We didn't say anything when Bob Kelleher filed as a Republican for US Senate, er Parliament.  And we didn't say anything when we learned that Republican Shay Garnett was wanted by the authorities in Indiana for "stalking, harassment, and invasion of privacy", (he later pulled out of the race).

But enough is enough.  We feel compelled to say something lest the Republican Party be completely overrun with loons running for office.

The latest example is the discovery that we have an alien chaser running as a Republican for Attorney General.  Unfortunately, we're not talking about the type of aliens who sneak over the Mexican border; we're talking about the little, green variety.  You know: flying saucers, Roswell, warp speed, Alf, etc.

It seems that when Lee Bruner isn't running for Attorney General, he spends his free time participating in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  Lee's been participating in this alien hunt since at least 1999.  So far it appears that he's not made contact.

This is a general plea to Erik Iverson, Jake Eaton, and all the rest of the leadership at the MT GOP--please, in future elections do a better job of screening your prospective candidates.  We know you can't control who files for office, but the least you could do is point out to some of these kooks the fact that some of their undesirable, eccentric, or outright strange habits could come to light and portray the entire party poorly.

Gov Schweitzer's tendency to stretch the truth is well know, but now he's stretching time too.  The Trib has a great story today on the ongoing investigation into the apparently-illegal public service announcement the Gov did for "National Ag Month."  The trouble is, there is no "National Ag Month."  There's a National Ag Day, and a National Ag Week, but no such thing as National Ag Month.

What's worse, this stretch of the imagination (and time) wasn't a mistake--Schwetizer intentionally invented National Ag Month in order to be able to run the illegal PSA for a longer period of time!  Here's an excerpt of the email that the Schweitzer comm team sent along to radio stations with the mp3 file attached: "National Ag Day is the first day of spring.  We broadened the concept a little to allow for longer air time."

It's pretty obvious from that statement alone Schweitzer wanted maximum exposure from these PSA's, and not maximum exposure for a fictitious appreciation month.  If that doesn't violate the PSA moratorium for elected officials running for office, we don't know what would.

Stateline.org recently released a preliminary handicapping for state legislative elections, and they're predicting that Republicans will re-take control of the Montana Senate.  They have the House as a toss-up. 

Conventional wisdom would have it that an incumbent governor with a plus-50 approval rating would be able to build upon a legislative majority.  Could it be the say-everything-do-nothing brand of "leadership" Gov. Schweitzer has provided his Democratic Party is starting to catch up with him?

Democratic State Senator Steve Gallus (Butte) may have acted improperly as a result of a conflict of interest between his job working for a private corrections company and his position on the Senate Corrections and Public Safety Committee, according to a recent article by the Big Horn County News.  (A pdf version of the story is also included as it appears the BH County News does not archive its stories).  The private corrections company Gallus works for, Community Counseling and Correctional Services Inc. (CCCS), could be a competitor for state contracts with other private corrections companies.

While it is not yet apparent that Gallus may have influenced any contract awards, the Legislative Auditor's Office is investigating the situation. 

A new study by the Tax Foundation has Montana scoring relatively poorly in corporate tax rates, especially in our five-state region.  The brief study examined the combined state and federal corporate tax burdens for each state and then compared them with the corporate tax burdens for other countries.  Montana was at the middle of the pack among the states, and narrowly behind Idaho and North Dakota in our region.  Wyoming and South Dakota do not impose income taxes on corporations or individuals.

According to the study's author, Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge, "Competition for jobs and investment is fierce, and the US continues to fall further and further behind.  Our states should be the world's leaders in many things, but the high taxation should not be one of them."

We think Mr. Hodge is right.  Governor Schweitzer obviously doesn't.  Despite record revenue surpluses (and contrary to the Gov's own misleading rhetoric) he raised taxes on business during the last legislative session and opposed common-sense property tax cuts for homeowners and businessowners alike.

I can already anticipate the responses coming, so let me answer you in advance.  No, I'm not going to count the $25 million repeal of the Water Adjudication fee as tax relief for business because Gov. Schweitzer is the one who signed that fee into law in the first place.  And no, you don't get to claim that somehow general fund expenditures into state retirement funds is tax relief for business.  And nope, you don't get to claim that you cut taxes for 16,000 small businesses (or whatever that number is) when all you really did was just shift the tax burden and raise taxes on medium and large businesses.   

Last week, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) released a study of the economic impacts of the cap and trade system envisioned in the Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation.  Even in the more conservative estimations, America (and Montana) will see a massive loss of jobs and wealth if Lieberman-Warner becomes law.

We read a couple of weeks ago about Republicans on the Environmental Quality Council questioning climate change science, but now it seems that the Schweitzer administration has it's collective head deeply embedded in the sand as well in their outright rejection of a scientifically sound economic study.  Here's what Schweitzer senior advisor Eric Stern had to say about the study

"They've been denying climate change is happening for so long, and now they're trying anything they can to scare people.  This is a petroleum industry front group that is literally like a cigarette company promoting a study that says smoking is good for you."

