Posted: March 19, 2011 at 8:28 pm

Crocodile Tears from a GOP Legislator – UPDATED

When Republican Representative James Knox (R-Billings Heights) testified in front of a Senate committee this week in favor of repealing Montana’s medical marijuana initiative, he appeared to be near tears.

It turns out, however, that Knox is hardly the distraught moral naif he pretends to be.  According the Montanafesto blog, Knox must have put aside these qualms when he proposed a contract to create a website for a medical marijuana business. UPDATE: New information has come to light.  See the comment section.

Montanafesto has the story, the contract, and an exposé of the profit arrangements other opponents of medical cannabis had set up, presumably before they launched a petition campaign to repeal the voter passed initiative.  UPDATE #2: The Billings Gazette is reporting this story h/t Montanafesto.

As for the tears, Knox needs to channel his bottled up emotions towards a more worthy end — if he really feels so strongly.   Rep. Knox has not introduced any bills related to repealing or tightening regulations on medical marijuana. Knox has also voted to include large cuts to prevention programs, mental health care, and drug treatment in the GOP’s budget proposal.

A Lee Newspapers poll, released today, found most Montanans prefer to tighten regulations on the current law over repealing the citizens’ initiative.  The poll results cast further doubt on polling done on this subject by GOP operatives earlier this year, as well as on the operatives earlier polling work on other subjects.

28 comments

  1. Kate Narsson

    He say’s “I’ll never get my brother back” –is he saying his brother is dead? Or just that he has written him off forever because he..wait for it…smokes pot? Also, sounds like he brother has a problem with mental illness, and that the drug use is secondary. This one is a piece of work.

  2. Larry Kralj, Environmental Rangers

    Equally insane. A buddy of knox’s perhaps?

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/20/gop-state-lawmaker-america-like-gaddafi-because-of-abortion/

    Ya know, when the Dems get back in power, I’m thinkin’ we need our OWN birther bill, one that would establish some residency requirements for these tub-o-lard fatassed outta staters like Jumbo Jimmy Knoxious! They should reside here at LEAST twenty years or more before being allowed to serve in the Legislature. I mean, just look at the list of inbreds destroying our state at the moment. Damn near ALL of them are recent arrivals with an agenda. And it’s only going to get worse.

    These people have NO right to move here and start dictating THEIR wacko, racist, inbred, hateful, fascist agendas on we Montanans.

    So, in order to prevent these tub-o-lard teabaggers, these corpulent carpetbaggers, these abdomius dufuses from destroying our state any further, I say we BIRTH’EM with a residency requirement!

    I see nothing wrong with it. How long have jumbo jimmy, the skeester, etc., been here? Not long enough to legislate.

  4. Corrine

    Word on the street is that alcohol lobbyist Mark Staples was paid to write this repeal bill and the Lewis marijuana tax and regulate bill. I wonder if any reporters will ask him about it. Sort of puts the motives of this crowd into perspective, doesn’t it?

  6. montanafesto

    Just to clarify, when I wrote this post, I wasn’t aware that Knox had indeed cashed the check for $600 and designed the website for Higgins. I was under the impression that it was only a proposal, but it was indeed a contract that was fulfilled.

    I’m a capitalist… I have no problem with people profiting, but Knox’s ridiculous crybaby routine at the HB161 hearing in Senate Judiciary was just TOO MUCH.

  8. interested party

    Contrast with this from the Seattle Times:

    Note: “The Seattle Times editorial board commends the House Ways and Means Committee for holding a hearing HB 1550 to legalize marijuana, and also expresses its support for SB 5073 to license, tax and regulate growers and dispensaries for medical cannabis.

    This page has been part of it. On Feb. 20 we came out for regulation and taxation of cannabis for adult use, which HB 1550 would do through the state liquor stores. That The Seattle Times would say this lowers the risk for public officials to say it. At the hearing Wednesday at the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, you could feel the change. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, presented Hunter’s committee with an estimate that in the next biennium her bill could raise $441 million for the state.”

  9. Lynn

    Another Republican that ignores the will of the people to follow the will of the corporations

    “Republican Wayne Stahl was among just a couple Republicans to oppose the spending plan because it didn’t cut enough. He said Republicans will see their big majority decline when voters see they didn’t deliver big cuts.

