A Tale of Two Maps: Natural gas production in Montana and South Dakota -- plus some thoughts on fracking

Maybe it was watching the recent “Dark Knight Rises,” but somehow I have lately ended up with Charles Dickens's “A Tale of Two Cities” on the brain. It has even spilled over into my musings on energy production in Montana, as the title of this post indicates.

According to the Billings Gazette, North Dakota’s oil production is on track to triple by 2025. All of those wells currently being drilled are going to keep pumping out oil and producing natural gas for a long time. Will Montana’s oil production triple? Who knows?

What really caught my eye in the article, though, were the natural gas production numbers:

North Dakota produced a record 650.8 million cubic feet of natural gas in April. Montana produced 85 million cubic feet for the month, and South Dakota's production was pegged at 42.1 million cubic feet.

I have before discussed North Dakota’s “stratospheric” oil production numbers and compared them to Montana. But this isn’t going to be another post comparing ND to Montana.

No, what made me sit up and take notice was that South Dakota produces fully half the natural gas that Montana does.

You see, as I sit writing this, I am at the family ranch in South Dakota, about 25 miles from the Harding county oil fields. While there are a few wells in the far southwestern corner of the state, more than 90% of oil and all of the gas production takes place up here in the far northwestern corner of the state. In fact, South Dakota's “vast" oil fields currently take up all of 1/2 of one county -- take a look at the map.

By contrast, Montana’s potential oil fields are far more extensive (see the partial map of Montana at the top of the post) and are in multiple parts of the state. It is hard to see how South Dakota’s minuscule fields could reach 10-20% of Montana’s natural gas production, let alone 50%.

One possible contribution could be fracking. I spoke to state Rep. Betty Olson, who along with state Senator Ryan Maher comprises the entirety of the "oil and gas caucus" in the South Dakota legislature, and she noted that while fracking isn’t necessary for oil production in the Red River formation that underlies the South Dakota fields, it has been used there for natural gas production since 1979.

Given that we have some who strongly and vocally oppose fracking in Montana and have increasingly stringent DNRC regulations regarding fracking, it is reasonable to wonder what effect this is having on Montana’s gas production numbers (which have dropped) -- another subject for inquiry, I suppose.

The first question I asked Betty after she mentioned fracking was whether, in 33 years of using that technique to enhance natural gas production in South Dakota, she had heard of any instances of it affecting the quality of well or surface water. Her reply? Not a single one.

Betty and her husband Reuben have been ranching in Harding County for as long as I can remember. I got to know Reuben from his years as one of the members of the crew that long sheared sheep for us and pretty much every other sheep rancher in our area. Betty is also the head of the Harding County Historical Society, and last year I had the pleasure of joining that group for a tour of historical sites in the North Cave Hills -- something I hadn’t done since I was a kid.

I can attest to their love for this land and their concern that this beautiful part of the country not be spoiled for future generations.

Betty is part of an interim SD legislative committee that is studying the impact of the Bakken oil boom as its effects continue to spill over into northwestern South Dakota. The committee is also trying to be proactive about oil and gas development and its effects on landowners, emergency services, schools, roads, and the like -- knowing that it could increase in South Dakota as well.

My point is that while she favors oil and gas development, my impression is that her visceral loyalties lie with the ranchers and other long-time residents in the area. At the first whiff of trouble for water supplies in this arid part of the South Dakota, Betty would be the last person to turn a blind eye to any dangers posed by fracking.

Talking to her, I was struck by the combination -- favoring oil and gas development and being clear-eyed about the potential problems and the necessary infrastructure and long-term planning that will be necessary to manage any boom the future might bring.

Film: A worthy conclusion -- The Dark Knight Rises

Quite simply, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a remarkable film by any measure and a worthy conclusion to Christopher Nolan's fine trilogy -- a series that has redefined the whole concept of "rebooting" a film franchise.

While there are those who think that the frenetic Heath Ledger-infused "Dark Knight" is still better as a stand-alone film, this concluding third installment sets new standards of its own.

Consider one thing alone -- Nolan made a lengthy film based on comic book characters and yet kept the action in the climactic sequence to a minimum. Lesser filmmakers would have dragged it out into what would have been (or seemed like) an hour's worth of CGI tedium. Nolan trusted the story to carry itself and had better things to do with the time alloted.

Christian Bale is again pitch-perfect as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine dominates the screen as Alfred in every scene in which he appears, and Anne Hathaway manages to create a "Catwoman" character (wonderfully never actually called that in the film) who is indispensable to the film rather than a goofy sideshow. In addition, Nolan “reboots" a couple of actors from his stunning "Inception” -- the fine Marion Cotillard and an unrecognizable Tom Hardy as Bane.

Which brings up another bit of silliness. We have heard tell that Jon Stewart and assorted other leftists have been riffing on the homophony of "Bane" the arch-villain and "Bain" the Mitt Romney corporation that the Obama campaign has been attempting to turn into an arch-villain.

This is hilarious because of the themes and visual imagery that run through the heart of the film -- that of the French Revolution. There are even explicit invocations of Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. As Gotham descends into madness, power is being given "to the people" -- and as happened in the days of the Jacobins, what this really means is tyranny, terror, and power in the hands of the few -- or the one. Given that the intellectual roots of the modern left arose squarely in the milieu of the French Revolution, the idea that anyone is going to come away from "The Dark Knight Rises" with some sort of anti-Romney brain implant is amusing. Anti-capitalist revolutionary spirit does not make itself attractive in this film. More to the point, however, is that the themes are universal and archetypal -- trying to read modern politics into this script is an exercise in irrelevance, whether one does it from the right or the left.

See the first two installments of Nolan's trilogy (the first one -- "Batman Begins" is perhaps the most important to have fresh in the memory), and then treat yourself to "Dark Knight Rises."

More campaign finance silliness

Yes, it is a fact of political life that campaigns have to snipe at each other with accusations of political malpractice, of filing the required forms incorrectly, of failing to make the disclosures on yard signs large enough (hint: you still can’t read them from your car as you drive by even when they are the specified size), etc., etc. They have to -- it’s in the official “Campaign Operatives Handbook."

This sort of thing is why summer is called the “silly season” in political campaigns. The sad thing for the public is that as campaigns become interminable, the silly season gets longer and sillier.

Matt Gouras’s AP piece on the Montana GOP lawsuit against AG Steve Bullock lets us know just how turned around things can get during the silly season. It turns out that Bullock was raising money for an “unspecified office” for a long time (still deciding whether to run again for AG or to run for governor.) In fact his website allowed donors to give up to $1200 for 3 months prior to having declared for the governor’s race.

The significance there is that Bullock hadn’t declared for the governor’s race, and could reasonably be assumed to be seeking reelection as AG -- but $1200 is a gubernatorial campaign contribution limit and well above the amount allowed for contributions to an AG campaign. The numbers in the AP story aren’t quite self-explanatory -- the max donation this year for the governor’s race is only $630, which would translate into $1260 only if a candidate successfully wins the primary and can accept another $630 for the general election.

