Good morning; on the Beacon today, with heavy snow and frigid temperatures in the preceding weeks, skiers and snowboarders can expect to descend more early-season terrain than usual when Whitefish Mountain Resort commences the 2010-2011 season on Dec. 4. Whitefish Municipal Judge Bradley Johnson is asking the Montana Judicial Standards Commission for a full hearing concerning an ethics complaint filed against him by a Columbia Falls woman stemming from a traffic dustup in a parking lot last summer. Polson police say a 32-year-old man has been stabbed to death and that an 18-year-old male is in custody. The Flathead County Animal Shelter is running at full capacity with more animals showing up each day; a situation that officials say may lead to turning away owner-surrendered pets. Many resources – from tax breaks to training grants to financing – exist to help small businesses, if they know where to look.
The release of more than 250,000 classified State Department documents forced the Obama administration into damage control, trying to contain fallout from unflattering assessments of world leaders and revelations about backstage U.S. diplomacy. Montana State hosts North Dakota State in an NCAA Football Championship Subdivision second-round playoff game on Saturday. Montana’s jeans-wearing, gun-toting Democratic governor is stealing the thunder from a tea party-fueled Republican resurgence — and tweaking the new GOP Legislature in the process — with a unique plan from a Democrat to cut business taxes during a flagging economy. The governors of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming plan to meet with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in Denver on Monday to talk about wolf management. Lawmakers, after taking Thanksgiving week off, arrive in town Monday along with the Capitol Christmas tree for the final stretch of the postelection session. The Missoulian reports on a wheelchair-bound Columbia Falls teen who bagged a six-point elk. The hand recount in the Billings Senate race between incumbent Roy Brown and Kendall Van Dyk has begun. Freshly re-elected U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg has asked Montana’s U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester to join congressional Republicans in their quest to end earmarks, the amendments to the president’s budget proposals that direct federal funds to specific local projects. Year after year, the big kahuna in state spending is human services — and Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s proposed budget makes no exception here, with substantial increases in Medicaid, the state-federal program that pays medical bills for the poor.