Big Sky Cairn

While the Drill-Nothing Democrats celebrate the increased use of public transit “across Montana” (well, at least in the cities that have public transit - if you live in rural Montana where you have to drive further anyway, you’re out of luck), gas prices in Montana hit an ugly milestone on Friday when the average cost of a gallon of gasoline hit $4. While all those working class Montanans are feeling the pain, our elected Drill-Nothing Democrats in the Senate, Tester and Baucus, are actually voting to increase the taxes on energy while the “Energy Governor” continues to attack his opponent for actually having some personal experience in the Energy Industry. Meanwhile, wannabe representative Driscoll, the Democrat’s nominee to challenge Rehberg wants to create an electric train system for everyone to ride.

So while Democrats square dance between the environmentalists whose money got them elected and the working class they claimed to defend, Republican Denny Rehberg actually makes some sense.

Drill, drill, drill!

The Left loves to blame Big Oil for gas prices, but Senator Jon Tester has upped the ante accusing gas station owners of price gouging at the pump. The gas station owners I’ve talked to in Montana aren’t making a ton of money. Their profit margins are actually smaller than the cut that government takes on a gallon of gas and the higher tab at the pump is making people less likely to buy ancillary products like drinks or candy bars. They face the brunt of consumer frustration as their profit margins decline. Of course, for Senator Tester, these hard-working Montanans are convenient villains as he piles it on. Classy, Senator.

Tester goes on to describe what he thinks Congress can do about the problem of high energy prices:

Tester said the answer to America’s problems of dependence on polluting oil from unstable foreign countries is to move forward on several fronts. These, he said, include use of renewable energy sources, energy conservation, expansion of existing conventional energy capacity, and the continued development of hoped-for carbon capture technology to enable cleaner coal use.

Basically, his solution is to continue to explore hypothetical alternatives, and the option of increasing supply by using our own friggin’ resources isn’t even on his screen. My favorite part though is where he actually tries to invoke the free market:

Tester said that, in their early stages, new technology and potential markets may be less significant than federal tax breaks and research incentives, but that once established, “the government should get out of the way” and let the market do its work.

Yes, Senator, the government needs to get out of the way and let the market do its work. And right now, the market wants - more than anything else - to meet the increasing demand for oil with increased supply. That’s called supply and demand and it’s sort of a fundamental underpinning of the free market that you blasphemes.

Drill, drill, drill!

Jim Hunt lost.  Still not sure what to make of that one.

Except that Jon Tester’s endorsement of Hunt looks pretty silly now.

Jack had a good find today.

This story could have been this, or this

But this is what we have;

The March event sponsored by L-3 executives raised $12,750 for Sen. Baucus’ re-election effort. The funds came from 14 top employees of L-3, according to federal election records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Most contributions were for $1,000, including from Ralph D’Ambrosio, chief financial officer, Charles J. Schafer, president of the company’s products group, and Curtis Brunson, senior vice president.

According to the reports, L-3 is involved in some offshore tax haven deals, which is an issue pending before Senate Finance since at least last spring. Max’s vigilance on the issue apparently did not extend to checking into who was hosting his fundraiser on March 17.

While he had no problem taking money from these folks less than two months ago, apparently something caused a change of heart. What changed? My guess is that a reporter finally did some homework and gave him a call, who knows maybe the Montana press will learn a thing or two.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the nicely alliterated “Culture of Corruption” in casual conversation. To be sure, the GOP did plenty to deserve this moniker on a national level. Indeed, by 3,562 votes Montanans visited the sins of the Party on Senator Conrad Burns.

Montana always bucks the national trends. Culture of Corruption, while somewhat appropriate in the face of national scandals. was misappropriated to describe the Montana GOP. Conrad Burns was exonerated. Outside the court of public opinion, he didn’t do anything wrong.

Interestingly enough, in the 2006 Montana Senate election cycle, only the Democrat candidates broke the law. Senator Jon Tester and John Morrison, in the early days of his campaign, broke Montana law by enlisting the help of robots to call Montanans to ask them for money. Turns out those robo-calls are as illegal as they are annoying.