The Montana Commissioner of Political Practices already ruled against the protest, but the Montana GOP has taken the case to court. They have a point -- Dave Gallik, who was Commissioner at the time that the GOP filed their complaint with that office, was a contributor to Bullock’s AG campaign and can reasonably be assumed not to have been an unbiased participant. Adding to the difficulty of weeding this particular garden is the fact that the judges in Helena all know Bullock (Helena is a small town -- no surprise there), and so the case had to be moved to Lewistown, where Judge Wayne Phillips will hear the case.

As to things being turned on their head, Gouras points this out:

Bullock, who has fought in the other lawsuits for more transparency as he seeks to preserve Montana’s campaign finance laws, has argued he did not need to disclose which office he was seeking last year while he was raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Indeed, we have had to endure Bullock’s stentorian and moralizing pronouncements on electoral transparency, and now, he claims that the GOP protest has no validity. Silly.

Less convincingly, Gouras intimates that the GOP is also being hypocritical, since "Montana Republican Party attorney Jim Brown has argued in federal court that many Montana campaign finance laws are onerous and unconstitutional.” True enough, but the point that the Montana GOP has made in the past is that campaign finance rules are onerous and cumbersome. In this case, however, they are saying that if we are going to have these onerous rules on the books, then everyone needs to be held to the same standard.

Think of it like this: I often challenge my liberal friends who favor higher taxes to go ahead and pay more in taxes. There is nothing stopping them. You don’t even need to write an extra check. If all Democrats who want higher taxes simply don't claim the exemptions and deductions allowed to them by law, then presto -- they will all be paying the higher tax rates they say they want and the government will have more of the money they say it desperately needs to spend. After the sputtering ends, the reply usually boils down to this: the fact that they advocate higher tax rates for all doesn’t obligate them to pay more voluntarily in advance of such tax rates going into effect. Fair enough.

The same thing applies here. Just because the GOP believes that certain election laws are onerous doesn’t mean that Republicans are obligated to look the other way when Democrats skirt them. If Bullock and the Democrats believe there is nothing wrong with raising large amounts of money without the basic transparency of saying what you’re running for, they should lead the way to change the law.

As has been pointed out here at MH before, Montana’s contribution limits are antiquated and force candidates to spend inordinate amounts of time raising the amount of money that modern statewide races require. In other words, not only should Bullock (like every other candidate for statewide office) be able to raise money without declaring what office he is running for, he should be able to take in contributions as generous as someone is willing to give him. All of the filing and record-keeping absorb huge amounts of time and energy that candidates could better spend doing other things. Some campaign operatives skilled in such arcana might lose their jobs, but there is plenty of work to be had elsewhere. We hear they’re hiring for all sorts of jobs in the Bakken.

Best of all, we citizens would be spared having to hear the nit-picky campaign finance accusations that both parties dutifully hurl at each other during the interminable silly season.

A couple of links related to my Montana Bakken piece

I’m happy to note that RealClearEnergy (part of the RealClearPolitics family of websites) included my American Spectator piece on Montana and the Bakken on their July 6th “Morning Edition.”

I was also happy to see that it got some attention from the mother of all Bakken blogs, Bruce Oksol’s Million Dollar Way.

That blog’s subtitle, incidentally, used to be “All Bakken All The Time,” but has since changed to "Some Bakken Some of the Time" -- something I can relate to, since the subtitle here at Montana Headlines has likewise been through a few changes as the emphasis in my writing has evolved.

Interestingly, one of the parts Bruce Oksol picked up was the effect of Montana’s higher percentage of federal land, and a commenter provided an interesting link to the Rocky Mountain Oil Journal about the 2010 Montana “permitorium,” in which the BLM suspended 61 oil and gas leases in Montana that had already been granted. The BLM was responding to litigation from a number of environmentalist groups hostile to traditional energy development.

It all makes for interesting reading.

Montana Headlines may be a little thin for a few weeks. I’ve got several deadlines for articles I have to have written before going under the knife to have my knee operated on. God willing, I’ll be healed up and wading the Stillwater River in search of trout by October.

Music: The BBC Proms Online

Each year, I look forward to mid-July and the start of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, a.k.a. the BBC Proms. But first, a digression.

When I was growing up in a remote corner of the high plains, the choice was clear -- if you wanted plenty of “culture” you had to move off to the big city and make your way amongst the crowds and the crime. As your reward, there were plenty of concerts, museums, and bookstores to frequent. You would usually have access to large public libraries and university libraries. If you consider such things to be cultural (I do), you could throw in various sporting events, horse shows, movie theaters showing obscure foreign films... you name it. And there is a variety of restaurants, pubs or coffee shops where you can drop in for a bite or a drink before or after.

The more of such things as you might want, the bigger the city you needed to seek out, and the more of the hassles and expense of city life you needed to endure. Now, the truth is that whether you live in Chicago or Chinook, the constraints of time and money mean that most people spend their days working and their evenings at home. But still, it is a bit easier to get to the Lyric Opera when one lives in the former.

The fact that our wired age makes it possible for many workers to telecommute gets a lot of attention. It never ceases to amaze me that I can be out at the remote family ranch, researching and writing articles, sending manuscripts and queries to editors anywhere in the country, and of course, putting up content on Montana Headlines courtesy of the wonders of DSL. When my daughter comes home, she can spend a few extra days with us without having to burn vacation time because she can work anywhere as long as she has her laptop and high-speed internet, putting in a regular work day, and then spending the evening with us. It is truly marvelous.

What gets less attention, I think, is that the modern wired age also makes it possible for people to experience cultural events from around the world that one would otherwise be unlikely ever to attend. Which brings me back at long last to the BBC Proms, the world’s largest and longest classical music festival, lasting for 8 weeks every summer in London, running from mid-July to mid-September, every minute of which can be listened to online.

Every concert (this year there are 76 -- plus assorted chamber music concerts, recitals, and other events) is carried live on BBC 3 Radio online, and each concert remains available for streaming for one week. Because of the time difference, the live broadcasts of evening concerts taking place in London’s Royal Albert Hall start in the afternoon in the U.S. for those who might be working at a desk where they can listen. For the rest of us, streaming the recordings over the ensuing week is usually the thing.

The full booklet of program notes for every concert is available online -- a veritable treasure-trove of first-class writing on composers, works, and performers. Finally, it is worth noting that in recent years, the Proms have expanded to include literary events -- poetry readings, panel discussions on literature, and the like -- all also available for listening online.

The workhorse of the Proms is the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which is based in London and which does regular performances throughout the festival, with the other four BBC orchestras from around the UK also taking their turns in the spotlight. Perhaps even more importantly, this is a time of year when the whole musical world comes to London, with major orchestras, conductors, and performers traveling from around the globe to perform at the festival.

