a point in Business Week that I have been arguing for a couple of years: "I think a major push is under way to move back toward the highly personal and politicized style of journalism that prevailed in the early days of the Republic."

Lots of people seem to think that the principle of journalistic objectivity was enshrined in the First Amendment, but as Peterson notes, it is a relatively recent convention. What journalism is now becoming is something that the Founding Fathers may not have admired but would have understood and expected.

This story about a compromise agreement to raise broadcast ownership caps appeared last week, but I missed it at the time. But Fritz Hollings says it was no compromise at all.

Pat Dawson notes that the Great Falls Tribune has administered a firm spanking to PPL Montana.

Most Montana bloggers (including this one) took it easy over the holiday, but mt.politics.net did enough blogging for all of us.

Jackie Corr sends along a great column on Wal-Mart, but you have to register.

A new group is forming in Lockwood to push for yet another vote on a sewer system. Citizens for a Better Lockwood elected Carlotta Hecker as president, Lois Logan as vice president and Glenn Seavy as treasurer. Dave Riley was asked to handle media relations.

A news release said, "Those who attended the [organizational] meeting noted the high level of misinformation and the lack of voter turnout in the last election. That election saw a critical vote on a new community sewer system for Lockwood receive a majority of the vote but fail to reach a 'super majority' by just 37 votes."

Carl Peters, president of the Lockwood Water and Sewer board, said mail-in ballots for the next attempt will go out on Jan. 20. For my money, the group already is ahead of previous efforts just by sending an e-mail announcing the effort. I covered the sewer issue for the Gazette for a couple of years and know Carl Peters pretty well. Yet the Outpost has gotten zilch from the sewer board about previous elections. It's not that we're the most important people in the world, but when you're only a few dozen votes away, every e-mail and news release counts.

I've been quoting all the criticism of Max Baucus for his vote on the prescription drug benefit, so the least I can do is give some of his spin:

“'We have passed landmark prescription drug legislation and delivered on our promise to America’s seniors,' said Baucus, who as the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee one was of only two Democrats picked to iron out the final details of the bill. 'I’ve worked with doctors, pharmacists, hospitals boards, and seniors all across Montana for more than a decade to provide seniors with a prescription drug benefit. This bill is not perfect. But it brings us one step closer to ensuring seniors will never again have to choose between paying the bills and buying the medicine they need. I’m very proud of my work on this bill.'”

Baucus also defended the provision allowing a role for private insurers in the bill, arguing that it was superior to the earlier House bill. "Baucus opposed that plan because he said it would have led to higher monthly premiums for seniors. Instead, the senior senator negotiated a time-limited pilot program in six major metropolitan areas that won’t take affect [sic] until 2010 and won’t be in Montana, he said. "

Thanks to Paul Whiting for this link about media conglomeration, Dean Singleton style. Big quote: "The founders of this country believed a free and rambunctious press was essential to the protection of our freedoms. They couldn't envision the rise of giant megamedia conglomerates whose interests converge with state power to produce a conspiracy against the people. I think they would be aghast at how this union of media and government has produced the very kind of imperial power against which they rebelled."

Full disclosure: Dean Singleton once interviewed me for a job. I didn't get it.

Montana Republicans held a news conference today to announce their energy strategy. The crux appears to be in this line in the news release:

"Overall, the Republicans stressed that the key to long-term affordable energy was new production.

'The outlook for new clean-coal generation facilities in Montana is very good,' pointed out Rep. Alan Olson. 'There are several new projects at various development stages. If we can get one or two or three of these new facilities online, and include that new power in the energy contract, then I believe we will see immediate effects in our electricity bills. These coal plants, combined with new wind and gas generation, are the future of stable Montana energy.'"

I've been hearing that argument for years now, and it still doesn't make sense to me. Montana already produces twice as much energy as it uses, and it appears that the nation as a whole will have excess (and increasing) capacity for at least several years to come, judging from this chart.

Theoretically, I suppose, if you keep dumping more capacity into the market, prices will fall. And if the people producing the electricity are dumb enough, they will keep building power plants and selling power for whatever they can get forever, no matter how little profit they make. But Bob Gannon doesn't run a power company anymore. You can't store electricity until the prices go up, and you can't increase market share by refining a better brand, and you don't automatically use more just because it's cheaper. And just because electricity is produced here doesn't mean it will be used or even available here. I'm not sure who's going to invest millions in all these new plants without some sort of assurance that there's a profitable market out there.

It may make sense to generate more electricity as an economic development measure (jobs, jobs, jobs) and it might even have some long-term national impact on pricess somewhere down the road. But nobody has showed me how it does much of anything to lower or even stabilize the cost of energy in Montana. Does somebody want to try?

A Billings readers sends along this message from a friend in Jordan (no, not Jordan, Montana):

Earlier this week I spoke with a young man who was also passing through on his way back to the USA. He was ex-Special Forces and had been with them since 1995, in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. (He too was in the Al Rashid Hotel that was hit.) He retired from the military, went home to GA and purchased some land to start his own construction business. Then he "got an offer he couldn't refuse." He was hired at a salary of $400,000 a year to go back to Iraq as a private security person (mercenary). Yes, $400,000--I asked him to repeat the figure because it was so unbelievable. He took the job, thinking that in one year he would be able to get his business going without having to take a loan.

