Tagged: Rep. Derek Skees

Posted: July 21, 2011 at 12:02 pm

Whitefish Leader to Challenge TEA Party Poster Boy Derek Skees

Good news for democrats today from the Whitefish Pilot.  A Whitefish attorney, city council member, and judge has announced he will run for the Whitefish House seat (HD 4) currently held by TEA party Republican Rep. Derek Skees, (R-Whitefish Kalispell.)

Kudos to Mr. Tom Muri, who has lived in Whitefish for more than 45 years, for stepping up to the plate to better represent the people of Whitefish.  He also has a 20-year military career that includes serving as a judge-advocate officer for the Navy.

The extreme and wacky nature of the 2011 Legislative session is expected to attract other strong candidates to follow Muri’s lead and step up to the plate and run for these seats.

Posted: March 28, 2011 at 5:17 pm

FACT CHECK: Republican Misquotes Party’s Founder

In today’s Twitter frenzy of enlightening and intelligent statements by Representative Derek Skees (R Whitefish Kalispell), this statement appeared:

If Republicans can't even get quotes from their own founder right, what else are they getting wrong?

However, according to the book They Never Said it: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, these words are not from Lincoln. The quotes were published in 1942 by William J. H. Boetcker, a Presbyterian minister.  He released a pamphlet titled Lincoln On Limitations, which did include a Lincoln quote, but also added 10 statements written by Boetcker himself.

This is not the first time that legislative Republicans have been caught misinforming the public about the words of President Lincoln.

On January 5, 2009, MT House Minority Leader Scott Sales (R-Bozeman) read a series of quotes that were attributed to former President Abraham Lincoln. A newspaper reporter looked into those quotes and found that they have been mis-attributed to Lincoln.  Sales was forced to apologize on the House Floor on Jan 8, 2009, to address the issue, saying he’d been “duped” because he got his information from the internet.

We’re not sure where Skees gets his information, but if his source was the internet, he must have missed this article about the gaffe and Sales’ apology and retraction here.

Posted: January 20, 2011 at 12:09 pm

Skees Forgets Himself in Chamber, and Confirms His Ties to Militia/White Nationalist Fringe

During the 2010 campaign, when Derek Skees (TEA-Whitefish Kalispell) was confronted by the press about his attendance at a conference that featured white supremacists neo nazis and militia leaders, he brushed it off and said he had no idea that the conference would be featuring such people when he accepted the invitation. Skees was also confronted by the fact that his campaign treasurer, a man named Rick Breckenridge, was one of the conference’s chief sponsors. In response, Skees replaced Breckenridge, presumably as a way of showing that he did not tolerate such hateful activity.

So with that background, enjoy this clip of Skees on the floor of the house January 17, posted online here.

UPDATE: The video appears to be back up.  When you click the link, you’ll get to a page that looks like the screenshot below.  Click “Full Video” (above “Order of Business”) and fast forward to 1:20:55.  (Oh, first you may want to download the terrible application “Real Player” because the legislature uses this terrible video format dot-rm that is not readily viewable with modern equipment that anyone uses.)

UPDATE: You can listen to the  Skees and Breckenridge audio clip here. It’s only a few seconds long.