Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/prairie-lights/page/6/)
For the Montana Historical Society, there was good news and bad news at the Legislature last week. The bad news was that, for something like the sixth consecutive session, legislators don’t want to allocate any money for a badly needed expansion and renovation of the Helena museum and research center. (more…) Continue Reading →
Readers of Last Best News, you did us proud. In late February, we posted a survey developed by the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, which is trying to determine who reads local news websites across the country, and what their readers are like. (more…) Continue Reading →
There are some books you hear about so often that you begin to think, wrongly, that you might have read them. Such was the case with John R. Barrows’ “U-Bet: A Greenhorn in Old Montana.” When I came across another reference to it recently, I told myself I’d read it, but then I started to wonder. (more…) Continue Reading →
Can we please get one thing straight on the suspension of radio host Paul Mushaben? No one violated his right to free speech. Nothing in the First Amendment prevents private employers from shedding themselves of workers who use their freedom of speech to offend great numbers of other people. (more…) Continue Reading →
I was still trying to get my head around the news of the dwarf star and its seven planets when I made an amazing discovery about our own planet. I suppose “discovery” isn’t quite the right word, since the fact was already out there and I merely stumbled upon it in the course of poking around the internet in search of something else. (more…) Continue Reading →
I know my colleague David Crisp has already written about Sen. Steve Daines’ role in silencing Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the floor of the Senate, but David’s piece was published on Wednesday. That same day, state Rep. Jeff Essmann of Billings, chairman of the Montana Republican Party, also wrote about the Daines-Warren incident in an op-ed for the Billings Gazette. Essmann’s piece was so crowded with misstatements and misleading information that it demands a response. (more…) Continue Reading →
The first time I can recall thinking overtly about politics would have been during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. I don’t remember any talk of politics in our house, but I somehow knew (or, more likely, connected the dots later) that my father, being a working-stiff union man, was a Democrat. (more…) Continue Reading →
I won’t come right out and blame the current occupant of the White House, but a phenomenon already indelibly associated with his presidency has caused me to make an important decision about the future of Last Best News. At least temporarily, and perhaps forever, we will not be running any more fake news. I say this with a heavy heart because April Fool’s Day is just six weeks away, and photographer John Warner and I had already been talking about ideas for this year’s spoof. (more…) Continue Reading →
You know you’re living in strange times when the maker of the world’s most popular dictionary feels compelled to send out a tweet defining the word “fact.”
As National Public Radio reported, there were actually two tweets, one defining “fact” as “a piece of information presented as having objective reality,” and a later one saying that the word “is understood to refer to something with actual existence.” (more…) Continue Reading →
I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Montana Legislature’s website since the session began almost three weeks ago, mostly looking at bill drafts. A few days ago, I scanned through the descriptions of all 2,546 introduced and unintroduced bills, wondering whether our esteemed lawmakers had any of the usual crazy ideas in the wings. (more…) Continue Reading →
