Good morning; on the Beacon today, a small group gathered on the steps of the old Flathead County courthouse building in Kalispell earlier this week to kick off an effort to put a measure on the ballot in November that would prohibit a tax on real estate sales and transfers. Hundreds turned out at Depot Park in Kalispell yesterday for the Tea Party demonstration to protest big government. A District Court jury has acquitted a Whitefish man of charges filed against him after a 5-year-old boy in his care was scalded in a bathtub of hot water. A 29-year-old Polson man has pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for violently shaking his 3-month-old daughter in February. Glacier High School’s tennis teams are again laden with talent, but whether they find more success at the state level this year could ultimately boil down to two factors: freshmen and family. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are backing off a plan to add aggressive netting to an effort to reduce the number of nonnative lake trout in Flathead Lake. And Mick Holien contemplates Griz football moving up into the NCAA.
Activists smashed cardboard boxes in a nod to the original Boston Tea Party as tax-day rallies were held Thursday in front of the state Capitol and elsewhere in Montana. A 30-day comment period is open on the state’s environmental assessment of an oil company’s plan to haul about 200 oversized loads of mining equipment through northwestern Montana to Canada starting this fall. In a bid to shoot down the city of Missoula’s newly adopted equality ordinance, NotMyBathroom.com chairman Tei Nash filed a petition Thursday to suspend the law and place it on the ballot. With more than $731,000 in the bank on March 31, Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg again has amassed the largest campaign war chest in the House race, reports filed Thursday showed. Federal officials will try to determine how prevalent wolverines are across the West to decide whether they should be added to the endangered species list. And Lee’s Mike Dennison, as part of his ongoing series on the health care overhaul, looks at how it will help small businesses purchase insurance for employees.