    “We are not doing anything we promised we would,” Stahl said.”

    http://mtlowdown.blogspot.com/2010/12/buckle-up.html

    http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9LVOES00.htm

    • Larry Kralj, Environmental Rangers

      Only a complete dipshit would refuse federal money to help the needy while the feds are firing missiles in Libya at about 1/2 million a pop! HUNDREDS of them.

      Yet the dumbass teabaggers in our Lege refuse the money. I’m sorry, but just HOW f*ckin’ stupid is that?

      • Larry Kralj, Environmental Rangers

        Schweitzer should call every last ONE of these pathetic, inbred, dumbass teabaggers into the rotundo and tell them, OK, boys, bend over! I’m a’gonna BRAND your dumb asses with this here veto iron until one of two things happen! One, you take the fed money. Or two, you GIVE UP YOUR OWN!

        Now which is it, boys? Are you REALLY gonna make me brand your fat asses repeatebly in front of the ENTIRE ELECTORATE or Montana, or are you gonna come to your senses?

        Like my daddy used to tell me before I got a whippin’ when I was a kid, you can learn through your head or you can learn through your ass!

        Now which is it gonna be, boys? (i’m thinkin’ these stupid bastards are SO dumb that they’re gonna have to learn through their asses! I’m OK with that, and I’m sure the guv is too! OUCH but that veeetoe iron is hot!)

  11. Rimrock

    Mark Staples?!

    Now that is truly pathetic.
    Talk about going over to the Dark Side…

    A quick, and somewhat unrelated story. Going on thirty years ago, my wife offered to buy me a new guitar as a wedding present. Which I gladly took her up on! Except this turned problematic, as I already had a pretty good acoustic (plus some electrics). So as opportunity presented, everywhere from San Francisco (honeymoon, visiting relatives to boot) basically from horizon to horizon I tried lots of different guitars. Nothing lit my fire. This went on for five years or so. Until one day, unbelievably enough in Shelby, MT (where Mark had a music store at the time) I picked up a jumbo body Guild he’d just had traded in from somebody over in Havre the day before.
    It was love at first strum. I know, oversimplifications, but it rang like a bell. And still does!! We’re talking near-magical…
    Not too long after that, Mark left Shelby for Helena. And now this!!?
    Karma, Mark. I think I’ll go play Willin’.

  12. Lt. Col (Ret., Army) Rich Liebert

    We The People should be WEEPING profusely to allow ourselves to be ‘hijacked’ by imposters……

  14. ken

    What a FKN joke this persons and all i want to say go back where u from n know what is right,and kiss my ass

  15. Jedediah

    My experience with politicians has led me to believe that all politicians have to be dyslexic at least. I have come to believe the problem is not politics, per se, so much as overpopulation generally.
    Too many of us are surviving infancy.

  16. Jack Ruby

    Un f-ing believable. Have you guys checked out the link to the Kemmick article? Knox actually says that “he can’t recall” if he used to sell pot in California. I really am floored at the new levels of hypocrisy these people reach on a DAILY basis. This guy is a god damn cartoon characted. James do you even have one ounce of integrity in that substantial frame of yours?

  17. Fake Crying Is So Embarrassing

    Okay-This guy is a bad actor, he turns his fake whining on by artificially moderating his voice and heavy breathing and at the end of his testimoney, he cheerfully says Thank You and bombles off to the donut table.

  18. Farmboy

    WTF happened to the party of “personal responsibility”? “We need to save other people’s brothers”. Who in the hell appoint James Knox or anybody else to be my bothers keeper? I know people that can not digest food with out medical marijuana, what about them? What about those people that are in such pain that they would probley comit suicide if they did not have their medical marijuana? If James cares soooooooooo much for his brother, why does he not get him into a drug rehabilitation facility? Why does he not get him declared incompetent? Good God this man is a joke of a legislator!!!!!!!!!!

  20. trust no one

    His brother started smoking pot in the fifth grade and hadn’t missed a day of getting high since he was 16? So when he met his wife he smoked pot everyday. He smoked pot everyday while he was making his fortune and his family was growing yet he lost it all because he smoked pot everyday? Makes no sense whatsoever. I’m not saying he’s lying but I think maybe he’s leaving something out like his brother also did acid everyday.