Now, I’d be willing to write this off as a simple mistake perpetuated by a fledgling campaign, but for the fact that Tester later justified his action as if he hadn’t done anything wrong.

Both candidates admitted Thursday they were using message systems. And both said they were doing so because they believe the law banning them is unconstitutional.

“It’s a free speech issue,” said Tester, who also is president of the Montana Senate.

That’s not a person’s decision to make, said Chuck Denowh, executive director of the Montana Republican Party. You may think the speed limit is unconstitutional, but that doesn’t give you the right to break it.

“It’s the law,” he said. “They should follow the law, and you should respect the law.”

Now, yes, this happened years ago, and before anyone accuses me of resurrecting old skeletons for no reason, I do so for a larger point. The Culture of Corruption tag that was so effectively attached to the national GOP in 2006 ought to find itself a comfortable home right here with the Montana Democrats. Their candidates - their leaders - have only as much respect for the rule of law - laws that they pass - as they expect there to be political fallout for breaking them.

I’ll say it now for the record, I think Matt Singer is the most gifted political mind in the Sinestrasphere. His post on the possible Tester vs. Rehberg matchup in 2012 is certainly worth a read, if for no other reason than the double meaning of this line:

Montana Headlines is already previewing what could be the heavyweight match of the decade: a 2012 U.S. Senate battle between Sen. Jon Tester and Rep. Dennis Rehberg.

Too easy. Let’s just say that Senator Tester is a “heavyweight” in only one meaning of the word and leave it at that.

What’s more interesting is that like Art Noonan and senior Democrat Strategists, Matt Singer’s commentary seems to assume that Congressman Denny Rehberg will be a viable political candidate - a “heavyweight” - in 2012. Read between the lines and Matt Singer is acknowledging that it’s unlikely he’ll lose in 2008 or 2010. To be fair, he first refers to this match-up as “a good chance” but later refers to it in the simple future tense using “will” which removes the previously applied conditional.

Poor Jim Hunt. What’s next? A Rehberg endorsement from his Mom?

On a related note, I wonder if, by 2012, Tester will have secured that seat on the Appropriations Committee that Montana was promised… Somehow I doubt it; not a lot of first-term Senators on that Committee and like I said, Tester isn’t exactly a political heavyweight. He’s already served his purpose - no need to pander to Montana anymore.

Via Matt Singer, Tester has decided to forgo the normal policy of not taking sides in his own party’s primary and instead endorse Jim Hunt (who isn’t expected to beat Rehberg until 2010).

I love how Tester waxes eloquent about being an underdog. If memory serves, he was also a pretty significant underdog in his own primary against John Morrison. Lucky for him, his party didn’t jump on the front-runner’s bandwagon in the first two weeks and he was able to win the nomination and eventually the seat. I guess Tester probably realizes that 7th choice is better than 8th or 9th… although if you do the math the difference is pretty small.

As the mistakes keep mounting, Tester has one-and-out written all over him.

Jim Hunt - remember, he’s the trial lawyer who was the 7th choice for the Democrats to challenge Denny Rehberg - has a blog. And his latest post is about “his” “plan” for defeat withdrawal in Iraq. I put “his” in quotes because it’s not really his plan so much as it’s the plan of an organization apparently operated out of Washington, DC (is the “me too, me too” approach really what we want out of a leader?) and I put “plan” in quotes because it’s more of a set of goals than a plan.

Someone running for Federal office has a plan for withdrawal in Iraq supported by retired military types? Gee, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. Here:

Some of our best retired generals who understand the situation in Iraq have argued that an exit strategy for American troops from Iraq by the end of 2006 is feasible and in the best interests of America.

The President and the U.S. Congress need to put a successful exit strategy in place to bring our troops home. Additionally, we need to consider redeploying some of these troops to Afghanistan and other critical fronts in the War on Terror.

The time has simply come for us to have a plan in Iraq so that our nation can turn its attention, and its economic and military resources, toward pressing economic and homeland security needs.

Oh well, I’m sure this time they really mean it.

