Archive for March, 2007

I always assumed politics in Montana was different than what I had been watching on the national level, better somehow. I always thought of it int terms like “We are all Montanan’s. We are all reasonable people.” I made the assumption that since we are all Montanan’s and had the interest of Montana at heart, the politics here would be better. Not like on the national level where politics take on a life of their own and become a power tripping ego fest. Then I took a look into the belly of the beast and saw that they were not the same, they are worse.

I first heard of House Bill 179 directly from Julie French (D-Scoby) some months ago in Helena. Our own JHYGirl describes French’s discussion that day here.

Representative Julie French told the crowd of her son who had served in the service, and a younger son who has told her that if he is asked to go, he will do so without question. She spoke of her unwaivering support of men and women in service and HB 179, which she sponsored, that will create a Montana monetary relief fund for families and soldiers called up for federal service. She noted that while the monetary amount may seem insignificant in relation to what is actually being asked of the service men and women and their families, it is important for Montana’s sons and daughters to know that we, the people of this state, support them 100%

What a great idea. Sure, $500 to $2000 is not a lot, but it would help. As she said, they need to know that we care about them. Julie fought the good fight for this bill, but was unable to get it out of committee. She even tried to blast it out, to no avail. At every turn it was blocked by house republicans. Despicable, right? Well, it gets worse.

Julie French’s bill is named “An Act Establishing the Montana Military Family Relief Fund“. After Republicans stalled her bill for months in committee, Republican Alan Olsen introduced a bill named “An Act Establishing the Montana Military Family Relief Fund”. It differs in wording from her bill by just a few words.

Let me be clear on what happened here:

After holding a bill sponsored by a democrat in committee, republicans copied her bill almost word for word, didn’t even change the title and are pushing it through committee. This is cheating and, yes Julie, this is stealing.

“When I was a little girl, we were taught not to steal, and this is stealing,” said French, a freshman lawmaker.

My first thought is that Olsen is a spineless tool, no better than the kid that makes it through school by copying other people homework. In Olson’s defense however, he is a different kind of spineless tool. He claims that he had no idea that it was like French’s bill and was just doing it because the house leadership told him to. Mike Lange, Scott Sales and John Sinrud are clearly to blame for this? That’s what he said anyway.

You will have to excuse me, I am madder than I have been in years. I know that most Montana republican voters are reasonable, perhaps there are even some reasonable republicans in the state house, but I have my doubts. If there were, they would not have elected the likes of these three men to the leadership. I would warn those reasonable ones among them that the people of Montana don’t seem to take to games and dishonesty. With behavior like this, don’t be surprised when we wipe the floor with you in the next election.

It is a disgrace.

(HT to Jay)

You’ve all heard about the investigations into the altering of scientific findings on global warming by the Bush administration. You’ve no doubt heard too about the decision to re-write the Endangered Species Act to make it easier to de-list certain species in certain parts of their range. The grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone were to be the first to be de-listed. Democrats in Congress have vowed to block this decision, and rightfully so, and deserve a hearty round of applause for doing so. One of the key elements of the ESA is the protection of critical habitat for a given species. This revision of the act was a blatant attempt to waltz right around the current law and in effect potentially open much of our public land to logging, mining and other development. It can and must be stopped.

It turns out that a high-ranking official over at Interior, a Bush appointee named Julie MacDonald, has been doing some creative editing of scientific findings by Fish & Wildlife biologists, as well as leaking non-public agency policy information to her friends in various industry groups. You know, make the science fit the policy decisions. It’s bad enough changing the findings of your own biologists even if you’re a biologist yourself. She’s not. She’s trained as a civil engineer. What the hell is she doing re-writing the findings of trained biologists? The cronyism displayed by this administration just keeps plunging to new depths. Oh well — you gotta take care of your friends I guess. On and on it goes…

More about it here and here and here.

The Department of Justice was not intended to be a political tool for presidential administrations. Its intention is to serve in the interest of the American people and national interests under the oversight of the president. By most accounts, this has more of less remained the case to varying degrees under all other administrations. Not this one.