However, after a short time, he had second thoughts and was going home for good. He told me that conditions in Iraq were worse than before. Humvees and the military are easily identifiable targets. Whoever was his employer brought in Toyota trucks, banged them up, and tried to make them appear more 'local' so they'd blend in. He said it's best to drive in the middle of the road because many bombs are placed on the edges and camouflaged, some with Styrofoam that has been painted or covered with sand. He also told me it's safer to drive after 12:00 noon, because by then most of the bombs have been detonated. He said a few of the explosives are rigged with wires, but those require someone to set them off and require a line of sight. So you become more cautious if you're not in the desert but someplace where there's a structure or place for someone to hide, watch and wait.

In the military, he had all the latest, sophisticated equipment and worked side by side with those who were trained as he was. But when he returned, he had a gun and not much else. I think the main reason he left was that he also lacked confidence in others with whom he worked, some vintage Viet Nam era.

He said Royal Jordanian had a few flights from Marka Airport in Amman to Baghdad and that they took evasive action, such as circling down steeply instead of an expected straight-in landing pattern. (You probably heard about the DHL plane that was hit by a heat-seeking missile on takeoff yesterday.)

Since returning to Amman, Malcolm has completed training of 30 Jordanian consultants and is now working with a company that makes kitchen equipment for hospitals, the big hotels, etc. It has been difficult for him as one of the females he's training is completely covered except for her eyes. Hard to judge whether someone understands something when you cannot see a response or reaction.

He now has several days off since the Eid al-Fitr feast (marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan) should begin tonight, depending on the moon. Then, hopefully some of the 'singing' from the minarets will ease up, and the dogs will stop trying to emulate them. I swear one dog near us has a sore throat trying to keep up with the imams.

Severe sandstorms in the south affected power stations in Jordan yesterday and left most of the country without electricity for an hour or two. The Inter-Con has an emergency generator, so the elevator and some of the lights worked.

There was a big to-do in the Jordan Times this week. One of the new Ministers stated that part of the MPs salaries came from foreign funding. This offended her fellow parliamentarians and she made a public apology saying she was mis-stated. However, Al Rai newspaper commented that there should not have been such a reaction because she's right. Finance Ministry figures for Jan. through Sept. of this year show that about 30% of the treasury revenues came from foreign donations; 24.3% per cent from the US. It appears that next year Iraq will get the most US taxpayer money.

In Aqaba I would ask the front desk for the Jordan paper every day. One day the guy said, "It's always bad news." The next day I said, "Is there any good news today?" He said, "Same, same, just new picture."

The Republican National Committee notes, with glee, this quote from former Democratic Sen. (and triple amputee) Max Cleland: "We cannot afford to have a leader who weaseled out of going to Vietnam on a medical deferment for a bad back and wound up on the ski slopes of Aspen like Howard Dean."

Reminds me a bit of the criticism once aimed at Joe Namath for getting a draft deferment because of a bad knee while he was healthy enough to play quarterback in the Super Bowl. But there's a big difference. If the knee blows out in a Super Bowl, a ref blows a whistle, the networks cut to a commercial and everybody stands around for a couple of minutes while the trainers haul the quarterback off on a stretcher.

No whistles in combat.

Subject line on the e-mail I am least likely to read this week: "Never Say No to Zucchini."

E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post is easier on Max Baucus than Al Hunt was in the Wall Street Journal, but it's still painful sledding for Max. One longtime Billings Democrat sent me this note: "It seems to me that Montana Democrats ought to consider "censuring" Mr.Baucus and suggest to him that if he runs for re-election in five years(!) Democratic party support now won't be automatic. Bob Ream needs to be asked what he will do about this, too. Yellowstone County Democrats need to take a position as well--as I am sure th[e]y will. I imagine the Montana Republicans can't wait for the next Senate election cycle. A much better Democrat than Max noted that "all politics is local" -- Max forgets Montana Democrats to[o] often, not just because he forgets, which is bad enough, but because he might not just be bright enough to handle Washington politics. Max might just be the best Democratic Senator the Republicans can count on.

On one of the first days of my first newspaper job, my first managing editor said he wished there were no holidays: They made it too complicated to put out a newspaper. I looked at him with pity and disgust: How could a newspaper guy become so shriveled inside that convenience at work outweighed national celebrations?

Twenty years later, and I still think of what he said every time a holiday rolls around. And every year what he said makes more sense. This week I'm buried under monthly billing and subscription renewals, plus early deadlines because of the holiday. So yesterday I worked 15 hours on my day off so I could take a day off on Thursday. Then Friday there's another paper to get out.

I know, I'm old and rotten. Happy Thanksgiving.

John Morrison's announcement was that he plans to run for re-election as state auditor. You can read about it here, or you can move on to InstaPundit.

This is too late for many people to see, but Dennis Kucinich apparently will be in town today after all. He is scheduled to speak to the Northern Plains Resource Council at 1:30 p.m. at the Sheraton. He had been scheduled to speak earlier but was considered likely to cancel.

Ron Selden passes along a link to the Dictionary of Bureaucratese. Sample definition: "abvise: v., to give bad council or counterproductive assistance. (L. ab viseo: blindfolded)"

The cheap shot of the week comes from the Republican National Committee, which plans to include this line in TV ads that begin running tomorrow in Iowa: "Some are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists."

Jackie Corr found a link to the full Al Hunt bashing of Max Baucus in the Wall Street Journal.