A version of the North Fork Watershed Protection Act (NFPA) recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives and has been stymied by some U.S. senators refusing to vote for it. This oversight is welcome. One of the senators is the author of the apt and timely book, “The Debt Bomb” (Coburn, 2012). The senators “… have stipulated that the only way they’ll support additional land protections is if an equal amount of land is removed from federal protections” (March 19 Beacon).

While deliberately dodging the public’s questions after recently leaked emails exposed a plot to hand a U.S. Senate seat to Gov. Steve Bullock’s right-hand man, John Walsh, Rep. Steve Daines is working tirelessly at his job in Washington fighting for the interests of Montana.

Congressman Steve Daines deserves credit for advancing the North Fork Watershed Protection Act, but he needs to work on being more consistent and reliable with similar Montana-made legislation.

The day Daines helped pass the North Fork legislation out of the House of Representatives he also voted to pass another local grassroots bill that protected a historic lakeshore in Michigan. This is significant because it was the first time in his career he helped pass a collaborative, solution-oriented bill that includes new wilderness area into law.

When Congressman Steve Daines voted to shutdown the government and voted to privatize Social Security and Medicare, I wondered who he was working for because it’s definitely not Montanans.

Then I got my answer from a news story I read.

In response to the many articles and events surrounding the recent vandalism at All Families Health Care, the Kalispell area 40 Days for Life Leadership Team feels compelled to comment.

Following the news of the vandalism, 40 Days for Life issued a press release stating, “We stand in strong opposition to the vandalism incident that occurred at the All Families Healthcare location. Violence and vandalism are opposed to our belief and continued focus on a prayerful and peaceful means to oppose abortion.”

There were two mentions in the Beacon recently concerning the North Fork.

While I am happy to see more people endorse paving the North Fork Road, columnist Rob Breeding undercuts his own argument to do so.

It was a chilly day, spring of 1998, when the sixth grade class of Kila School took the most fascinating of all field trips, to the county landfill. It stank, it was noisy, it was cold, but each one of those kids remembers that day and when they learned where their trash ends up. It was exciting and educational; motivating and meaningful. We must teach our children the impact each of us has on our valley. It is hard to push responsibility on a 12-year-old, but they get it when they visit the county landfill.

Montana’s hate crime law is on the books to protect Montanans against crimes motivated by “race, creed, religion, color, national origin, or involvement in civil rights or human rights activities.”

People are free to hate. They are free to espouse whatever religious views they wish. But when they kill, threaten or vandalize in order to intimidate people they don’t like, or whose religion they disagree with, that crosses a line.

Here we go again. Religion being blamed for something it had nothing to do with. First Dr. Cahill on TV news blamed “religious terrorist” for destroying her clinic, then Ms. Strong in a letter to the Flathead Beacon, even after it was proven the person who broke in and did the damage was not religious. I especially enjoy the way non-religious people love to quote Bible verses when they clearly don’t have a clue the context of those verses. It’s all about an attempt to control “religious” people by using their Holy Book. Christians do no harm. If anyone claims to be a Christian and does harm, they are a liar.

Montanans’ most fundamental right is at risk: the right to choose who we want to represent us in free and open primary elections. In an unprecedented political maneuver, our highest elected officials selected a candidate for the United States Senate, a decision made for Montanans in Washington, DC. Historically, elected officials have trusted Montana voters […]

Many Montanans don’t know that nonresident students subsidize the cost of our own children going to college. Legislators recognized this and wrote laws allowing the university system to waive nonresident tuition up to 2 percent of the previous year’s full-time enrollment numbers. University officials call this “tuition discounting” and know that more students from out […]

We must end the Democrats’ war on jobs. What war on jobs, you ask? It’s a subtle war, but one with devastating impacts. It involves millions of pages of needless regulations and red tape on our businesses. It involves not letting Native Americans to develop their resources. The Crow Tribe Chairman Darrin Old Coyote has […]

While I feel Congressman Steve Daines’s introduction of the North Fork Watershed Protection Act of 2013 is a great step forward, let’s not frame him as a conservation hero. With his political ambitions, this bill is a no brainer. It would be political suicide if he didn’t. But let’s look at his overall conservation track […]

If you have been following the articles proposing to designate the Whitefish River as non-motorized, you have not been getting the straight story. Recent newspaper articles have more than suggested that the FWP (Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks) supports the non-motorized designation proposed by the city of Whitefish. This is misleading if not completely untrue. […]

After four decades of collaborative effort, protection of the watershed of the North Fork of the Flathead River from mineral or energy development is almost a reality. On June 5, 2013, Congressman Steve Daines introduced the North Fork Watershed Protection Act to our nation’s House of Representatives and made a commitment to “lead the charge” […]