While we on the left have long been ‘alarmed’ by what we see as an expansion of presidential powers, much of that conversation is esoteric, full of nuance and not very palatable for consumption by the general public. One of the oddities of the conversation is that Republicans, as the party of conservatives and libertarians, still like to claim that they are the party personal freedoms and smaller government. Between the banning of same sex marriage, warrantless wiretapping, signing statements and a deficit spiraling out of control, these ‘conservative standards’ don’t really hold a lot of water. The current scandal over the firing of federal attorney’s gives a real insight into the way that this administration has attempted to grow presidential power in way that has no precedent. No precedent in this country anyway.

Joseph D Rich spent more than 35 years in the DOJ before leaving the department in 2005. He has written a piece in the LA Times where he talks about how things have changed since the administration took over. He says that during his 35 years he worked with a broad array of political appointees from multiple administrations in a non partisan way. In short, the DOJ was not used as a political tool before this administration.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

This does not come as a surprise to me, nor should it to you. We have seen that there were major problems in the last two elections and they are still not resolved.

That aside, there is a real difference between political appointees and career employees. Simply put, we expect any administration to favor those of similiar political persuasions for appointments. There is nothing wrong with that, it is the whole idea of an appointment. Career staff is a different situation, these people are the glue that hold the government together between administrations. Rich goes on to make the claim that this administration has broken the time honored tradition that career staff should not serve a political agenda.

This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.

If anything at all will come out of these hearings and inquiries, perhaps we will restate the idea that the law enforcement branches of the DOJ are there to serve the American people and not a political tool of those who seek to expand the powers of the executive branch.

For decades prior to this administration, the Justice Department had successfully kept politics out of its law enforcement decisions. Hopefully, the spotlight on this misconduct will begin the process of restoring dignity and nonpartisanship to federal law enforcement.

One of the most amazing aspects of this case is that almost everywhere a spotlight gets shown into this administration, we see roaches scurrying off into the cracks of the woodwork. Kyle Sampson’s testimony made is quiet clear that Gonzlaes has not been honest with the American people about his involvement in the attorney’s firing. Senior council Monica Goodling has already claimed that she will refuse to testify before congress under the fifth amendment. If everything is above board, why fear the ’sunshine and light bulbs’?

As a true believer in the constitution, I know that almost every single part of it was designed to protect America from expanding central authority. In short, no dictators allowed here.

I have to give Robert Gates credit, for admitting to not knowing how to solve the Guantanamo problem.  After all, his predecessor was not so great at admitting his weaknesses.  However great the news of a Guantanamo closing (which even President Bush has admitted to wanting) might be, it is tempered by some pretty disturbing goals.

“Is there a way statutorily to address the concerns about some of these people who really need to be incarcerated forever but that doesn’t get them involved in a judicial system where there is the potential of them being released, frankly?” Gates said at a congressional hearing.

See, I don’t get that.  Really (even though we are talking about Bush’s administration) I do try and understand their logic instead of just fighting them all the time.  Either these detainees are guilty or they are not; that is pretty basic.  If they are guilty, why not put them on trial?  And, if they are innocent then how in the world can you justify any further detention? Perhaps the concern is the possibility of guilty persons going free from a flawed trial?  I don’t know, it is hard to imagine that kind of concern from people who generally tout legal-infallibility in the face of capital punishment opponents.

For his part, Gates urges the President and Congress to come to an accord with regards to Guantanamo.  Perhaps Gates is too busy to read the papers, but Congress and the President haven’t honest that cooperation just yet.  Although, perhaps they can at least agree that Guantanamo ought to go:

President George W. Bush and administration officials have said they would like to close Guantanamo. But they argue it is difficult to accomplish because of the trials to be held there and the group of detainees the United States says should be imprisoned for life.

Again, can’t the legal system in the greatest country in the world decide whether or not they should be imprisoned for life?  Because he insists on continuing to process these detainees his way (an immature trait I explored recently), I don’t feel that our President actually wants to solve the problem of Guantanamo, just that he wants the media frenzy surrounding its particulars to go away.

I genuinely ask anyone who agrees with Bush and Gates on this one to help me here; I would like to understand them when they talk about this situation.

Montana is #1

If you find the above three word sentence enticing it is not!