As I have discussed before here at Montana Headlines, there is still no substitute for live performances and experiences. I once read a comment by someone on the internet who claimed that sculpture and architecture were the only things he felt he really needed to experience in person -- he could stream any music he wanted to hear, could watch recordings of plays and operas, and could experience all of the great paintings of the world’s museums on Google Art. I couldn’t disagree more about the idea that one can just sit at home in front of a computer -- no matter how large the screen and how high the resolution, and no matter how wonderful the sound system -- and have this replace concerts and museums and galleries.

On the other hand, the internet does give an infinitely broader exposure to the world of the arts than could have been imagined even a decade or two ago, especially those of us who have the privilege of living in places like Montana. I suppose I more deeply treasured the bits of connection that I did have when growing up -- the Time magazine reviews of the arts that I devoured from an early age, the weekly PBS television broadcast of the Boston Symphony (and in summer, the Boston Pops), my few treasured classical music records (especially a cheap set of the complete Beethoven Symphonies, and my dad’s favorite -- a set of records containing Mozart’s sonatas for violin and piano that he listened to again and again), and so on... But I love the infinite variety of music, art, and knowledge available 24/7 at the click of a mouse in this modern age and look forward to even more of the same as technology advances. It is a consolation, I suppose, for the equally infinite variety of insanities and indignities that that same modern age deals out to us on a daily basis.

So, some practical notes on the Proms for a conclusion:

There are several ways to access the concerts. One is to visit the BBC Proms homepage and start exploring. An easy thing is to look at the calendar and click on the previous 7 days, seeing if there are any concerts that seem to be of interest. Another way is to go to the “Performances and Events” page on the BBC 3 website, where the currently available concerts will show up, along with other BBC 3 program recordings. If there is a concert on the schedule that you want to listen to live “as it happens” some quiet afternoon (again, something I find to be just amazing,) just go to the BBC 3 homepage and click “listen” in the upper right hand corner. Something unfortunate is that none of the video content is available outside the UK. The BBC is a taxpayer-supported entity, so unless one lives where such taxes are paid, one can’t access the content. Fortunately, all of the concerts are available in high-quality audio, no matter where one lives. Which means that we can enjoy the beauties of a Montana summer by day, and, should we choose, go to London for the Proms that evening. What’s not to like about that?

Rehberg and Tester spar on Obamacare; Plus -- Money in the governor’s race

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. The Billings Gazette published articles that covered the views of Sen. Tester and Congressman Rehberg toward Obamacare. Mike Dennison writes that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is "known by detractors as ‘Obamacare.’”

Actually, it isn’t just detractors who call it that. None other than President Obama’s key advisor David Axelrod had this to say recently:

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, sent out an email saying: "I like Obamacare. I'm proud of it -- and you should be, too. Here's why: Because it works. So if you're with me, say it: 'I like Obamacare.’”

The way I see it, if David Axelrod can call it Obamacare, so can “detractors.”

Like it or not, “Obamacare” has entered the political lexicon permanently, and no amount of revisionism is going to be able to get rid of it. Given what a budget-buster it will be if fully enacted, calling it the official name of the “Affordable Care Act” deserves scare quotes more than does Obamacare.

Dennison is to be commended, however, for discussing, later in the piece, Republican Congressional proposals for health care reform that Rehberg supports -- it isn’t just about saying “no.” All of this may be moot, however. The fact is that Obamacare is one of the most sweeping and expensive pieces of legislation in decades. It is deeply unpopular in Montana, and Tester voted for it anyway. Had he bucked the President and voted with his constituents rather than with his party on this issue, there is a good chance that he would be coasting to re-election rather than fighting for his political life.

* * * * *

Unsurprisingly, AG Steve Bullock has a big lead in funds on hand compared to former Congressman Rick Hill. Hill had a bruising 7-way primary and took some sharp hits from his fellow Republican candidates along the way -- it costs money to win contested primaries. Charles Johnson, in his piece on the subject, predicts that Hill will make up a lot of that ground -- the question is not where things stand now, but what will happen with fundraising from here on out.

The most depressing part of the article is the statement that both Hill and Bullock are probably spending 96% of their time on fundraising. Based on what I have seen of statewide races in Montana, especially for governor, this is spot-on. Needing to raise more than $1 million in increments no larger than $500, candidates for governor literally spend months on end doing nothing but being personally on the phone, asking for donations. Yes, they speak at party gatherings and what-not, but these are mere interruptions in their primary job, which is to be glorified telemarketers. I ask you, is this any way to elect our statewide officials? If contribution limits were to be brought into the 21st century (or better yet, eliminated altogether), candidates could actually spend more of their time actually campaigning -- talking to Montana voters, studying the issues, and preparing policy statements.

Contribution limits are supposed to keep large contributors from “buying” elective office for their candidates of choice, but what average person has the time to live on the phone for months on end, asking for contributions? Increasingly, elective office all across the country is becoming the realm of the wealthy, who can afford to have their working lives stop for a year or more while they fundraise and campaign (mostly the former), and in many cases the truly wealthy can underwrite much of their own campaigns.

Outside organizations have always been able to pour money into races, and this election cycle is no exception, but in general these organizations will only invest money when the candidate has proven an ability to raise money himself. Furthermore, since outside groups can’t coordinate with the candidate, the candidate has no ability to control the message -- increasingly, the truly greasy things are done by outside groups so the candidate can shrug his shoulders and say “I had nothing to do with it -- in fact, I’m not even allowed to talk to them.” There is always mud slung in campaigns, but when big money is forced into outside groups, the candidates don’t have to take responsibility for any of it.

Montana coal trains ready to “spew”?

Railroads make money by hauling things that people want to buy. That money can in turn be used to improve rail service.

This is vital in places like Montana that depend on rail and highway transportation to access markets around the country and around the globe. As demand rises in Asia for coal from Montana and Wyoming, traffic from trains hauling coal will increase in Montana. On that point, opponents of coal mining in Montana are right.

Whether the trains will "spew coal dust across several states,” as the purple prose of the Billings Gazette photo caption states (using the language of coal opponents in an indirect quotation without identifying who used that word -- the text of the article doesn’t say), remains to be seen. With increased traffic does come the necessity for improvements, whether of safer crossings, more overpasses and underpasses, or lines that are routed around denser population centers -- all the things that high-volume rail traffic requires.

Coal opponents, as the Gazette article reports, claim that "the local impacts could be severe for local and state governments dealing with the increased rail traffic,” and that state and local governments could be left picking up the tab.

It is true that railroad crossings involve government funding, and that is because railroad crossings are a shared responsibility between governments and railroads. Railroads own the railway rights of way and the tracks, while governments own the roads and streets involved. This is primarily a federal responsibility, not a state and local one. The federal government brings in a great deal of tax revenue in corporate and individual income taxes from the coal industry. Any costs that state governments might incur will be more than made up for with royalties, excise taxes, and income taxes that the state collects.

