Big Sky Cairn

I’m too young to remember the last time there was a major fire on Mount Sentinel - when the entire north face burned. And I’m also surprised that it’s been so long considering how dry it gets and how much traffic there is.

It was strange watching the fire yesterday, and I have to admit, I’m a little frustrated. I’m training for a climb in August and a big part of the training regime was climbing up to the wind-sock two or three times a week. Now I’m going to have to find a new trail with some serious vertical…

Any suggestions?

You have probably never heard of Wes Cherry. But I bet you’ve played his game. Wes Cherry is the inventor of a little game with a big heart… so to speak. He’s the guy behind Windows Solitaire - the free game installed on Windows machines.

Turns out, he’s a pretty funny guy. In a really anti-social nerdy kind of way that I dig.

Update: I got interested and did some more reading.  Sounds like Solitaire and Minesweeper were included in early Windows OSs in order to teach people how to use a mouse.  Remember, that technology that we now take for granted was brand new and a little non-intuitive for people used to looking at their hand for movement.  Solitaire taught drag-and-drop.  Minesweeper taught left and right click.

Oh, and if we’d started drilling back when these programs were being written, we wouldn’t be dependent on foreign oil today.  Zing.

As previous posts might suggest, I proudly exercise my right to keep and bear arms. Thus, I will be up early tomorrow to find out how the Supreme Court ruled in the case District of Columbia v. Heller.

There is much speculation that Justice Antonin Scalia will be writing an opinion for the Court. However, it is important to remember that even though Scalia is a conservative, this does not mean that the Supreme Court will decide in favor of Heller. Some SCOTUS watchers are speculating that Heller could be decided using the seldom utilized “plurality opinion.”

A plurality opinion is the opinion from a group of justices, often in an appellate court, in which no single opinion received the support of a majority of the court. The final decision is determined by the opinion which received support from a mere plurality of the court. That is, the plurality opinion did not receive the support of half the justices, but received more support than any other opinion.

So, what is a plurality opinion?

It takes five votes for an opinion to become a binding “Opinion of the Court.” When there is no one majority opinion, the Court has generally embraced what is known as the Marks rule, after Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977). The Marks rule is (essentially) that if there is no one majority opinion for the Court, the controlling opinion for future cases is the narrowest decision in favor of the winning side. As the Court put it in Marks, “When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgment on the narrowest grounds.”

There isn’t any one “opinion of the Court” in such cases, but the lower courts must follow the narrowest opinion for the winning side as if it were the majority opinion. And in recent years, the Justices themselves have largely treated the controlling opinions under Marks as if they were majority opinions for purposes of stare decisis.

Can I get an example?

For example, on Monday the Supreme Court decided United States v. Santos, a case where the Marks rule applies. In Santos, a money-laundering case, the Court divided with four Justices on either side of the issue, and a concurrence by Justice Stevens in the result of Justice Scalia’s opinion, whose opinion was supported by three other Justices. In this case, Justice Stevens’ concurrence formed the narrowest basis for the decision, and thus under the Marks rule, is effectively the controlling opinion, even though all eight of the Court’s other Justices did not share his legal reasoning on the issue!

So, from what I can tell, a plurality opinion is not the binding f-off to the District that many NRA supporters would like. But it is also not the end because lower courts will use the majority opinion or the concurrence to decide future cases. And if said cases come before the Supreme Court, we might be able to get the five we need for a controlling decision.

Again, we do not know it will be a “plurality opinion” but there is a chance, so be forewarned. And I will be back at 10am EST tomorrow morning with the good/bad/indifferent news!

In February 2007, Barack Obama petitioned the Federal Elections Commission for a bi-partisan compromise that would ensure that both candidates would accept public financing for the 2008 Presidential Election. Obama “argued in his filing with the commission that the public financing system had insulated candidates from a corrupting dependence on big donors.”

Then the primary happened, and Obama learned that he could raise $100 million dollars in a month. NBC News predicts that Obama could handily raise $300 million dollars to spend on the general election. That’s almost four times the amount of money that would be available to him if he kept his promise to accept only public monies.

But when you can raise hundreds of millions of dollars and crush your opponent under the weight of your money bags, who needs a paltry $84 million in public financing?

