Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/david-crisp/page/30/)
Last week the Outpost ran a letter by Sen. Roger Webb, R-Billings, who argued that states should call a convention to consider amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Here’s why that is a bad idea. Article 5 of the Constitution allows it to be amended in two ways. First, two-thirds of the members of each House can propose amendments that become part of the Constitution if they are ratified by three-fourths of the states. That has happened 27 times. Continue Reading →
During his run for Montana’s U.S. House seat, Ryan Zinke often seemed uncertain about exactly what positions he held. That’s a bad trait in a candidate but not necessarily in a congressman. Issues before Congress can be complicated, and remaining open to evidence is more helpful than going to Washington with a closed mind. So it was reasonable to hope that now-Rep. Zinke would prove a more flexible and pragmatic House member than his predecessor. But early returns are not encouraging. Continue Reading →
Asked about Monty Python’s sometimes offensive humor, John Cleese once replied, “There are some people one rather wishes to offend.”
Quite so. In the same way, there also are people one would prefer not to offend, at least not without good cause. (more…) Continue Reading →
The headline in The Billings Gazette read: “New Mustang owners see Dehler as blank canvas.” Allow me to fill in some of the blanks. Why me? Because this spring will mark exactly 50 years that I have been a baseball fan. And because I have faithfully attended Mustang games for more than two decades. (more…) Continue Reading →
A local businessman is organizing a campaign to get downtown businesses to drop all advertising with the Billings Gazette. The spark was a December column by Gazette Editor Darrell Ehrlick, who described some of the least savory aspects of downtown Billings. (more…) Continue Reading →
I am sometimes accused, even by members of my own staff, of being too liberal. Sometimes, they suggest, my politics costs the newspaper money. This criticism mystifies me. I am just about the most conservative person I know. I wear khakis and dress shirts. Continue Reading →
“Spirit of Steamboat” and “Wait for Signs,” both by Craig Johnson. Viking. Shoppers for last-minute Christmas presents could do worse than to pick up one, or both, of these two quick reads by the creator of Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire, now the title character in a TV drama. (more…) Continue Reading →
Gazette Sports Editor Jeff Welsch wrote a solid farewell column last month for Bill Bighaus, who retired after 23 years as a sports writer at the Gazette. But the column failed to truly capture the range and depth of Bighaus’ remarkable wit. I don’t mean that as a criticism. No single column could have pulled that off, and this one won’t either. Just consider this a modest contribution to the Bighaus legend. Continue Reading →
Four years before his death in 1910, Mark Twain wrote his estimate of Thanksgiving Day. The passage didn’t appear in print until 2010 because Twain stipulated that his autobiography not be published until 100 years after his death. As usual, Twain was a century ahead of his time:
“Thanksgiving Day … originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for—annually, not oftener—if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors the Indians. (more…) Continue Reading →
Jonathan Gruber got himself—and the Obama administration—into trouble last week when a tape surfaced in which he referred to the “stupidity of the American voter.”
The context made it worse. Mr. Gruber, an economist at MIT who had a hand in writing the Affordable Care Act, praised lack of transparency about the bill and said that it was written in a “tortured way” so the Congressional Budget Office would not score the individual mandate as a tax. (more…) Continue Reading →