What we are talking about here is what our friends on the left claim always to want the government to build -- infrastructure. But infrastructure that greases the wheels for traditional energy development (and that is a shared private/public responsibility, no less) apparently isn’t the kind of infrastructure they have in mind.

Why, the logical person asks, don’t opponents take a collaborative and constructive attitude toward coal development and the railway service that builds up around it? Just once, it would be nice to hear something to this effect: “We fully support the development of coal mining in Montana -- and we look forward to working with the coal industry and railroads to improve our railway infrastructure in Montana. We want coal development and we want rail traffic that disrupts our lives and our air quality as little as possible. So here are some suggestions that we think will work to everyone’s benefit...”

Would that be so hard? If the real agenda is global warming activism, I suppose it would be very hard indeed. If the real agenda could instead become economic development and our state’s fiscal health, then we might hope for something more constructive and collaborative.

Coal development should go full speed ahead in Montana, and those who are concerned about rail traffic should put their energies into finding ways to improve railway crossings and routes rather than into stopping coal-mining in Montana.

From the bookshelf: Words Made Fresh: Essays on Literature and Culture, by Larry Woiwode

Something I neglected to mention when I reviewed a Larry Woiwode memoir last week is that the most recent of his many literary awards was presented to him in Billings last year, when he received the Emeritus Award at the High Plains Book Awards ceremonies. This week I want to mention his most recent book, Words Made Fresh: Essays on Literature and Culture. This slim but dense volume is a first for Woiwode -- a collection of formal essays on literature and writing. An alternative subtitle might have been borrowed from Hank Williams, Jr., however: “A Country Boy Can Survive,” as will be clear from what follows.

This book is a welcome addition to the library of anyone who enjoys Woiwode’s works and reflects an aspect of Woiwode’s life that hasn’t been accessible to most readers -- namely, Woiwode the teacher and critic. Like many serious novelists, Woiwode has, whether through choice or necessity or both, done repeated stints as a teacher: at the university level, as a lecturer at conferences, and as an essayist.

As mentioned in the review of A Step From Death, Woiwode has written thoughtfully in his memoirs about his approach to writing, but he has always touched on the subject indirectly in the course of talking about his life. In Words Made Fresh, Woiwode the essayist expounds directly and without a veil -- on writing, writers, literary criticism, and education.

The first essay is the oldest -- a piece on guns written for Esquire in the mid 1970s. It is a period piece in that it reflects a certain depressing, even pungent, 1970s ambience. It is also a personal period piece, since it comes from a particular time in Woiwode’s life that seems a bit foreign to those who got to know him later on. In quality, it is certainly worthy of the writer of What I’m Going to Do, I Think (a book in which a gun features prominently) and it has been previously collected in a number of anthologies. Still, as one cautiously steps through its sometimes heavy existential fogs, one can’t help but think that Woiwode may have chosen to lead off his book with this particular essay partly as a way of showing the reader, “So, here is where I started. Perhaps you can now better appreciate the much better place I am about to take you next.” As a side note, it is hard today, when the 2nd Amendment battles have largely been settled (for now) in both political parties, to realize what a shocking piece this would have been in the era of Jimmy Carter: a respectable cutting-edge writer living in New York City and confessing to a lifetime fascination with firearms.

The country boy theme continues with Woiwode’s essay on the farmer/poet/essayist Wendell Berry, who has long been a favorite at Montana Headlines. It is is a sheer delight. While each has been making his way in quite different topography (Wendell Berry farming in the hills of Kentucky, Woiwode on the high plains of western North Dakota), both inhabit the same world. They are, in a sense, moral and cultural neighbors. Berry’s prose is the very picture of clarity and economy, and yet Woiwode is able to boil down his insights even further into sentences that convey the essence of Berry's work while also suggesting the vistas that await the reader. Woiwode wisely concentrates on Berry’s essays, since these are the place to start if one wants to grasp the richness of this writer who is, first and foremost, busy with living on his land with a woman who loves him, working to turn a financial profit from his family acreage using organic, even preindustrial techniques.

Berry's writing, rather than a source of profit to support a farming hobby, feels like the abundant fruit of that life. Reading a Berry essay (or even more acutely, a Berry poem), feels like being at a community gathering where songs are sung, stories are told, and photos are passed around. The day’s work has been done, and it is time to light the fires, tune the instruments, gather around the person telling the history of the place, and let the magic begin on a winter’s night.

Woiwode captures the essence of Berry a number of times in this essay but never better than this:

Certain passages and paragraphs have the power to lift you into stretches of contemplation and personal reassessment – those periods when you seem to be staring out a window but are really assessing the realignment your consciousness is taking on. Berry’s books are that well built and keep revealing new dimensions.

Indeed. Continuing on with another country boy, Woiwode devotes two essays to the criticism and fiction of John Gardner. I first encountered Gardner many years ago when I bought a well-worn copy of his magesterial On Moral Fiction, after which I was never able to read a novel the same way again (and happily so.) Woiwode’s respect for Gardner’s powerful and provocative criticism is clear, and it is well-deserved, since there is really no-one quite like him. Of course, Gardner’s rural background doesn’t hurt:

Gardner was a farm boy, unabashedly so, and usually lived in a rural setting with his family and a menagerie of animals. [ ] As a critic, Gardner kept his square, strong farmer’s hand firmly on the pulse of American fiction, and you either waited for or feared his reviews and assessments of writers and writing – his manifestos, as they were seen by some, diatribes and hallucinations by others.

In Woiwode’s lengthy multi-part essay on John Updike (also greatly admired by Woiwode), things might get a bit involved for someone not familiar with the full sweep of Updike’s oeuvre (I am not), especially when he discusses religious matters and the relationship between Updike’s devout Christianity and his writing. Nevertheless, one finishes the essay motivated to buy and read a pile of Updike’s novels.

Elsewhere, essays touch on subjects as diverse as Bob Dylan, Shakespeare, and education. Again the country boy theme continues in various forms: Dylan in obvious ways, education in talking about his experiences with home-schooled children (including his own), and Shakespeare in the freshest ways possible:

Lore and court records have him returning home at least once a year, and it’s likely he went back to check on the lamb crop each spring (along with perhaps cattle, maybe swine) and to oversee the seeding of his barley and wheat, and he would want to be present in late summer or early fall for harvest.

He seems to have known from the start that Stratford (farming populace and handcraft merchants) was the source of its accomplishments, and he paid it homage, dying in New House only blocks from where he was born, leaving a healthy largesse to Stratford’s poor. Only a person who was nurtured by and nurtured the earth over its diurnal and seasonal changes could have written his plays -- rural boy that he was, farmer or farming-inclined son of a rural tradesman and farmer.

Woiwode is an unapologetic Christian, although he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve. He isn’t a “Christian writer,” but rather a writer who decades ago turned to a life of Christian faith. There is a difference -- a difference that Woiwode saw in Updike as well. To Woiwode, there is no place for a pulpit in a novel, whether that pulpit is Christian or atheistic. What matters is being faithful and honest in one’s work -- the rest will take care of itself. As he notes in the opening essay:

It’s life here we’re responsible for, in its minutest detail. We should expect to give an account, according to a teaching of Jesus, for every idle word that comes out of our mouths. That’s a weighty responsibility for a writer.