Jack over at Western Word is quickly becoming one of my favorite Montana blogs. He is consistently breaking interesting stories - driving the debate in the Dextrasphere. Take a look at his latest gem, catching Tester in a bit of a contradiction.

After that announcement and with Tuesday’s viewpoint from the senator telling us it was completed before the documents apparently arrived, the beliefs that this whole audit was just a publicity stunt to get votes are even stronger today - just like his comments about his being “against earmarks, period” were a publicity stunt.

We’ve blogged about Tester’s ethics audit before, here, here and here. Still wondering if the audit is itself a violation of ethics rules that prohibit in-kind contributions. Not holding our breath for the media to ask a tough question like this though - not when the alternative is writing about what a bang-up job Mr. 99 is doing.

It seems odd that a law that has become as controversial as Real ID (at least in Montana) passed with such popular margins in Congress (100-0 in the Senate, 368-58 in the House). Why?

Our borders and immigration system, including law enforcement, ought to send a message of welcome, tolerance, and justice to members of immigrant communities in the United States and in their countries of origin. We should reach out to immigrant communities. Good immigration services are one way of doing so that is valuable in every way-including intelligence.

It is elemental to border security to know who is coming into the country. Today more than 9 million people are in the United States outside the legal immigration system. We must also be able to monitor and respond to entrances between our ports of entry, working with Canada and Mexico as much as possible.

There is a growing role for state and local law enforcement agencies. They need more training and work with federal agencies so that they can cooperate more effectively with those federal authorities in identifying terrorist suspects.

All but one of the 9/11 hijackers acquired some form of U.S. identification document, some by fraud. Acquisition of these forms of identification would have assisted them in boarding commercial flights, renting cars, and other necessary activities.

Recommendation: Secure identification should begin in the United States. The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists.

And this one too:

For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons. Terrorists must travel clandestinely to meet, train, plan, case targets, and gain access to attack. To them, international travel presents great danger, because they must surface to pass through regulated channels, present themselves to border security officials, or attempt to circumvent inspection points.

In their travels, terrorists use evasive methods, such as altered and counterfeit passports and visas, specific travel methods and routes, liaisons with corrupt government officials, human smuggling networks, supportive travel agencies, and immigration and identity fraud. These can sometimes be detected.

Before 9/11, no agency of the U.S. government systematically analyzed terrorists’ travel strategies. Had they done so, they could have discovered the ways in which the terrorist predecessors to al Qaeda had been systematically but detectably exploiting weaknesses in our border security since the early 1990s.

We found that as many as 15 of the 19 hijackers were potentially vulnerable to interception by border authorities. Analyzing their characteristic travel documents and travel patterns could have allowed authorities to intercept 4 to 15 hijackers and more effective use of information available in U.S. government databases could have identified up to 3 hijackers.32

Looking back, we can also see that the routine operations of our immigration laws-that is, aspects of those laws not specifically aimed at protecting against terrorism-inevitably shaped al Qaeda’s planning and opportunities. Because they were deemed not to be bona fide tourists or students as they claimed, five conspirators that we know of tried to get visas and failed, and one was denied entry by an inspector. We also found that had the immigration system set a higher bar for determining whether individuals are who or what they claim to be-and ensuring routine consequences for violations-it could potentially have excluded, removed, or come into further contact with several hijackers who did not appear to meet the terms for admitting short-term visitors.33

Our investigation showed that two systemic weaknesses came together in our border system’s inability to contribute to an effective defense against the 9/11 attacks: a lack of well-developed counterterrorism measures as a part of border security and an immigration system not able to deliver on its basic commitments, much less support counterterrorism. These weaknesses have been reduced but are far from being overcome.

Recommendation: Targeting travel is at least as powerful a weapon against terrorists as targeting their money. The United States should combine terrorist travel intelligence, operations, and law enforcement in a strategy to intercept terrorists, find terrorist travel facilitators, and constrain terrorist mobility.

Remember that 9/11 Commission Report? Turns out that among the central recommendations of this report was something like Real ID. That’s where those excerpts are taken from.

Look, liberals love to set their standards way above federal minimums. Except, apparently, when it’s a matter of national security.