Columns
Searching for opinion based articles? Below we'll share opinion news articles on a wide variety of topics.
Notes from Ranger Doug
I’ve had the pleasure over the years of getting correspondence from longtime Glacier National Park ranger/naturali…
What’s the point of being a Senator if you don’t have guts?
More than half a century ago, when I was a young, enlisted man stationed at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington D.C., I contacted former Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler. I introduced myself and asked him …
And in chicken news...
I could hear the chicken, but I couldn’t see the chicken. Just little clucks, wafting off into the growing darkness.
A ride through paradise
Earlier in our legislative careers, now Senate President Matt Regier and now Senator Dave Fern took a bike ride (not E-Bikes!), in a nearby county. The first half of the ride was all uphill. Then after going as fa…
A day's work and the demise of a Senator
I awoke slightly before 5 a.m. on Friday, April 18. I needed to reacquaint myself with four bills from the House that I would be carrying on the Senate floor.
Opinion: Eggcellent
So the wife got these eggs that were supposed to be fertilized, chicken eggs that is. A friend has hens and roosters and apparently lives in a place where both are copacetic with the neighbors, or at least in a pla…
A bill for the dogs and taxes for you
Senate Bill 427 was plodding along on the senate floor. The subject matter involves trapping and snaring. Needless to say, emotions can run high when such a discussion occurs. The bill proposes to provide a uniform…
An open letter to Montana’s Congressional delegation
I represent House District 3 in the Montana House of Representatives. My district includes the western half of Glacier National Park, a large portion of the Flathead National Forest and the gateway communities alo…
Nearing halfway point
On a frigid Helena morning, somewhere south of minus 20 degrees, a bus load of residents from Ennis were dropped off at the Capitol.
They don’t know what they don’t know
Much has been written and broadcast recently regarding the impacts of the Trump administration and particularly the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce the size of the federal government workforce.
Visiting with Friends
Early one morning a lobbyist for a trade union enters my office. Yes, my elevation to the Senate includes office space, a real stretch of the language, more a cubby space I share with Senator Windy Boy of Box Elder…
Cut the budget, not the Constitution
I had the opportunity, during the second Bush administration, to engage in advising struggling democracies in a project then known as “democracy building.” It was enormously fulfilling work, and I saw real progres…
Racicot on politicizing the judicial branch
Before entering upon the duties of his or her office, a legislator “shall,” according to Article III of the Montana Constitution, solemnly swear to faithfully support, protect and defend the constitutions of Montan…
Beware the Trojan horse targeting public lands
Sometimes when I drive past the little house my wife and I bought when we first married, 30 years ago, it makes me sad. Not only because of nostalgia, but because of economics.
In defense of the green and the gray
The Trump administration’s federal workforce hiring freeze and “resignation” offer certainly sent a chill with locals who work for the Park Service and Forest Service last week.