Montana
updated
7:20 a.m.
"We're closing at the end of the month, so that's how it's effecting us," said Carol Hoffnagle, who opened Studio 12 Art Gallery on Broadway and Pattee Street with her husband in downtown Missoula a little over a year ago. "In September we felt we were just getting going," Hoffnagle added. Over the past decade art galleries flourished and multiplied in the Mountain West, as flush tourists and n...
New West Bozeman - Fri 8:49 p.m. - 10 clicks 
The Tour de France might come to seem less grueling -- and certainly less murky -- than Greg LeMond's two-year legal fight against the Yellowstone Club, which he resumed this week when he asked a Montana judge to order club owner Edra Blixseth to pay him the final $13.5 million of a $21.5 million settlement, a Bloomberg story says. The judge granted LeMond's request, but the cycling great, who wo...
New West Bozeman - Fri 8:49 p.m. - 7 clicks
As noted several times in this column, visitation to our national parks has been declining for years, partly because of steep increases in entrance fees and annual passes. While reading these stories, we suffered under the misperception that the problem was confined to the national parks while visitor use of our national forests continued to increase. Now we know the truth. The wild proliferatio...
New West Missoula - Fri 6:47 p.m.
The Ruggs have been a Leanin' Tree kind of family for a long, long time. And in addition to sending and receiving a truckload of Leanin' Tree cards over the years, I have written in the past about the Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art. (In fact, watch this space for an updated article on ol' Edward Trumble's art collection.) So when Twila Green, Leanin' Tree's customer service manager, shot me...
New West Missoula - Fri 6:47 p.m.
The Tour de France might come to seem less grueling -- and certainly less murky -- than Greg LeMond's two-year legal fight against the Yellowstone Club, which he resumed this week when he asked a Montana judge to order club owner Edra Blixseth to pay him the final $13.5 million of a $21.5 million settlement, a Bloomberg story says. The judge granted LeMond's request, but the cycling great, who wo...
New West Missoula - Fri 6:47 p.m. - 9 clicks
"We're closing at the end of the month, so that's how it's effecting us," said Carol Hoffnagle, who opened Studio 12 Art Gallery on Broadway and Pattee Street with her husband in downtown Missoula a little over a year ago. "In September we felt we were just getting going," Hoffnagle added. Over the past decade art galleries flourished and multiplied in the Mountain West, as flush tourists and n...
New West Missoula - Fri 6:47 p.m. - 9 clicks
As noted several times in this column, visitation to our national parks has been declining for years, partly because of steep increases in entrance fees and annual passes. While reading these stories, we suffered under the misperception that the problem was confined to the national parks while visitor use of our national forests continued to increase. Now we know the truth. The wild proliferatio...
New West Bozeman - Fri 11:42 a.m. - 7 clicks
The story behind the new $100-million GE-Wyoming coal gasification project goes back to the early 1980s when a then-California-based energy company, Tosco, was trying to extract fuel from massive oil shale deposits outside Grand Junction, Colorado. The challenge at the time, former Tosco CEO Morton Winston recalled in an interview with WyoFile.com, was to build a device that could introduce prec...
New West Bozeman - Fri 11:21 a.m.
Writer Lisa Selin Davis asks on Grist this week: "... if McDonald's is seeing record profits due to inexpensive food, will green housing be the equivalent of a biodynamic, $8 a pound plum?" Industry leaders say not so much: "Certainly green building is not a fad, rather, it's a trend," James Brew, an architect with the Rocky Mountain Institute's Built Environment Team, wrote...
New West Bozeman - Fri 11:21 a.m.
The American Independent Business Alliance is urging everyone to "unchain" themselves this Saturday, Nov. 22, by shopping and doing business only with locally owned merchants. More than 200 community groups around the country are participating in the sixth annual event, says the AMIBA, which is based in Bozeman. There is lots of evidence that spending money at locally owned stores is good for th...
