Columns

Recently a friend of mine told me about a principle she’d learned from a Buddhist: everything is transient. I may not be Buddhist myself, but the concept intrigued me. It touches on something we all know but do a wonderful job of keeping out of our day-to-day thoughts.  The impermanence in life. Now, this idea can be approached in a nihilistic way, talking in large strokes about unavoidable death and the pointlessness of doing things. But rather than inspiring futility and uncaring, this philosophy could help us adjust to the inevitable change we’ll see not just in the world, but within us throughout our lifetimes.  Everything is transient, so why are we so ha...

Attorney General Austin Knudsen recently spoke to a meeting of health care workers and community members in Sidney, where some employees of the Sidney Health Center were protesting the hospital’s intention to comply with a federal vaccine mandate for health care providers that receive Medicaid and Medi...

Turning the calendar over to a new year is often a time of reflection, not only to look backward but also to look ahead. What can happen to make the future bigger and brighter?  The past year has been overflowing with lessons for my life. It’s been a year of change and challenges, struggles and...

1.   The signing of my bipartisan infrastructure package into law. My top highlight is the bipartisan infrastructure package, which delivers urgently-needed investments to Montana that will support our small businesses, lower costs for working families, and grow our economy—all without raising ...

With the unrelenting talk about election fraud, I’ve decided now to clear my conscience and disclose that I voted twice for President in 1996. No, it wasn’t an act of voter fraud. As a delegate to the Republican convention that year, I voted to nominate Bob Dole as the Republican candidate. I vot...

There is a board-game called Pandemic that has been around for years before Covid 19 circled the globe. In Pandemic, you and your fellow players are members of a disease control team. You must work together to develop cures and prevent disease outbreaks, for Pandemic is a cooperative game. The players all wi...

Montana families across the state are feeling the pain in their pocketbooks from inflation and higher prices on everything from gas to groceries to heating their homes. What’s causing this? President Biden and Congressional Democrats’ wasteful spending problems, and their multitrillion dollar rec...

The idea that America is a Christian Nation is a modern myth. The founding documents do not mention Christ or scripture. While the word “God” appears in the opening of the Declaration of Independence, it refers to “Nature’s God,” the god of Deism.  The phrase “IN G...

The winds of change are moving through the ponderosas. The faces and skylines of our towns are fluctuating, growing in ways many Montanans have not seen. The secret has gotten out, and it seems more and more people are flocking to the Last Best Place. What does this mean, though, for the Montana experience? ...

I was an early proponent of online shopping. I lived in a rural community without much access to retail, so it was a natural fit. I even experimented with grocery purchases when it was a new and novel thing. I wrote about the crazy packaging practices of my delivery orders back in 2017. Yes, I was that cutti...