Ask almost anyone and Montana has consistently ranked as one of the lowest ranking states when it comes to personal income and what the citizens of this fine state (most refer to it as the Big Sky State) pay in personal income taxes. Worse, the levied state income taxes are on the poorest families to boot.

Of course it depends on just whom you are talking to and how you frame your question on taxes.

Let’s say you begin with – Why do you live in one of the lowest paying states in the US? The answer you would hear most often would be – “it is not about the money, but look where we get to live.” Ask someone else and their reply might be – “I was born here and I can’t afford to move.”

Regardless, we now have the displeasure of knowing that we now outrank Alabama in levied taxes among the poorest of people in the nation.

Above I asked that you remember three (3) words and now I point to these two (2) words – TAX CUTS!  Sound familiar?

According to the study released on Tuesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (authored by Jason Levitis) he said that with the new changes, Alabama now stands second to Montana in having the lowest income tax threshold for both a single-parent family of three and a two-parent family of four.

According to the study, Mt. will now have the lowest threshold (http://www.billingsgazette.net/h/blogs/citylights/?p=2004) and those by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) Montana will have the lowest threshold in the categories mentioned above.

Help me out here – Does anyone see ANY numbers versus those at the TOP of the tax heap?

Looks like we are soon to be joining California for a February 5, 2008 presidential primary.

HB797 passed a second reading in the House today, eeking out three more votes than it did the first time around.

I’m torn. Longer primary seasons mean more costly elections. I mean, Lord - the mid-terms weren’t even put to bed…Tester hadn’t even been declared the winner…and they were talking about Obama and Hillary. On the other hand - maybe western issues can get some nominal attention and perhaps a meaningful visit from a candidate or two.

For those of you unfamiliar with Democratic Party politics, there are (at least) three branches within the party.

• There are left wing Democrats, as typified by Dennis Kucinich, who is making yet another quixotic run for the presidency. Left wing Democrats like to talk about things like health care and minimum wage and ending the war, and are usually either framed and hanged or stuffed and baked by the party. Left wing Democrats make party regulars uncomfortable

• There are liberal Democrats, as typified by John Edwards. These are more sedate mainstream politicians who sometimes happen upon left wing talking points (like minimum wage or health care or ending the war) that resonate with voters. They are usually easily intimidated and abandon the left once elected. (This is where I currently place Jon Tester, though I hope to be wrong.)

• There are DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) Democrats. These are right-leaning Democrats who completely eschew the left. Bill Clinton was a DLC’er, and he perfected the strategy called “triangulation” whereby Democrats were finagled into supporting right wing policies because they were offered up by a Democrat.

Note that Republicans cannot distinguish between any of the above, so that this conversation is lost on them.

Left wing Democrats are expected to support right wing Democrats, and are called disloyal when they don’t. DLC Democrats usually keep their distance from lefties, though they do mingle with liberals.

Two candidates in the current campaign represent the DLC – Hillary Clinton and Tom Vilsack, who was former head of the outfit. Vilsack is best known for an appearance on the Daily Show which sported a duck walking across the screen. Not much else.

Vilsack recently quit his campaign, and in what liberal radio host Ed Schultz called a “major coup”, threw his support behind Hillary.

What support? Vilsack could only aspire to a lofty 1% in the polls. But it doesn’t take much, I guess, to impress Schultz. (Vilsack could have been a stalking horse for Hillary. If so, he’ wasn’t very good at it.)

I’m yet to figure out whether Obama fits better with the liberals or the DLC, as he’s long on glamour, short on substance.

Anyway, that’s Democratic Party politics 101. I’ll give them this: It’s an interesting party, at least during primary season. But I’ll not soon forget the many varied candidates offered up in 2004. We ended up with dull and dreary DLC’er John Kerry. It could be that all the fun we’re having now will yield us nothing better than Hillary.

Today is a proud day for America. The democratically controlled senate did exactly what the American people sent them to Washington to do by upholding language naming a withdrawal date in the spending bill for Mr Bush’s war.

By a vote of 50 to 48, the Senate allowed a withdrawal date of March 31, 2008, to remain in the $122 billion bill, which has yet to be acted upon. The majority defeated an amendment offered by Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee, that would have removed the date.