New West Missoula - Fri 10:42 a.m. - 12 clicks
Writer Lisa Selin Davis asks on Grist this week: "... if McDonald's is seeing record profits due to inexpensive food, will green housing be the equivalent of a biodynamic, $8 a pound plum?" Industry leaders say not so much: "Certainly green building is not a fad, rather, it's a trend," James Brew, an architect with the Rocky Mountain Institute's Built Environment Team, wrote...
New West Missoula - Fri 8:03 a.m. - 3 clicks
After all the years of the GOP running the legislature with sneaky backroom deals, mismanagement, bending the rules, bad ideas, corruption, profane tirades and poorly thought out bill proposals, it's beyond a joke that Scott Sales and his party are trying to advocate to maintain these legislative "traditions." Mr. Sales, there are some traditions in the Montana legislature that Montanans could ...
Left in the West - Thu 11:28 p.m. - 15 clicks
The Montana Supreme Court finally handed down its long awaited ruling on the so-called "Mitchell Slough case." Brought by the Bitterroot River Protective Association (BRPA), the appeal challenged the right of "rich out-of-state landowners" to limit public access to the Mitchell Slough. The plaintiffs argued that the Mitchell is a "natural, perennial-flowing stream" an...
New West Missoula - Thu 8:25 p.m. - 21 clicks
Falling demand for cardboard boxes has prompted fresh rumors to swirl around Frenchtown's Smurfit-Stone paperboard facility about a pending closure. Company officials say the plant will stay open. "I hope it doesn't happen," said Roy Houseman, union representative for the workers there. "But if it does, it wouldn't surprise me." If the plant did close, it would mean the loss of about 390 jobs....
New West Missoula - Thu 8:25 p.m. - 5 clicks
Falling demand for cardboard boxes has prompted fresh rumors to swirl around Frenchtown's Smurfit-Stone paperboard facility about a pending closure. Company officials say the plant will stay open. "I hope it doesn't happen," said Roy Houseman, union representative for the workers there. "But if it does, it wouldn't surprise me." If the plant did close, it would mean the loss of about 390 jobs....
New West Bozeman - Thu 5:52 p.m. - 3 clicks
The Montana Supreme Court finally handed down its long awaited ruling on the so-called "Mitchell Slough case." Brought by the Bitterroot River Protective Association (BRPA), the appeal challenged the right of "rich out-of-state landowners" to limit public access to the Mitchell Slough. The plaintiffs argued that the Mitchell is a "natural, perennial-flowing stream" an...
New West Bozeman - Thu 5:52 p.m. - 17 clicks
Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters Weekly Voting Rights News Update By Erin Ferns Following an historic turnout in the 2008 election comes a flurry of election reform agendas from both sides of the battle over voting rights. Since November 4, some state lawmakers have seized on the success of early voting and Election Day Registration (EDR) as models for facilitating...
DailyKos (Montana) - Thu 3:01 p.m. - 6 clicks
Missoula filmmakers Damon and Eric Ristau are finishing up their independent feature film Best Bar in America and you can see in the trailer above that it's taking shape. So much shape, in fact, that the Ristau brothers are celebrating with a preview party this weekend. The film, starring the likes of Andrew Rizzo, David Ackroyd, Gregory Collett and Lee McAfee, showcases some of the West's bes...
New West Missoula - Thu 12:11 p.m. - 17 clicks
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME (POLITICAL) FOOTBALL?? Hank Williams, Jr., has announced he will run for the U.S. Senate! Hank Jr. lives in Montana, so presumably he’s thinking of challenging freshman Senator Jon Tester (D) in 2012. Tester will be a top target for Republicans, since he won in 2006 with less than 50% of the vote against a scandal-plagued incumbent (the disgraceful and i...
DailyKos (Montana) - Thu 12:11 p.m. - 63 clicks
Well, I finally got around to taking down the Christmas lights from the house last Saturday. I laid them all out in the driveway, then plugged them in and checked every bulb on each string. Then I carefully coiled them all up, sealed them in a plastic bag, and tossed them into the garbage. I've been burned enough times to know that, when I put the lights back on the house in two weeks, half of th...
