The release of the proposed draft of the United States Supreme Court’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was, to be sure, a spoiler alert of sorts. For one thing, appellate court opinions are not supposed to be leaked. The process of opinion writing is tedious: Proposed drafts are circulated t… Read Article

Who are unhoused people? We all have various ideas of who is an unhoused person and how they became unhoused. These are based on what we see in the media, stories from friends and family, or what we see in the street. There simply is no such thing as the "typical" unhoused person. No one is … Read Article

Our democracy—is it alive? Do we still live in a democratic republic, or is our democracy dead, no longer a governance of, by and for the people? How is the American Experiment faring? As it turns out, not so well. Read Article

In a letter to his constituency recently, Sen. Steve Daines wrote, among other things, the following: Read Article

Republicans are pushing a new tax-cap, Constitutional Initiative 121, to be on the ballot for Montana voters. CI-121 limits annual increases in valuations of residential property to either 2% or the inflation rate (whichever is lower) when assessing property taxes, if the property is not new… Read Article

Montana's Constitution contains two fundamental rights that are distinct, yet are connected in an important way. Read Article

Editor's note: The following letter, written by longtime Boulder area resident Sam Samson, was submitted as a public comment to the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation regarding the department's proposal to log 318 acres of state land atop Ryan Mountain, about 5.5 miles … Read Article

Misinformation is one of the gravest threats facing us, but we are not doing enough to educate people how to recognize fact from fiction in the flood of information they encounter every day. MIT researchers found that tweets containing falsehoods reach 1,500 people on Twitter six-times faste… Read Article

Recent legislative actions in Montana have made access to voting harder. Restricting eligible voters’ access to voting does not equate to more secure elections. For example, let’s look at the new voting law HB 176, “eliminating same-day voter registration on Election Day,” to see if it truly… Read Article

Gov. Greg Gianforte has put forward a petition to remove most Montana grizzly bears from federal Endangered Species Act protection. This petition claims the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem's grizzly bear population is ready to survive under state management. Not so subtlety pushed in t… Read Article

That was quite a colorful story James C. Nelson wrote about the Kyle Rittenhouse incident and trial in the Dec. 8 issue of The Monitor, but to me it appeared mostly to not be based on facts. Contrary to Mr. Nelson's argument, the Rittenhouse verdict set a precedent for the rule of law. Read Article

I am thankful the sun rises and sets every day! Read Article

In my opinion, the gathering at Veterans Park in Boulder to consider ways to promote civility and peace in our community was a success. I attended with dozens of other community members. No one seized the opportunity to promote themselves, their ideas or their interest. No one tried to stand… Read Article

On Jan. 6 I was part of a group that gathered in Boulder for a Silent Vigil for Peace and Civility. Read Article

On Sunday, Jan. 2, the Helena Independent Record published a column from Kendall Cotton, on "Red Tape Relief." Mr. Cotton states that “the accumulation of thousands of regulations has been shown to stifle economic growth and substantially increase the cost of doing business.” He states that … Read Article

Oxford High School is the newest addition to the national list of mass school shootings. This time, even the worn phrase “thoughts and prayers” was not uttered by politicians beholden to a gun lobby while our children and educators face the continuing trauma of drills and living on edge for … Read Article

Republicans have killed the latest attempt to fix our democracy. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Indeed, if Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky truly cares about American democracy (as he professed to after the Jan. 6 insurrection), then he should look to the example of election compromise … Read Article

The Senate is now deciding the fate of local news.As part of the Build Back Better Act, the Senate is in the next few days considering an important proposal: providing a payroll tax credit to local news organizations to retain or hire local journalists.Why? Local news is in a deep crisis. Th… Read Article

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), our state has an opportunity to make unprecedented investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. We have a chance to catapult our state forward, but only if we have the workforce available to build that infrastructure. If there aren’… Read Article

Hi folks, Read Article

If you were at the Rodeo Parade in Boulder on Aug. 28, you probably saw it: A silver pickup truck driving down Main Street, its bed festooned with two flags—one, the United States stars and stripes, the other bearing the words, “F--- Biden.” Read Article

The Montana Legislature is working on plans to appropriate the nearly $3 billion American Rescue Plan Act funding package that Montana will receive from the federal government. Unfortunately, the Legislature is entertaining a controversial amendment in the bill to cut federal aid funds by 20… Read Article

Consumers have the right to know the origin of their beef purchases, and ranchers have the right to a fair and competitive market. This is a reasonable expectation.  However, since 2015 Congress specifically exempted beef and pork from labeling laws. Consumers do not know where their beef co… Read Article

The Instagram post looked strange to Amulya Panakam, a 16-year-old high school student who lives near Atlanta. In February, a friend showed her a sensational headline on her phone that declared, “Kim Jong Un is personally killing soldiers who have Covid-19!” Of course, the news wasn’t real. … Read Article

Parents are more crucial than ever to their children’s education. As more kids learn at home, here are two programs, thousands of miles apart, that have helped get them involved. Read Article

This op-ed was co-authored by Chuck Tooley, ex mayor of Billings and by Renee Coppok of Billings and signed by more than 100 Montanans. Read Article

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — When Harlandale Independent School District in south San Antonio shuttered its doors in March amid the coronavirus pandemic, Melissa Casey’s first thought about her students was, “How are all of their basic needs going to be met?” Read Article

Small Business Saturday has slowly become an American tradition following the Thanksgiving holiday. Brick-and-mortar businesses across the country promote their best deals of the year in hopes of luring shoppers from online purchases. It was not so long ago that Americans would visit locally… Read Article

President Donald Trump has frequently repeated the NRA talking point that more extensive background checks on gun sales would not have prevented the recent rash of mass murders. Maybe so. It’s hard to see what lurks in a murderer’s mind. Read Article

Most of us have, at one time, encountered or heard about military imposters. Famously, actor Brian Dennehy, who played Sheriff Will Teasle in the 1982 Stallone film First Blood, claimed to have fought and been wounded in the Vietnam War. While he, in fact, did serve in the United States Mari… Read Article

A few years ago, too long absent from journalism, I returned to the field as a breaking news reporter in Southern California. Mostly I covered wildfires, fatal crashes, homicides. Occasionally my editors let me report outside my beat, but when that didn’t happen enough I decided to seek an e… Read Article

How appropriate that Valentine’s Day is the date we publish the obituary of dear friend Dick Crockford. His heart was as big as the Montana sky and his generosity as wide as the state he served so well. Read Article

A press release issued December 14 and published in this issue caught our eye. As we read it, we wondered, “And why was it so hard for Boulder to get that kind of help?” Read Article