The National Association of Manufacturers took umbrage at Mr. Stern's harsh words, likening his response to "something a snot-nosed kid would say, to come back with an insult instead of acknowledging legitimate concerns."

The NAM blog post went on to rightly point out that this was an especially troubling position from the Schweitzer administration because Montana's potential to be an energy producing state and the fact that "Gov. Brian Schweitzer fancies himself an advocate of coal."  News to NAM: The Gov. fancies himself a lot of things, very few of which have a basis in reality.

The model (called the National Energy Modeling System, or NEMS) used for the study at the center of this controversy is not an invention by NAM or ACCF, but was developed by the US Energy Information System.  Two datasets were inputted, one that estimated a "high cost scenario" and the other a "low cost scenario." The study can be accessed here.

Even the low-cost scenario has some pretty dire predictions for Montana.  It estimates that by 2030 we'd lose between 11,000 and 15,000 jobs; lose between $1.35 billion and $1.59 billion in gross state product; and would cost each Montana household between $2,918 and $5,321 annually. 

Those aren't fun numbers, especially for a governor who just spent a few months and a lot of money to develop 54 recommendations about climate change (one of which was to impose a cap and trade system in Montana).  Most of those recommendations will have a negative economic impact on Montana, but conveniently, only a cursory economic analysis was done by the Governor's Climate Change Advisory Committee.  It's no wonder the Gov is a little defensive when presented with an economic analysis that comes out so negative for his agenda.

So while the Montana media gets all wound up about a few Republican legislators even raising the prospect that the science behind climate change might be a little suspect, the real story about the unknown economic impacts gets overlooked.  Not to mention that when Republicans blow off scientific evidence it makes big headlines, but when Gov Schweitzer does it, there's barely a splash.

Our advice to Republican legislators on the EQC--stop quibbling about whether or not climate change is man-made, and start pointing out the enormous cost (in both dollars and jobs) of the plan Governor Schweiter's committee has laid out.

The Hardliner just recently learned of this issue, but we cannot take credit for bringing it to light.  Way back in January 2007, Republican Attorney General candidate Tim Fox had a press release on this very topic, and we must give full credit to him for bringing this issue to light.  Interestingly, the Montana media has yet to look into this story.

It's pretty simple really, Attorney General McGrath is charged with maintaining an online Sexual or Violent Offender Registry. According to the it's web site, the Registry must include a photograph of all sex offenders.  The law mandating the Registry is pretty clear about this as well.  The problem is, McGrath's Department of Justice is not providing photographs for an alarming number of sex predators even though the photos are available.

With such a large mandate, a few missing photos would be excusable.  The Registry's web page even provides an explanation for why photos might not be displayed.  On records without a photograph, a box is displayed with the text: "The Registration Unit has not yet received a photograph for this offender."

But are they even trying?  It turns out that many of the "missing" photos are already available on the Dept. of Corrections ConWeb database.  Let us illustrate:

Go to the Sex Offender Registry's web site and do a zip code search for 59101.  That will give you an alpha-ordered list of all the violent and sex offenders in that zip code.  (For the purposes of this experiment, ignore the violent offender records; only certain types of violent offenders are required to have a photograph)  Now let's cross-reference those sexual offenders without photographs against ConWeb.

Here's an example of a sex offender (crime: sexual intercourse without consent) without a picture in the Sex Offender Registry, but with one on ConWeb.

Here's a second example (crime: sexual intercourse without consent and sexual abuse of children), without a picture in the Sex Offender Registry, but with one on ConWeb. 

Third example (crime: sexual intercourse without consent): Sex Offender Registry, and ConWeb.

That's three examples from the 59101 zip code, and we haven't even gotten past names starting with the letter A! According to Tim Fox's press release, the "failure rate" is estimated to be around 60%.

Granted, the Registry does have photographs for some sex offenders, and Con Web does not have photographs for every record in its database either.  However, there fact that these photos are available on one state site and they're not on the state site where they are required by law to be is unacceptable.  McGrath is required to post these photos, and he's completely falling down on the job.

It's obvious that providing information about sex predators is not a priority for Mike McGrath.  This should be a fairly easy fix--you could even copy and past these photos on an individual basis!  It's also obvious that after 16 years of Democrat administration of the Dept. of Justice, we desperately need a change in leadership.  Kudos to Tim Fox for exposing this problem; and shame on the Montana media for sitting on this bombshell for over two months.

There’s been a lot of talk from Montana Democrats over the past few months about the MT GOP's decision to hold caucuses in February to select their presidential nominee as opposed to the traditional June primaries. As the Dems continue to harangue the GOP on their supposed elitism, we started wondering just how “democratic” their system is.

