Posted: February 6, 2013 at 5:15 pm
by Cowgirl
…does not, alas, emanate from the Montana Legislature. It comes from Idaho, our neighbor. The Idaho Statesman reports that the chair of the education committee in the Idaho state Senate has introduced a bill to require school children to read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand.
Posted: February 4, 2013 at 7:11 am
Back by popular demand after the big hit in 2011, here is the current list of actual Republican bills in the 2013 Montana Legislature. Enjoy.
1. Amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent President from entering into any arms treaties that infringe on gun rights. HJ 5
2. Allow corporal punishment in lieu of incarceration for misdemeanor crimes and felonies, punishment to be imposed be commensurate with the severity, nature, and degree of the harm caused by the offender. Punishment must be administered publicly. LC1452
3. Authorize alkaline hydrolysis as a means of dissolving human remains in lieu of cremation, as is done with animal carcasses. LC226
4. Authorize trapping of mountain lions by Montana residents. HB 29 Continue reading
Posted: January 28, 2013 at 6:54 am
There is an unmistakable lull in the world of firebrand conservativism right now in the Montana legislature. When the legislature was last convened in 2011, right-wing bills were getting big crowds of proponents lining up to testify, to rage against the machine, as it were.
This year, not so much. I read in the IR this week that Democrats proposed getting rid of Montana’s so-called anti-sodomy law which criminalizes homosexuality, and that only two people came in to oppose it. A bill to allow the state to require all state workers to submit to drug tests received no support at all from any citizens. A bill requiring the teaching of creationism similarly did not get a single citizen testifying in favor of it. Several other GOP bills have met with similar indifference, with few if any conservative citizens attending the hearings.
This muted expression by the Tea party and the Right Wing presents a marked contrast to the frenzy of conservative activism witnessed in the previous legislature. So what’s going on? Continue reading
Posted: January 3, 2013 at 4:45 am
As the 2013 legislature arrives, here are some bills that I’m told are already being drafted by certain legislators. Some I like, some not. You be the judge. (For those new to the Cowgirl Blog, referring to the 2011 Nutjob Bills may provide some context).
1. Joint Resolution of the House and Senate, acknowledging the earth is significantly greater than 6,000 years old.
2. Joint Resolution, declaring global warming to be bad.
3. Bill requiring all political funding sources to be disclosed, for all groups and candidates, period.
4. Bill requiring mandatory counseling prior to divorce, for candidates running in a GOP gubernatorial primary.
5. Bill forbidding any GOP legislator who votes to take health care from others from benefitting in any way from any aspect of taxpayer funded health care.
6. State income tax increase for large corporations and Montana’s making more than $250,000.
7. Bill to remove carbon monoxide detector in the Governor’s office.
8. Bill to require legislators opposed to medical marijuana to take a lie detector test, about whether they’ve ever smoked it, and how much they smoked.
9. Bill to require a posting, in Capitol Rotunda, of all federal farm subsidy payments to legislators. (Did you know they are mostly TEA Partiers?)
10. Bill to require school children to carry hand-thrown spears and guns with silencers.
11. Constitutional amendment limiting the number of legislative referenda to three per election with citizen-authorized measures with greatest number of signatures taking priority; and raising the vote threshold needed for the legislature to send a measure directly to the ballot, to supermajority.
12. Bill requiring security checkpoints at all public bathrooms, to inspect all transgender Montanans.
13. Bill to establish dog kennel on Capitol grounds, to perpetuate dog-friendly state government.
14. Constitutional Amendment to require use of branding iron by Governor when vetoing.
15. Bill to allow fishing with silencers (and semiautomatics).
16. Bill to allow legislators to be paid in gold dust, pixie stix, or cattle.
Posted: December 19, 2012 at 6:35 pm
Republican leaders are scrambling to prevent party members from discussing their new wacky gun proliferation ideas in public, but that hasn’t stopped GOP lawmakers from trying to pass them into law.
Already, Montana legislators are introducing what appear to be some of the exact same bills that went down in flames last session. We’ll know more when the drafts of these bills are made public, but here’s what’s out there so far:
Rep. Ted Washburn (R-Bozeman) is again proposing to legalize hunting with silencers.
Rep. Krayton Kerns (R-Laurel) is bringing back the bill to allow anybody to carry a concealed weapon around without a permit. (He’s also brought back the bill to give local sheriffs authority over the federal government in terror investigations.)
And new Rep. Alan Doane (R-Bloomfield) wants to “Encourage manufacture of ammunition in Montana to ensure availability.”
This is only the beginning. The legislative session doesn’t even start until January 7.
Posted: December 14, 2012 at 7:19 am
The Montana Republican Party announced today that it wants to make sweeping changes to education in Montana.
When the party responsible for the “broken, unconstitutional school-funding system had crashed and burned” calls for sweeping changes, be afraid. The changes they’ve pushed for in Montana seem to be more about stoking the roiling paranoia that motivates the right-wing base than anything else.
Montana Republicans have come out vigorously against evolution, public school classrooms, teachers’ bargaining rights, the age of the Earth, student loan programs, and the entire skill of critical thinking.
The last Republican governor in Montana poo-pooed education. The last GOP candidate for Governor backed abolishing the Department of Education altogether. Their candidate for U.S. Senate is listed first among the most anti-science candidates in America.
Montana Republicans even tried formally codifying their disdain for education, attempting to do away with all educational requirements for candidates running for Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Posted: November 29, 2012 at 6:31 am
Those eagerly awaiting the next important idea to emante from the GOP legislature need only go to the Flathead Memo to see what much-needed policy advancement Sen. Edward Buttrey (R-Great Falls) has come up with this time.
Posted: October 18, 2012 at 6:25 pm
A bizarre mail piece appeared in Whitefish arguing that voters should support Tim Baldwin for legislature because he wrote one of the worst nutjob bills of the 2011 session.
The piece actually brags about Baldwin’s work to write HB 414, one of the infamous nullification bills, an idea so nutty it made national news. As TIME magazine reported in its profile of Montana’s wacky bills, nullification has a sinister history:
It was invoked by South Carolina lawmakers seething over tariff laws in the antebellum South, and again during the civil-rights era, when states opposed to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 used the idea of interposition, nullification’s kissing cousin, as a mechanism to resist integration.
Like nullification fanboy Derek Skees, (R-TEA) who currently holds the HD 4 seat Baldwin is running for, Baldwin is a states-rights fanatic. He believes that the fifty states individually can, should and must override federal law when they please. He admittedly does not recognize the supremacy clause of the US Constitution, saying it is a tool of “socialist and nationalist ideologues” designed to bring “state annihilation.”
The concept of nullification was a key feature of the most extreme legislature in Montana history–nearly a dozen bills to declare federal authority “null and void” or unenforceable in Montana were introduced by Republicans during the 2011 session. Gov. Brian Schweitzer in his veto of this particular nullification bill, HB 414, wrote:
“The 2011 Legislature may best be remembered for its efforts to “nullify” numerous federal laws and set records for the greatest number of unconstitutional bills in a legislative session -as identified by its own legal staff.”
Spear-hunting, war on women, nullification and militia bills have taken their toll on the Montana legislature, with polls showing that 61 percent of voters don’t approve of what the lunatics in the state house did, while only 24 percent of voters approve of their behavior.
Baldwin recently moved to Montana from Florida and lives in Kalispell, another trait he shares with Rep. Skees. Baldwin has lived in Kalispell for two years and has never lived in Whitefish.
Contrast that with forester Ed Lieser who has served Whitefish for 22 years.