Most of the arguments offered by republicans centered around the idea that a withdrawal date empowers the enemy by letting them wait it out. The fallacy of this argument is very clear when you consider that enemy is not some remote ghost living in caves and attacking by night, but dwells openly inside the government in Bahgdad. The fact that the same militias that are at the heart of the civil war are financed by government ties and are very friendly with the Iraqi government.  Through our meddling, we have made things in Iraq way worse than they were before.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, disputed any suggestion that a timetable was a prescription for defeat. Rather, he said, it is “a signal to the Iraqi leaders that we cannot save them from themselves.”

When the administration sold this war with a pack of lies to the American people, they made the claim that it would be over in month. ‘Months’ have come and gone many times and things have only gotten worse in Iraq. We are further from a solution than we were two years ago. If not now, when do we insist that Iraq takes control of their own destiny? In two years? In ten? In twenty? How long do they get before we realize that there is no military solution in Iraq?

“There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq,” Mr. Hagel said. “There will not be a military solution to Iraq.”

“Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there,” Mr. Hagel said. “It doesn’t belong to the United States.”

At some point you draw a line in the sand and say ‘Enough is enough’. Mr Bush put us in an illegal war without end and I’ll be damned if I want to still see our kids dying over there in 20 years. I want to take this opportunity to thank Jon Tester and Max Baucus for doing the right thing. We need about 49 more like you two.

Imagine being an 81-year old who needs to move into an assisted-living facility. Imagine too that you have squeezed $100 every month for several years out of a meager budget to pay for an insurance policy that promised to pay for the care. Then when the time comes the insurance company pulls every trick it can think of to avoid paying, hoping you’ll either abandon the claim or die, and the burden gets dumped onto your family. It’s happening to a family right now right here in Montana. And this isn’t an isolated case. Something needs to be done, but what? Charter revocation? A company like this may be skating barely within the law, but I don’t know. But one thing seems certain — in spite of the billions of dollars they are making, this gang of scam-artists is without a doubt morally bankrupt. Totally and utterly so.

Last night I talked about Chuck Johnson’s theory that unexperienced lawmakers due to term limits are the cause of the mass chaos in the Montana state house. Today, I want to discuss another analysis put forth in the IR: Republicans are the cause. That was my theory all along, but this piece is really just a discussion of their online poll in which 357 respondents disapproved of the Republican tactics while 200 approved. We wont go into how unscientific these type of polls really are, the real gems are int the comments.

One respondent brought up a point that I have tried to make several times: If it was good, then why all the secrecy?

Would someone remind Reps. Sales, Lange and Sinrud that the governor of Montana is Brian Schweitzer and not Rep. Rick Jore. And, if eight budget bills are better than one “House Bill 2” budget bill, why didn’t Rep. Lange share this discovery with Montana voters and legislators last fall?

What would their response to that reminder be? We already talked about that one in the famed Fear And Loathing in Helena post:

Lange said the timing of the announcement of the breakup of the budget — just a few days before the transmittal break — was his decision, and that he waited until making sure it was a move House Republicans would support.

“I will not walk over to Senator Cooney or the governor and say, ‘Here’s a strategy I’m going to employ,’” he said.

“It’s not my job as Republican leader to help out the governor or help out the Senate Democrats or the House Democrats to figure out how to go after me. I feel absolutely no remorse about waiting until a time of my choosing to make that announcement to the Democrats.”

Other folks seem to think that transparency is important and that backroom deals stink to high heaven:

You cannot find good government or democracy in a Bozeman basement. We’re paying a high price for term limits. We can thank four voters in Laurel for this nightmare.

We have been over that one several times though. One we don’t always remember to talk about is who really gets hurt in these kind playground games:

Political posturing using Montana’s most vulnerable people as pawns? Shame on whoever thought this up.

To sum it up, I think that you’ll find a bunch more like this gentleman in 2008

As a former Republican, I am of the opinion that our Republican legislators have acted, and continue to act, like a bunch of blind, dogmatic, unreasoning jerks. The budget fiasco is just another example. That is why in the last election I held my nose and voted a straight Democrat ticket.

