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Monday: Climate Bill, Nurse Drug Theft, BP Frustration

By Beacon Staff

Good morning; on the Beacon today, Whitefish-based Rocky Mountain Transportation has come a long way since its modest beginnings in 1946, when the entrepreneurial Roy Duff was one of many men and women across the nation finding their way in the business world following World War II. A group of Flathead residents were in Washington D.C. last week to press members of Montana’s federal delegation to take action on legislation to stem global-warming. A library committee in Whitefish is calling on the city council to break ties with the Flathead County Library System and revert back to a city-operated facility. And Libby residents continue to struggle with ongoing asbestos-related afflictions. And just in time for summer, Kitchen Guy Jim Gray instructs on the perfect crab cake.

The executive in charge of fighting a Gulf of Mexico oil spill acknowledged Monday everyone is frustrated at BP’s failure to plug the ocean gusher more than a month into a disaster that is spreading damage in Louisiana’s wetlands, including miring pelican colonies. Two employees in the governor’s budget office have received pay increases of nearly 38 percent after their duties were changed and their jobs reclassified. Montana and other states that have legalized medical marijuana are seeing a backlash, with public anger rising and politicians passing laws to slow the proliferation of pot shops and bring order to what has become a wide-open, Wild West sort of industry. The victory of Republican Charles Djou in a special election in Hawaii’s First Congressional District – the heavily Democratic district where President Obama grew up – is a welcome political reversal for the GOP. The number of Montana nurses caught stealing drugs is underreported, the narcotics bureau chief for the state Division of Criminal Investigation says. Montana timber workers may benefit from $1.8 million in Department of Labor national emergency grants for retraining over the next two years. And a conservative gathering in Missoula over the weekend called the Liberty Convention drew about 250 people. Butte-Silver Bow leaders in southwest Montana said they have no immediate plans to limit medical marijuana caregivers in the area.