Once the clocks move forward, excuses hold less water. Before, when driving to and from work under the cover of darkness, it was a lot easier to explain away why you’re not running, or biking, or whatever it is you do to prepare for summer – a season that requires some endurance to keep pace with.

Those days are now over. The temperatures are rising as the sun hangs around a little longer. Muscles little used for anything more than balancing on skis and snowboards are awakened. Rudely. And getting back into the routine is sporadic at best.

I remember as a sophomore in Spokane, Wash., watching my older brother play high school football. Nearly every game, besides homecoming, was held at Joe Albi Stadium on the northwest part of the city. The stadium holds more than 25,000 people and always seemed too big for the games it hosted – a nice facility […]

During a June 2013 interview with the D.C. publication Roll Call, former Gov. Brian Schweitzer made waves when he slammed the nation’s capitol as a place with bad traffic, worse weather and an oversupply of “frauds.” During the same exchange, when asked whether it was accurate to report that he was close to jumping into […]

We’ve all seen it in print, or heard it on television. The phrase is used so often that it’s easy to gloss over. Everyone from politicians to celebrities says it: “I can neither confirm nor deny.” They are likely responding to an inquiry or accusation, to which they don’t want to answer. Even though they […]

If you’ve been watching the Winter Olympics, you’ve likely seen the commercial for consumer goods giant P&G. It shows children falling, his or her mom picking them up, the children growing up, falling some more, and ends with their mother embracing them as their son or daughter accomplishes their lifelong dream – in this case, […]

After Gov. Steve Bullock chose Lt. Gov. John Walsh as Montana’s interim U.S. senator, David Hawkings with D.C. publication Roll Call pointed out that Walsh is the 51st member appointed to the chamber in the past half-century. “But of that group,” Hawkings wrote, “only 19 of the 36 who tried went on to leverage the […]

A few inches of snow dropped on the South last week, enough to effectively shut down the region and earn the storm the nicknames “snowpocalypse” and “snowmageddon” and other combinations of words that suggest the end of the world. While that didn’t happen, it was still pretty bad. Atlanta, one of the largest metro areas […]

Homeland Security officials recently told Montana that the licenses and identification cards it issues do not comply with a number of federal rules implemented by 2005’s REAL ID Act. Gov. Steve Bullock disagrees. And if this all sounds familiar, it should, since we’ve been waging this battle for several years. If you recall, former Gov. […]

On a recent visit, a relative asked why Christmas lights were still hanging over the streets in Whitefish. I explained that they would stay up a while and that the Winter Carnival is approaching. I then explained what that is, which didn’t explain anything at all. It went something like this: “It’s a month-long celebration, […]

Last week, during the kickoff to his campaign for his old U.S. Senate seat in South Dakota, Republican-turned-independent Larry Pressler said, “I think there’s an increased level of people wanting an alternative to the Republican-Democrat thing.” People have been saying this for a long time. And those people are right, but rarely does anything change. […]

It’s easier to look back than forward. It’s at least much more clear. We can reflect on the accomplishments and failures of the last year. We can measure them against what we had hoped to do, then keep the yardstick out to set benchmarks for 2014. That’s how my New Year’s resolutions work. I write […]

The national media left the state after Jordan Linn Graham changed her plea. Closing arguments were set to begin in her trial last week when the Kalispell woman acknowledged that she pushed her husband, Cody Johnson, off a cliff in Glacier National Park, killing him on July 7. Graham will be sentenced for second-degree murder […]

The Internet is full of so many lists that they have earned the nickname “listicles,” and we like to share them. Some include celebrities. Too many include cats. And perhaps the most popular are those that depict images of people acting selflessly with titles like this: “22 Random Acts of Kindness that will Restore Your […]

Miles of cars are idling in front of me on the west side of Lookout Pass on Interstate 90. More than an hour has passed and people are getting antsy, exiting their vehicles and wandering around in the rain for no apparent reason – rain that turns into snow a few miles ahead and has […]

When Oracle bought Bozeman-based RightNow Technologies in 2011 it was already involved in a long-running lawsuit with Google, alleging copyright and patent infringement over the search engine giant’s Android operating system. The case dragged on and largely focused on Java technologies, which Oracle now owned with its acquisition of Sun Microsystem a year prior. I […]