Good ole Chuck Johnson has an interesting piece on the lack of civility in the state house. I was considering the other day that the Democratic controlled Senate doesn’t have the same problems that the Republican controlled House of Representatives are having. I am a partisan hack, so of course I chalked it up to the ‘Democrats Rock!’ category. Chuck has a slightly different view though:

Like them or not, term limits appear here to stay. They remain popular with the voters who adopted them, yet deprive the Legislature of the very kind of experience we value lawyers, doctors, carpenters, mechanics and engineers and other occupations. Anyone watching the House recently would probably agree a little more seasoning couldn’t hurt. Perhaps term limits someday could be extended to 12 years instead of the current eight.

My thoughts on term limits are conflicting. On one hand, career politicians creep me out. The genuinely seem to forget why they are there and who they really represent. On the other hand, I understand the arguments of experience. The clincher comes down to the fact that term limits don’t apply to lobbyist so they tend to become the institutional memory.

Whatever the reason, it is a mess and rather embarrassing. I expect a bigger turnover in the house in two years than can be accounted for by mere term limits.

Carrying on with the theme of yesterday , sort of. First I found this piece in the Helena IR rather interesting. Montana Democratic Senator Larry Jent of Bozeman has proposed a trio of bills to help law enforcement deal with poaching. The first makes some forms of poaching a felony, the second would use the increased fines collected from poachers to hire two additional investigators and the third would provide money to the Fish Wildlife and Parks to hire additional game wardens.

Game wardens, outfitters and sportsmen from around the state asked lawmakers Thursday for stiffer penalties for poachers.

They told the House Fish, Wildlife and Parks Committee that poachers are “despicable cutthroats” who are robbing Montanans of material and natural wealth. They asked the committee to support three bills by Sen. Larry Jent, D-Bozeman, that they said would boost the state’s efforts to curb illegal hunting and fishing.

Pretty strong words, and rightly spoken I believe. I think there is a special urgency to these laws when, as this article points out, the bears are going to wake up to a different set of circumstances than when they went to sleep. I am not a conservation bilogist, so it is difficult for me to know exactly how to feel about the delisting of grizzles.

“This isn’t only a serious occasion, but an occasion to celebrate the success of the Endangered Species Act and the effort to recover grizzly bear populations,” said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation.

I have not seen a lot of opposition to the delisting, so I would suppose that it is not unreasonable to trust that the Endangered Species Act actually worked. Now we are dependent on the powers that be to manage them appropriately. That brings us full circle to why I think that Senator Jent is on the right track.

One of the interesting things about western democrats is that we take the best parts of the democratic party platform and throw out the rest. Bill Schneider over at NewWest has written an interesting piece on Democrats and gun control. While I am not sure that I agree with all of his points, it is worth discussing. The article discusses the reauthorization of the assault rifle ban and the authors opinion on how gun control issue can effect the next election:

Here’s why this is so important to an outdoor guy who likes wild, public land, likes hunting, and likes guns, but doesn’t worship them. After barely surviving six years of an anti-environmental Congress supported by an anti-environmental president, I don’t want to give up a chance to keep a pro-environmental Congress in power and elect a pro-environmental president. For outdoor folks, there’s too much at stake. For the last six years, we’ve been fighting back repeated attacks on wildlife habitat and outdoor recreation–selling off federal lands, overzealous fee charging to reduce access to public lands to common folks, runaway escalation of fossil fuel drilling, no support for protecting roadless lands, and more.

Schneider’s view is that the democrats should stay away from the topic of gun control altogether, it’s a political had grenade. Considering the number of gun owners out there, I would say that he is on to something. This is an important point to consider. There are elements in the democratic party that strongly support gun control, but they are few and far between on the western front. Schneider points out that this can effect all democrats though:

Like any group, democrats can’t control all their members, so it isn’t fair to paint the entire party as anti-gun because of one maverick representative–no more than it’s fair to equate all gun owners with the wacko that shoots up a shopping mall. But it’s much easier for the gun lobby and the GOP to do this with H.R. 1022 in the congressional grinder

This cuts against the grain with me, seeing as how I have been spouting off against party-line-locksteppers recently and truly feel that elected officials should legislate with their conscience. This is especially true when their conscience runs against the party. You see, I fully expect Jon Tester and Max Baucus to vote against gun control since that is where they told voters their conscience would direct them, no matter what the party line is. If the distinguished lady from New York wants to make a stance on gun control, that is between her and her voters.