The Montana Wolf Trap

Update: The Montana FWP Commission approved the new regulations as proposed in a unanimous vote (one member abstained for reasons that weren’t given). They are to be commended for not bowing to pressure from a vocal minority.

One important item that deserves attention is found at the end of the article, where a member of the Montana Trapping Association warned about the importance of proper training and education. As the thoughts below indicate, exempting wolves from trapping on the basis of it being “barbaric” would be harmful to trapping in general in Montana.

At the same time, this is not a place for inexperienced amateurs to decide to give wolf-trapping a whirl. Trapping is a skill and an art that one must be taught. Poor trapping practices on the part of wolf trappers could also harm trapping in Montana, and we don’t need that.

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Where would Montana politics be without a little lupine-driven controversy? According to an article in this week’s Billings Gazette, the proposed guidelines for this year’s wolf season have generated 6500 comments, compared to last year’s 1500. Driving the added interest this year is that trapping has been added to the wolf control arsenal.

In spite of the fact that Montana hunters were unable to reach last year’s quota of 220 wolf kills, and in spite of the fact that Montana’s wolf population has more than doubled in the last 7 years, there are still those who are protesting the hunts as “too extreme.” According to an article some time back in the Billings Gazette, some of those at a public meeting on wolf hunting and trapping believe that all trapping is “inhumane and uncivilized,” while the more recent Gazette article notes that opponents called trapping “cruel and morally wrong." Commenters at the public meeting also protested that Montana wolf trappers would only have to check their traps every 48 hours, whereas government trappers reportedly check theirs at least once a day.

Perhaps they would do well to review state furbearer regulations, in which 48 hours monitoring is the standard for all trapping in Montana -- why would the regulations for trapping wolves be any different from that used for trapping mink or bobcats? Furthermore, government trappers can carry on their business without regard to cost, since they are on salary. Almost certainly, if the protesters would like to pay private Montana trappers to check their traps twice as often as currently required, they would likely be more than happy to oblige. Perhaps those at the meeting would like to start a foundation and contribute their own money?

It goes without saying that trapping seems uncivilized to many in today’s urbanized world, but given that it has probably been practiced in every civilization since the time that word became a concept, we would point out that what is “civilized” is a relative concept, something any good multiculturalist would understand. Some of the same people who consider trapping barbaric probably also consider aborting humans to be a normal part of civilized life, just as it once was during a pre-Christian Roman civilization. One can be quite certain that not too far in the future, there will be civilized folks who look at the tics and spasms of 21st century first world behavior and wonder what on earth we were thinking and doing about this or that.

My father, like others who grew up during the Great Depression, was dirt poor. He loved music and wanted badly to buy a guitar, and there weren't many ways for a kid to earn money. So he trapped skunks, which were in plentiful supply and for which there was a market. It was worth dealing with the smell to trap and skin them, earning two bits a piece for each pelt, as I recall. He finally got enough money together that he could buy a cheap mail-order guitar -- the same one on which I learned to play my first chords, and which still hangs on the wall at the ranch.

While it is now about 35 years ago, I also remember trapping (for me, it was red fox) while a kid to make some spare cash myself, using the money to buy my first shotgun. Trapping was a part of rural life, just as it is for many trappers in Montana today. If there was such a thing as a license, I never heard of anyone ever getting one. Anything we trapped on the high plains was by law a predator or a varmint, so I doubt anyone would have cared.

I met a girl a few years ago who earned spending money by trapping along the Yellowstone River in Eastern Montana. At some point, I realized that I was probably one of the few “city-folk” she had met who understood the pride she took in having learned to trap from her father, just as I had learned from mine. I understood the pride she took in her work and in the degree of self-sufficiency she earned from selling the fur. It was only when I spoke of my own youthful trapping days that she started to open up and talk about it, and I saw her face light up as she talked animatedly about her love of tramping through the woods along the river, checking her trap line.

I also realized how long it had been since I myself had talked to someone to whom I could confess my secret past life as a (short-lived and not particularly skilled) amateur trapper, let alone someone who would understand that particular call of the wild (think Swiftwater.) I have no interest in trapping today and frankly I am now citified enough that unlike a 10 or 12 year-old me, I would now probably get a little queasy at the sight of an animal in a trap I had set, but I wouldn’t want to deny the experience or the income to anyone. Certainly I utterly reject the idea that trapping livestock predators is barbaric and unacceptable.

We are unlikely to see wolf supporters offer to pay the expenses of civilian trappers for checking traps daily, and even if they did, such offers would likely end up the same as promises by environmentalist groups to reimburse stockmen for livestock losses due to wolf predation. Those quickly vanished into the thin air of empty promises, as we knew they would once the wolf proponents got what they wanted. Back in the old days, such things were given a much simpler name: lies.

A little honesty would be appreciated on these matters, but we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for it. The agenda is not that the opponents are fine with traps checked every 24 hours but scandalized with those checked every 48. It isn’t that it is fine with them to have 100 wolves harvested but not 200. The point is rather to throw up every possible roadblock to the control of wolf populations. If Montana is able to come up with a hunting and trapping plan that will actually keep wolf numbers down to a reasonable, self-sustaining population level with wolves that are largely restricted to wilderness areas, that would be a terrible blow to what wolf proponents seem actually to want, which is an ever-expanding population of wolves with an ever-expanding range.

Many of us who opposed wolf reintroduction did so not because we had any desire to see wolves go extinct (which given the Alaskan and Canadian populations wasn’t going to happen anyway) but because we knew that regardless of promises, wolf proponents would fight tooth and nail against controlling wolf numbers and against the right of ranchers to protect their livestock and to be made whole for their losses. We have not been wrong.

Wolves have proven themselves to be very resilient and aggressive, which comes as no surprise to the descendants of those who originally spent decades working to eliminate them as threats to their livestock and the civilization that livestock represented. What is becoming clear is that even with hunting seasons set as they were last year, wolf numbers are going to continue to grow rapidly. The numbers of wolves allowed to be harvested is already below what is needed to keep populations static -- hampering hunting and trapping to a degree that quotas can’t be filled will only make the situation worse.

While there are probably ranchers who want wolves completely eradicated from Montana, I haven’t met any. It is, truth to be told, kind of nice to have wolves in our wild places again. What is desirable, however, is for wolf numbers to be kept to a minimum and in wilderness areas. Achieving such goals requires flexibility in hunting and trapping, and this week’s Gazette article notes that Idaho has done a much better job at this than has Montana, although the FWP seems to be making a good faith effort to come up with guidelines that will result in a larger wolf harvest. Aggressive hunting combined with freeing up ranchers to shoot wolves on sight would make it more likely that packs will stay in wilderness areas and that they will associate populated areas with danger. Speaking of aggressive hunting, legalize wolf-hunting with Borzoi or Irish Wolfhounds, anyone?

