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Three true things about the southern border
In an average month in 2022, immigration was No. 4 in the “Most Important Problem Mentions” found by the polling folks at Gallup; higher than other hot-button issues like COVID-19, crime, prices at the pump, abortion, or the environment. Judging from the airtime that immigration receives from some of Montana’s politicians, immigration is a particular […]
MAGA is a testable hypothesis
It’s been a decade or more since the neologism “MAGA” (or, “Make America Great Again”) entered the language. We should have known that it would become powerful. It was “hot” and yet not. It could ignite a fever in the head on whose red baseball cap it was embroidered, but still have ambiguous meanings. As […]
Voter registration in Montana — the reality and the dream
Linda Taylor (not a real person) lives with her family in rural Montana. On a farm of sorts, west of Wisdom. It isn’t much of a farm, and Wisdom itself isn’t much more than a village (pop. ±100) several miles east of the Taylor place. Dillon, the Beaverhead County seat? Southeast of Wisdom and over […]
Critical race theory fury is just the next thing to rile an already upset base
Among the odder creatures in the grove of academe are theories. Useful to scholars as thought strategies, and helpful as shorthand among their students, these theories are little known – and even less understood – to folks beyond the cognoscenti. Take string theory, for example. A paradigm of great use to physicists, it is “a […]
Helena’s all-hat-no-cattle legislation
We’re told by the experts that 2.6 million beef cattle live in Montana. That’s two-and-a-half head per person. Most Montanans won’t get much closer to cattle than a hamburger or a T-bone steak. For others, though, cattle are a way of life. Mythically, this cattle-world’s denizens are cowboys. Prosaically, they’re ranch hands. Cowboys are the […]
Why is Montana’s abortion rate higher than Europe’s?
Unborn Montanans have been present and accounted for in the 67th session of the Montana Legislature. Eighteen abortion bills were submitted in 2020-2021; six of them were eventually introduced in the House, one in the Senate. The “short titles” of these bills reveal an expected pattern: Bills to protect a “pain-capable unborn child” or to […]
Nationalism, American style
The third clause of the American Pledge of Allegiance speaks of “… one Nation under God, indivisible….” The pledge, and the clause, is an American commonplace, quotable by most, recognized by all. When I was a child, it was declared each school day morning. Perhaps, in classrooms here and there across the nation, it still […]
Finally, a stop to the tyranny of the nanny state’s traffic laws
Editor’s note: This satirical commentary was originally drafted for online newsite, “Last Best News,” but has been freshened up to fit the circumstances of today. In 1908 the first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line. More than a century later the motor car has been granted the same constitutional guarantees that other technological […]
Voter registration, Montana style — a view from Europe
States across the union are revisiting the regulations that govern voting. It’s no surprise: Reactions to the election of 2020 swept the continuum from sighs of relief (from many Democratic voters) to apoplectic snarling (from the Republican candidate). Few states are eager for a re-run in 2022 or 2024. Some revisits have turned their attention […]
The End of the ‘American Century’
Commenting in the midst of Europe’s corona crisis, Austria’s major daily, “Der Standard,” captured at least one European attitude toward the United States: “No one on the planet expects any help from the U.S.A. Working together with Donald Trump, the coronavirus has ended the American century.” The American Century began decades ago when the U.S. […]