My personal opinion on this? I think that the jury is still out on whether the assault rifle ban is really gun control. With that said, I am with Howard Dean on this one: gun control is a state or local issue. “Guns and New York” or “Guns and Detroit” are a completely different conversations than “Guns and Montana”. Those conversations need to be had, they just don’t make a lot of sense at the federal level.

I wake up to NPR Morning Edition every morning, for the simple reason that out of all the alarms and radio stations I’ve tried over the years it’s the least annoying. I heard one term this morning, twice within a matter of minutes, uttered by both the Montana legislature and the White House. Obstructionist.

I’m not going to re-hash the budget proposals the Montana House Republicans introduced this session, but they aren’t faring well, and a spokesman, I didn’t catch who, stated that the reason they didn’t sail through is obstructionism by the Democrats. Really? Voting against bad legislation is being obstructionist? I always thought that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Georgie Bush himself made a statement defending his refusal to allow the issuing of subpoenas to his inner circle in the investigation into the firing of federal judges. He claims that simply allowing Rove et al to talk without written record should be good enough, and that to demand more is obstructionism. I see. To use every legal means possible to get to the truth and to hold possible wrong-doers, especially those in the highest circles of our government, accountable is obstructionism. I always thought it was a part of the whole checks and balances thing.

It seems to me that if the White House has nothing to hide they would welcome a detailed and thorough investigation, if for no other reason than to clear themselves of any charges of wrong-doing. Instead Bush will use every means at his disposal, including going in front of the Supreme Court if necessary, to block a thorough investigation. What does this tell the American people?

I think both the Montana House and the White House should take a long hard look here at who is truly being obstructionist.

I pointed out after the state GOP sent out disgusting mailers that I had some serious concerns about the stability of the Montana Republican party. Why should I care? Well, I live here and the entire state would be better served by competent lawmakers in both parties. It just gets worse and worse.

Last week they attempted to decimate the health and human services budget from $3 billion dollar budget down to a $300 budget. Look at the numbers: $3,000,000,000 -> $300. Why? To get votes from Rick Jore, Koopman and other such wingnuts:

House Republicans couldn’t pass HB808 Thursday. It failed 54-46, with all 49 Democrats, four Republicans and Jore opposing it.

That led Republicans to propose slashing the human services budget from $3 billion to $300 for the next two years to win the votes of Jore and the other Republicans. However, Republicans backed down from that plan Saturday, with Sales saying,

“We capitulated.”

Now, they have no real clue on how to pass education funding.  Remember, these are the same guys that I wrote about in Fear and Loathing in Helena that said that they did not collaborate with Democrats on the budget because of some fear that the dems were trying to figure out ways to ‘get them’:

“I will not walk over to Senator Cooney or the governor and say, ‘Here’s a strategy I’m going to employ,’” he said.

“It’s not my job as Republican leader to help out the governor or help out the Senate Democrats or the House Democrats to figure out how to go after me. I feel absolutely no remorse about waiting until a time of my choosing to make that announcement to the Democrats.”

Now, in a bizzarre twist, it goes tabloid. It seems that  Reprentative Boggio of Red Lodge earned a DUI this weekend.

Court records show Boggio, a Republican, had a blood alcohol level of 0.14 percent when he was arrested Saturday night. The legal limit in Montana is 0.08

He broke the law. He made a conscience decision to drive after he had drank more than the law allowed. While this isn’t the worst thing that a lawmaker has ever done, it gets worse. Remember that this is the same Republican representative that was fined for poaching an elk last year. Pattern? Maybe.

Wait though! It gets worse still:

Boggio’s passenger, Rep. Elsie Arntzen, R-Billings, is a member of the Yellowstone County DUI Task Force.

Hmmm. I don’t know. Seems pretty unstable to me.