Those who want ranchers to have the ability to protect their livestock effectively from predation and those who want elk hunting to remain a Montana tradition need to be prepared for this struggle to continue. If wolf populations and the range they cover continue to grow in spite of new hunting and trapping regulations, as we suspect they will, Montana’s wolf quota will need to increase significantly, and regulations will again need to be adjusted to make sure those quotas are met. The FWP is having another meeting Thursday, July 12, so now is the time to make one’s voice heard.

Montanans need to understand that opposition to trapping wolves is at this point just a surrogate for opposing the control of wolf numbers. If the FWP is pressured into dropping the trapping provisions, furthermore, there is no logical reason why all trapping in Montana won’t be on the chopping block next. It’s sort of a wolf trap... trap.

Montana Democrats -- caught between a frack and a hard place

Three recent pieces in the press give an indication of just how and why Montana Democrats are torn over how to approach traditional energy development in Montana.

The first appears to be the account of another local success story in the making. Jan Falstad provides another fine article in the Billings Gazette on Bakken-related business development, this time telling the story of two Montana brothers, Sivert and Richard Mysse, who put their farm-boy know-how to work in developing a new truck for heating fracking fluid. After noticing how many trucks were needed to heat water at a fracking site in the Bakken oil fields, they got the idea of constructing an innovative truck that they say is "twice as big, one-third more efficient, and safer than the competition," according to Falstad’s report. By heating the water for fracking, fewer chemicals are needed, and the entire process is more efficient. The brothers sold some ranch land near Ingomar and used other “creative financing” to build the $2 million truck, and they are now marketing their services in the Bakken.

Whether their enterprise will be a financial windfall for the brothers remains to be seen, but this is the kind of entrepreneurial spirit -- seeing a need and coming up with an innovative way to meet it -- that is inspiring. We suspect that given the demand for services of every kind in the Bakken, they will indeed be successful. Small businesses like this are the lifeblood of a healthy economy. Concerns that employ a half-dozen people here and there add up quickly.

Meanwhile, we have a guest editorial in the Helena Independent-Record decrying the fact that the Montana Land Board voted 3-2 in 2010 to take another step toward finally developing the Otter Creek coal reserves. The lead author of the op-ed is Montana writer Phil Condon, and he was joined by 3 other Montana authors (including William Kittredge,) actress Margot Kidder, and the chair of a Livingston-based liberal women’s activist group.

The authors criticize Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Sec. State McCulloch, and State Auditor Monica Lindeen for “siding with Big Coal.” They state that Attorney General (and Democratic nominee for governor) Steve Bullock and Secretary of Public Instruction (sic) Denise Juneau oppose the permits, which indicates that there will be a change of attitude in the state house if Bullock is elected governor. While we have been critical of what has seemed like 8 years of foot-dragging on the part of Gov. Schweitzer, at least his rhetoric has often been there, favoring coal development of one sort or another. And in this case, his vote seems to be there as well.

I’m not familiar with most of the authors of this editorial, but have enjoyed a couple of William Kittredge’s books (even while failing to share some of his cynical attitudes toward the West in which he grew up.) As public intellectuals, their voice has a certain influence in Montana and they deserve to be heard out, as do all who express their opinions thoughtfully.

In my recent American Spectator piece, I made the observation that many Montanans of a certain bent seem determined to be stuck in the past (hard to believe that I as a pretty old-fashioned conservative am even writing that,) noting that AG Steve Bullock’s arguments in the Citizens United case seem appropriate for 1912, but not really for 2012. The Copper Kings are long dead and they aren’t coming back -- the alphabet soup reasons (EPA, OSHA, DEQ...) why the landscape has dramatically and permanently changed when it comes to “Big Mining” of any sort are well-known to everyone. And yet, predictably, the Condin piece leads off with the “Copper Kings.” Pretending not to know how irrelevant this argument is in 2012 amounts to an inexcusable rhetorical mendacity on the part of skilled and experienced writers who know exactly what they are doing with their words.

The authors’ concerns about contaminating water supplies used by ranchers find great sympathy here at MH. What one would rather see, however, is an attitude that seeks both to strictly protect water supplies while also encouraging mining and development. Instead, the real argument is found deeper into the piece -- coal mining’s purported effect on global warming. Take away the global warming argument, and the pressures to find a “win-win” situation are inescapable. Include it, and any rhetorical weapons -- relevant or not -- are justified in the fight to save the planet, whatever the cost to individuals or to local economies. The intended audience of this article really consists of just three people, just as many of those ranting articles in the media leading up to the Obamacare decision were really only being written for one reader. In the latter case, the pieces were being written for Chief Justice John Roberts. In the former, the piece is being written for the three Democrats who are perceived as favorable to proceeding with the coal leases -- only one would need to flip a vote to stop the development cold in its tracks. But the calculus is more complicated than that for Montana Democratic politicians.

Which brings us to the third article -- a Washington Post piece that centers on Montana’s Democratic Senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus, and their support for the Keystone XL pipeline. Sen. Baucus has, according to this report, been particularly open to lobbying for the pipeline. Sen. Tester has been supportive but seems more muted. The financial politics of Senate races play a significant role here, one would think. Baucus, with his role as head of the powerful Finance Committee, has an endless stream of people and entities in the financial sector who are lining up to line his campaign's pockets. Baucus doesn’t have to worry about money -- he just needs to worry about votes, should Montanans (who overwhelmingly support the Keystone XL pipeline) decide they care more about energy development than about what Baucus’s seniority can do for the state.

Sen. Tester, on the other hand, is heavily dependent on the sort of bicoastal left-leaning fundraising that gave him an edge when he took on then Sen. Conrad Burns. At the same time, he also needs those votes. So Sen. Tester seems to be trying to navigate the shoals carefully -- give enough support to the Keystone pipeline to satisfy Montana voters, while being quiet enough about it so as not to dry up his out-of-state funding sources. Whether out-of-state fundraising is playing a role in AG Bullock’s decision not to support Otter Creek is an interesting question for which there is not, as yet, an obvious answer.

One thing would seem likely -- entrepreneurs like the Mysee brothers and their employees will likely cast their votes for those who at the very least are not hostile and obstructive when it comes to traditional energy development -- while Condin, Kittredge, Kidder, et al. could play havoc with Democrats’ ability to raise money from liberal sources should they continue to push the issue.

As the title above says, Montana Democratic politicians in high-dollar races are indeed between a frack and a hard place.

My piece in The American Spectator

My recent web article at The American Spectator on Montana and the Bakken can be found here. I’ll be chatting with the redoubtable Aaron Flint about it this morning on Voices of Montana.

Thanks to everyone who patiently answered my background questions and who gave useful critiques on the piece while it was in preparation -- you know who you are.

I’ll be returning to my usual Friday series of book reviews, movie reviews, and other cultural offerings next week. And of course, please tune in again Monday for more on energy development in Montana and on Wednesday for commentary on Montana politics.

