It is sad to see that campaign signs have again started to litter our roadsides. The campaign rules state that campaign signs cannot be displayed in zoned areas more than 30 days before the mailing of absentee ballots for any election. Therefore, campaign signs should not appear in zoned areas before May 5 for the upcoming primary. There are no regulations or guidelines for un-zoned areas of the county. We who live in the county have to suffer the campaign litter endlessly in many cases. Ryan Zinke’s campaign signs appeared on our county roadsides about the middle of March, and who knows when they will be removed.

I am writing about the pro-life and pro Second Amendment stance of the current Republican candidates for the U.S. House seat. Matt Rosendale, Elsie Arntzen, Corey Stapleton and Ryan Zinke are pro-life and pro Second Amendment, all support defunding Planned Parenthood with federal dollars and believe that life should be protected. Ryan Zinke is the only one of the four who actually carried and presented a pro-life bill for Right to Life of Montana, the Unborn Victims of Homicide bill, which is now law in Montana.

There’s something liberating about slipping a raft into a river in Western Montana. We are fortunate to have so many clean, free-flowing rivers nearby to enjoy with friends and family. And in my mind, few rivers can match the North Fork Flathead River. Other rivers may have more thrilling whitewater or more fish per river mile, but few match the North Fork for clean, beautiful water and stunning, wild scenery.

Montana’s congressional delegation happens to agree with me on this point. Sens. John Walsh, Jon Tester and Rep. Steve Daines are all supporters of the North Fork Watershed Protection Act. For this reason, it is especially maddening to read news that the bill is being blocked in the Senate by three senators who – in the memorable words of Tester – “can’t even find the Flathead River on a map.”

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 […]