Let’s do the breakdown of the delegates that the Montana Democrats are sending to Denver:
The Dems get 24 total delegate votes.  Of these 24, eight of them are “superdelegates”—party insiders, known as Party Leaders and Elected Officials (PLEOs), such as Senators Baucus and Tester, Gov. Schweitzer, MDP Chairman Dennis McDonald, etc. who are not bound to a particular candidate.  The remaining 16 delegates are split into two groups: one group of 10 proportional pledged delegates, and another group of 6 delegates (including another 2 PLEOs) who are bound to vote for the primary winner.

I know, it’s complicated, but it is interesting to me that the Montana Dems keep spouting this rhetoric of how the Montana GOP let party insiders select their nominee.  Isn’t this a little hypocritical?  The Dems are allowing that many of their delegates—all party insiders—to vote for whomever they please without regard to ANY Montanan’s voice in the primary.

So how does the Montana GOP decide which delegates get to vote for whom?  Montana Republicans from all walks of life decide who their nominee is and the delegates vote as a block bound to that candidate.  No mathematical formulas, no superdelegates, no chance for a split vote based on the party elite—just the voice of Montana Republicans.

And this year that voice was heard by all four major candidates. Candidates or their surrogates were not hard to find in Montana in the weeks leading up to the caucus. With the early caucus, the presidential hopefuls had to pay attention to Montanans when it still mattered, when there was still a decision to be made. The fact that Gov. Romney was selected as Montana’s nominee is a testament to our GOP’s newly-found voice. His nomination was a statement to the nation that Montana Republicans believed that they would be better represented by someone who wasn’t the eventual nominee. Would they have had that chance in June?

Even with the tight race between Hillary and Obama, it isn’t likely that Montana Democrats will be afforded that same voice. True, Montana has 24 delegates, but only 16 are decided by the people and they will not all go to one candidate—of the 10 proportional delegates, 4 will likely go to the loser in the primary. So in the likely scenario, that would put the delegate count at 12-4, which is really a net gain of 8 delegates. Including the 8 superdelegates, that means that the state Dems are truly only allotted 16 consequential votes with HALF of them coming from the party leadership, not popular will. So what happens if all of the superdelegates vote the other way? Then, with the miniscule net gain of delegates for a candidate, how is that going to influence a party with 800 national superdelegates?

And this scenario is only in the unlikely event that there are still two candidates in the race in June.

When will the Democrats realize that the people of their party need a voice in the selection of their nominee? The Republican caucuses have illustrated why we need to finally move both primaries to earlier in the process to give all Montanans a choice in who will lead their party’s ticket—and possibly the free world.

Is reporter Rob Harper of the Missoula Independent just new to the political scene or is he really not that good at his job?  That's what we were left wondering this morning after reading his bit about Eric Iverson's dual roles as MT GOP chairman and chief of staff for Congressman Denny Rehberg.  Harper's story centers on MT Democratic Party exec Art Noonan's criticism of Iverson for holding these dual positions; the one glaring thing Harper forgot to mention is that Noonan is doing the exact same thing.

Art Noonan, aka State Representative Art Noonan of House District 73 in Butte, holds dual roles as a paid official of the Montana Democratic Party and a duly-elected, sitting legislator.  You'd think that might be worth mentioning in the story.

This is one of the best parts: "'His volunteering as chair—that’s not unusual,' Noonan says. What concerns him, he says, is 'the intermingling of the political business of the party with government work done for the taxpayers.'"

Pot calling the kettle black?

Usually media bias takes a subtle tone, but in this example Rob Harper lets it all hang out by omitting critical facts.  Shame on him.

Kudos to the MT GOP for sticking to their rules and not allowing Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger, an elected Democrat, to vote in their Caucus on Feb. 5.  Bohlinger's latest stunt is just another example of politics at its worst from the Schweitzer campaign.  The Caucus hasn't been any secret - Bohlinger's known about it for months and the MT GOP has widely publicized that there were hundreds of vacant precinct positions to be filled.  Bohlinger had every opportunity to qualify for one of these positions - is it any coincidence that he waited until after the Jan. 26 deadline to raise his little stink about not being allowed to participate?

As the MT GOP pointed out, to allow Bohlinger a vote would have broken several party rules - including the rule that requires Caucus voters to vote in the county in which they are registered (Bohlinger is registered in Yellowstone County but made it clear he intended to vote in Helena) plus that nagging little rule that says only Republican elected officials are eligible (Bohlinger was elected in 2004 as the Democrat Lt. Gov.).  Bohlinger's contention that he still considers himself to be a Republican is moot - Supreme Court Justice Jim Rice ran as a Republican in 2004 (and probably would still say he's a Republican) but since he's a non-partisan elected official, he is not eligible for the Caucus.

The Feb. 5 Caucus is a historic event for our state, and we can't help but imagine the Democrats are a little bit jealous over the grassroots surge that the GOP has seen in recent months, having swelled the ranks of precinct captains by a reported 750.  That's should give the GOP a marked advantage in the upcoming election.  It's pretty transparent that Bohlinger's latest stunt was calculated solely to deflate all the positives that the GOP has experienced with the Caucus. 

Jon, that's not how Republicans behave - just more proof of your deepening Democrat credentials.