A personal note

When I started Montana Headlines in the fall of 2006, I made the decision to blog anonymously. There are many reasons to want to write anonymously -- some good, some bad.

An example of a bad reason is the desire to say despicable things without adverse consequences, and we've all seen plenty of that in the comments threads on any number of websites, including this one.

The best reasons for writing anonymously stem, ultimately, from a desire to separate ideas from personalities -- in short, to have one's writing stand or fall on its own merits, and not to have it be judged by who the writer is (or in my case, is not.)

There are many examples of this. A famous one is the Federalist Papers, while a more recent journalistic one was the long-time anonymous "Cato" column in National Review, which we later learned was penned by John McLaughlin.

When I wrote that first Montana Headlines piece nearly 6 years ago, I didn't know whether anyone would ever read the contents of this site. Not being a golfer, and living for many years far from the mountains, as a hobby I had written and sold some freelance things over the years (mostly book reviews,) but I didn't know if I could sustain the rigors of writing week-in, week-out. But I've always loved culture and politics and writing, and I was curious -- so the experiment began.

From the beginning, I set a standard for myself -- never to write anything I wouldn't be willing to publish under my own name. There have been a couple of posts that I later thought better of and deleted before anyone had a chance to read them. There have been a couple of times when I've apologized for saying things I shouldn't have said -- and I expect that those won’t be the last apologies I’ll need to offer on this site. There are some things I look back at now and cringe a little. My views on certain people and issues have also probably changed somewhat as the years go by, and I'd like to think that my writing has matured and improved with experience. But as I've browsed through the more than half-million words I've written on this site, I'm basically content to live with what I've produced, and that isn't a bad feeling at all.

An obvious question (at least to me) is why drop anonymity now? That requires a bit of a story. When I started blogging, I wasn't at all personally involved in politics and didn't know anyone at all in the Montana political world. I later contacted the local county GOP leader, wanting to get on a mailing list and find out about events -- I found that my expression of interest was enough to get me invited to join the Yellowstone County GOP executive board as a "back-bencher" (3rd Vice President, was the official title, I believe,) where I would have the opportunity to lend some moral support. After only a couple of months, the then county chairman -- Al Garver -- resigned to take a full-time active duty assignment in Florida with the Air Force. A new chairman was needed, and I was the last person to say "not it.”

This was about the time that Montana Headlines was gaining readership and attention and when felt like I was hitting my stride as a political writer. That would have been about the time when I would normally have been thinking about going public, but suddenly it was a lot more complicated. I decided to take the path of least resistance, and rightly or wrongly I just compartmentalized my existence as a secret blogger on the one hand and my existence as the face of the Yellowstone County GOP on the other.

I did the usual things -- organizing, speaking at meetings, penning op-eds for the Gazette, fielding interviews from print media, making a dozen or so local TV news appearances -- all in what proved to be a contentious 2008 election season.

As chairman in the largest county in the state, I was privy to a lot of information that I would normally not have had access to, but I tried to be scrupulous as Montana Headlines about sticking strictly to what was available in the public record and to what was stated in public forums open to all Republicans.

The combination of the grueling election season plus the equally grueling task of writing for this site almost every day (without having it detract from my day job) took its toll, and after the election I knew I needed a break. I handed off the baton to Kirk Bushman as the next county chairman, and I let Montana Headlines go dormant for several years.

In fact, I don't think I read much of anything other than potboilers, ancient (e.g. Sir Walter Scott) and modern (e.g. Dean Koontz,) and the sports pages of the Gazette for the next couple of years. I didn't go to a single political event, I didn’t watch Fox News or read National Review, and I didn't write a word. I knew that this guy named Obama was President and that there was this thing called the Tea Party going on, but I was experiencing for the first time in my life what it was like to not be a news junkie. It was actually kind of nice for a while -- kind of the political equivalent of sitting on a quiet beach sipping one of those umbrella drinks.

Anyway, what got things started for me again was one of those odd confluences of events that is hard not to attribute to what used to be called Providence. I own the family ranch where I grew up, just across the Montana border in the northwest corner of South Dakota, and I try to spend time there when I can. I am a urologic surgeon, and my practice takes me to several eastern Montana locations each month to do clinics. I arrange them so I hit Baker on a Friday and can then can buzz quickly to the ranch to spend the rest of the weekend.

So, in February 2012, I was sitting there in the quiet, with the cold wind blowing outside. I was looking at the bright flames and hearing the dull crackle of burning wood in the stove at my feet. My wife and I are both avid readers, so the shelves groan with books there just as they do at home in Billings. Instead of the usual potboiler that I usually had going, for some reason I had randomly pulled a copy of WFB's Cruising Speed off the shelf. While reading at it, with its mixture of politics and history and cultural commentary; and with its blend of light wit and serious argument, I realized that maybe, just maybe, I missed writing. And maybe I was ready to read something other than Clive Cussler.

Upon my return home, my beloved (her name is Susan, my brilliant, beautiful, and long-suffering wife of 27 years, and the mother of our three 20-something children -- who, while she has spent those 27 years correcting many an error or infelicity in my prose, is absolutely in no way responsible for anything I write) had decided on her own that she had had enough. She wasn't sorry that I wasn't actively involved in politics, but she was concerned that writing -- something that had occupied so much of my life since she had first known me -- was suddenly gone from my life. And why, she wanted to know, had I gone the longest stretch of my life ever without reading a single serious book? It wasn't exactly true -- I had read Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration, but this wasn't a time for talking back -- on the larger point she had me dead to rights.

So, I went to the symphony the next weekend, wrote a review for Montana Headlines just to get the creative juices flowing again, and haven't stopped since. Montana Headlines is my lifeblood as a writer, forcing me to produce three or more columns a week come rain or shine, hell or high water. It allows me to explore ideas and issues, to reflect on books I have read, to comment on art exhibits I have seen, and to review concerts I have attended. It is my home base, so to speak, and it is a base from which my other writing projects can flow.

When I returned to writing this spring, I had originally felt that Montana Headlines would just fall by the wayside. I wanted to get back to freelance writing after letting it drop a decade earlier, and as it picked back up I would just let Montana Headlines go. While my youngest son and I were out planting trees at the ranch, we talked about it, and he had to bring the old man up to speed on the modern era. He pointed out that one's web presence is today an essential part of being a writer, and that far from it being a sideline, the content on Montana Headlines needed to be at the center -- and so it now is.

He also told me what I already knew -- it was time to end the anonymity. So I set a simple arbitrary deadline -- when my first freelance piece appeared in a place I could link to, I would simultaneously give Montana Headlines a much needed facelift, write this post, link to my "real world" piece, and be done with it.

So, there you have it -- my name is Bradley W. (Brad) Anderson, and I live in Billings, Montana where I am a mild-mannered surgeon by day and a derring-do writer by night.