New West Missoula - Thu 10:45 a.m.
Josh Marshall : ...Rep. Henry Waxman has just successfully ousted Rep. John Dingell from his longtime perch as head of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office confirms to us the vote count in the Democratic Caucus moments ago: Waxman 137 votes, Dingell 122 votes. The defeat of Dingell is a major victory for environmentalists, removing a key obstacle to real energy ref...
Left in the West - Thu 10:45 a.m.
The United States Department of Agriculture says organic milk cows should be sent to pasture -- at least for 120 days a year. As Steve Karnowski reports for the Associated Press, the draft USDA rule comes after outcry about big organic milk producers that keep their animals in large feedlots, feeding them organically and producing organically, but not giving them any fresh grass or room to roam. ...
New West Bozeman - Thu 10:02 a.m. - 2 clicks
This years National Outdoor Book Awards honor crusaders to save the American chestnut tree, Grand Canyon explorers and the widow of mountaineer Alex Lowe, rebuilding her life after the death of her husband in a Himalayan mountaineering accident. "What a year it was," says Ron Watters, professor emeritus at Idaho State University. "The writing in the outdoor field has always been go...
New West Bozeman - Thu 10:02 a.m.
Relatively big news today as the insurance industry has announced that it is coming to the table for health care reform. This is better than in '94 when they chose to sit it out and scare the crap out of the American people with lies and half-truths. Their initial offering is lukewarm (not that we expected much better). They're offering to stop discrimination in issuing policies based on pre-ex...
Left in the West - Thu 9:45 a.m.
At first I thought the Obama-as-socialist-fascist-authoritarian was strictly a talking point for the stupid, but I see people like Craig Sprout and law professor (!) Rob Natelson ape the rhetoric. I don't want to get into the details of what they wrote -- Mark T and Wulfgar! already addressed the specifics of Natelson's piece, although I'd just like to add that it wasn't Obama supporters wh...
Left in the West - Thu 9:45 a.m.
Two days after progressives get accused of "crypto-fascism" for supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, the founder of Home Depot says that CEOs who fail to oppose the same act ardently enough should be shot . Update IRONIY! ...
Left in the West - Thu 12:28 a.m.
Ben Smith , in reaction to al Qaeda calling Barack Obama a "house negro" doing "the bidding of whites" and Jews: We always sort of knew it wouldn't take long to get from "secret Muslim" to "tool of the Jews," if he got elected. ...
Left in the West - Thu 12:28 a.m.
Just the other day I used the struggle for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce committee , noting that it wasn't likely "caretaker of Detroit's interests" John Dingell would be replaced by the ueber-ethical Henry Waxman, and Dingell would survive to be a major brake on any meaningful climate change legislation that might find its way to Congress. And look at this ! The House Ste...
Left in the West - Thu 12:28 a.m.
Craig : Look at the industries who typically have their hands out for bailouts. (Before the banks.) That would be the auto makers and the airline industry. And why do they always have their hands out? I dunno. legacy costs for one? "Legacy costs" -- the cost of pensions and health-care plans that companies owe employees who have retired. The irony here is that big corporations in WWII and ...
Left in the West - Thu 12:28 a.m.
The problem with unseasonable weather in Montana is the temperature is probably plummeting -- or rising -- even as you note how odd it is. So far this fall, the weather has been warmer than usual, said meteorologist Corby Dickerson of the National Weather Service's Missoula office. But the warmth won't last. The "normal" high temperature for November 19 is 38 degrees Fahrenheit. The low is 23...
New West Bozeman - Wed 6:10 p.m. - 15 clicks
Montana State University just won a $66.9M grant from the Department of Energy to "inject a million tons of carbon dioxide into the sandstone rock layer beneath southwestern Wyoming." The award will allow the partnership to begin its Phase III project, a commercial-scale, eight-year carbon sequestration study that could begin as early as next year. That project will spend two years building in...
Left in the West - Wed 8:22 a.m. - 14 clicks