In the post above is the link to my web article at The American Spectator. Enjoy!

Don't like Obamacare? Fire Senator Jon Tester

Update: Read this piece at "The Fix" at the Washington Post, in which Sen. Tester is prominently featured. It seems that Sen. Tester is quite aware of the unpopularity of his vote for Obamacare and is trying carefully to thread the needle.

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It's Wednesday, and time for a little Montana politics to celebrate Independence Day.

There is a lot to dislike about the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare, and since this is a blog that sticks to Montana politics, the urge to wax overly eloquent will be resisted. A couple of things stand out, however:

First, one is liable to get whiplash from following liberal opinion about the Supreme Court. Prior to the ruling, the left was preparing to discount the very legitimacy of the Court -- thinking it was going to rule against the constitutionality of Obamacare. Now, they are back to having the Supreme Court as bosom buddies, and the once-hated Chief Justice Roberts is now an exceedingly wise rock star -- Confucius meets Bono. Go figure.

On a related point, one notices that the left is accusing the right of being whiners and crybabies. Some expressions of outrage have perhaps been unseemly, but how would the left be acting right now had Roberts voted the other way? We got a pretty good preview from the full-court press bombarding the Court from Democrats and the mainstream media prior to the decision. Chief Justice Roberts was about to experience his own high-tech lynching had he decided otherwise, and he knew it.

But really, that isn't the proper analogy, is it? No, the proper analogy would be this: imagine that Justice Roberts voted exactly as he did, but that Justice Sotomayor had a last-minute change of heart, voting with Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy.

That's the real analogy. Think about it -- has there ever been a single major case in which a justice appointed by a Democratic President has broken ranks and cast a deciding vote with a conservative bloc on a hot-button issue? Once? Ever? I’ve been Court-watching for decades and can't think of an example. Were it ever to happen, the wrath from the left against that traitorous Justice would make current conservative hand-wringing pale by comparison. For if there is one thing we know, it is this: Republican-appointed Justices break ranks, evolve, whatever... Democratic appointees never do. Democrats know exactly what they are getting in their Supreme Court picks -- Republicans just have to hope.

George Will , Charles Krauthammer, et al, are wrong that Chief Justice Roberts somehow slyly stole a march on the left by voting as he did (you know, limiting the commerce clause, giving the political fervor to Romney rather than Obama, neutralizing liberal claims of a politicized court, gaining cover for future groundbreaking decisions, yada, yada...) One can't blame them for looking for a silver lining, but it is a joke to consider this as anything but a disaster for traditional conceptions of what the Constitution is supposed to do -- namely to limit the power and reach of the federal government. Roberts has instead given the federal government a roadmap for doing basically anything it wants to do -- just incorporate a tax into anything you want to do, and you'll have his vote and that of the 4 liberal Justices. (Unless he plans to go into even greater contortions next time to undo his thinking.)

Let's be generous to Chief Justice Roberts and assume that he is playing at a high-level chess game, of which this move is 6 steps ahead on a long-term strategy. If so, Roberts is trying to be too clever by half, and it won't work. Leaving aside the fact that his legal contortions are underwhelming, he is forgetting the real point to being a Supreme Court Justice: to protect and defend the Constitution. He didn't do that, and let's not pretend that he did, even if we can come up with some theoretical short-term advantages to be gained from all of this.

The true silver lining, such as it is, is this (and here, we return at long last to Montana politics): the Supreme Court didn't mandate Obamacare. Hence this decision in no way ranks with the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time -- this ruling doesn't create law out of whole cloth in the manner of many earlier Court decisions, but rather allowed a law passed by Congress and signed by the President to stand.

Which means that the law can be (and must be) repealed and/or gutted by the same democratic process. Chief Justice Roberts said, in effect, "you elected these jokers, you get to clean up the mess or live with the consequences." For Montanans, that means a number of things:

1. Montana needs to do its part in retaking control of the U.S. Senate, firing Sen. Tester, who voted for this monstrosity and would be a reliable vote to uphold it. He would be a vote against conservative judges and justices or for liberal ones (depending on the outcome of the Presidential election.) There are a number of paths to taking control of the Senate, but most involve Congressman Rehberg winning this race. We just need to get it done.

2. We need to elect Steve Daines as Montana's U.S. Congresman. While control of the House is not in immediate jeopardy, every hand is needed on deck to keep the GOP majority a comfortable one with plenty of breathing room. He will vote to repeal Obamacare, and his opponent would vote to keep it.

3. We need to elect Rick Hill as governor. States will have some discretion in implementing provisions of Obamacare, and we need someone who will stand strong with a conservative Republican legislature. We know from the fact that AG Steve Bullock refused to participate in the lawsuit against Obamacare that he supports it. We just don't need any more of that in the governor's office.

4. We need to elect Tim Fox as Montana Attorney General. Republicans and conservative-leaning independents in this state have for too long had a tendency to treat the AG office as a "gimme" for the Democrats, who always want it more badly than we do. There may not be more lawsuits challenging this or that aspect of Obamacare (and other items of federal overreach,) but if they do happen, I want Montana's AG being a part of it. (Living mentally in the 19th century and pretending that the Copper Kings are still running Montana doesn't count.)

In short, we just have to win this fall, here in Montana and all across the country. Elections have consequences.

Signal Peak Energy -- Coal in the Bull Mountains

It's Monday, and time for more on old-fashioned energy development in Montana.

Signal Peak Energy has submitted their bid to lease state land for coal development in the Bull Mountains near Roundup. Their bid of $3.5 million essentially meets the minimum bid that the state said it would accept -- 30 cents per ton, which was the same bonus payment Signal Peak had agreed on with the BLM for its land in the area.

This is, of course, just an upfront bonus. The state will also receive additional money in the form of royalties (set by Montana law at a minimum 10%) on all coal actually produced.

We are a long way from coal actually being mined, though. The state Land Board (made up of our 5 statewide officeholders -- currently all Democrats) must approve the lease, and then all of those agencies have to go to work on their studies and reviews and analyses and inquiries. One or more agencies can be predicted to make things difficult -- we'll see down the road -- and we'll see whether any objections are solid or simply obstructionist.

There is a time for public comment on the bid, but one would expect that the Land Board will approve the lease, this being an election year and all.

One thing worth noting -- Signal Peak is the only bidder and was probably willing to make the bid because it already has operations and infrastructure in the area. If Montana's government were going out of its way to encourage developing what the governor calls the "Saudi Arabia of coal" we have in this state, wouldn't we have a business climate that would encourage more players to be in on the action?

In the long run, having multiple competing coal developers actively working in Montana would not only increase the amount of coal being produced, with attendant state revenue, jobs, and economic development -- it would also eventually lead to bids actually being part of a... yes!... bidding process -- as in competition -- which generally leads to higher bonuses and royalties.

We should, however, perhaps consider ourselves fortunate that we have at least one company willing to meet the minimum bids set by the state. We could, after all, have thrown a coal party where no guests ever arrived.