Apparently, a promise is only a promise until a better offer comes along. And even some of Obama’s strongest supporters are upset by his decision to pass on public financing.

McCain-Feingold co-sponsor Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) said that Obama had not made a good decision. Feingold argues that while the system does need to be updated, the system for the general election is not broken, as Obama claims.

But for my part, Obama’s flip-flop is not the most upsetting part of his decision to pass on public financing.

I’m not a rich person. I’ll never drive a Mercedes or fly on a private jet. I struggle with increasing food and fuel prices, and like a lot of people I live month to month. So, when I hear that a candidate who talks about change and supporting the little guy is preparing to spend THREE HUNDRED MILLION dollars on an election, it makes me sick to my stomach.

Not only does it sound like Obama is trying to buy the election, it sounds like he has lost perspective.

On October 26, 1967, John McCain was shot down while flying over Vietnam. McCain parachuted into a lake, breaking both arms and a leg before he nearly drowned. After he was pulled from the water, a crowd attacked him, crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him. But his nightmare was just beginning.

McCain spent nearly six years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. And despite being tortured and beaten on a regular basis, McCain turned down a 1968 offer of repatriation unless the North Vietnamese would release every American soldier taken in before him was released as well.

Due to the injuries that he received in service to his country, McCain has been rated 100% disabled by the Veterans Administration. So, when I read an article in the LA Times saying that McCain is not fit to be president because of injuries, I wanted to scream. Luckily, I have an electronic soapbox.

By any measure John McCain is a hero, who suffered unspeakable torture in service of his country. He then spent the next three decades in public service. And arguing that the injuries he sustained in Vietnam disqualify him from the presidency is abominable.

McCain is hardly the first person with disabilities to enter politics. Max Cleland and Tammy Duckworth are both 100% disabled, and they are both excellent public servants. Should their injuries make them ineligible to be president?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the hero of the Democratic Party, was horribly disfigured and disabled after contracting polio but he served as President for 12 years. His disability didn’t get in the way of his accomplishments, and they certainly didn’t hinder his ability to bring his country out of the Great Depression and lead us to victory in WWII.

So, if these politician’s disabilities don’t hinder their ability to serve, why is McCain different? Because he’s a Republican? Because some moron at the L.A. Times who is neither a doctor nor a therapist says so?

Anyone who has ever volunteered on a statewide campaign can tell you, the trail is a grueling test of the candidate’s physical and emotional health. And in the last 25 years, McCain has breezed through three campaigns for the House of Representatives, three campaigns for the Senate and two presidential campaigns. Not to mention the travel and schedule he had to maintain in order to become one of the nation’s most heralded and powerful politicians.

If he can do all of that despite his injuries, I have no doubt that he is healthy and strong enough to serve as president.

But perhaps the most deplorable part of the LA Times article and the constant speculation about how McCain’s disability impacts his health is what it says to the thousands of young disabled veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you for serving your country and putting yourself in danger to protect my freedom, but you are no longer qualified to be president. So, if you aspired to a life of public service in government, be advised that your aspirations will be limited to only certain offices. What kind of message is that to send to the brave men and women who have sacrificed more than many of us can imagine in the name of freedom?

McCain’s doctors say he is in great health. And his performance on the campaign trail over the past several months should silence the naysayers. But even if you think that he’s too old and frail to be president, don’t start insinuating that the brace men and women disabled in combat aren’t fit to hold public office. Because anyone who can survive the pain of his injuries, the grueling recovery therapies and the stigma of being disabled while rising to a position of prominence in the unkind world of politics is tougher and more qualified to be president than most of us will ever hope to be.

Montana lost a real treasure.  God Bless you Joe for all you did.

One thing that the primaries yesterday produced was a clear choice in the Congressional race.  (The Senate results seem to be in a dimension beyond the capabilities of ordinary language to describe it, so why try.)

Check out Western Word’s summary of the Vote Smart answers that Driscoll gave vs those that Rehberg gave.

A clear choice.

Because I will be out of town next week, I arranged to vote by absentee ballot.  Something that more and more Montanans are doing.  But after I filled out my ballot and repackaged it inside it’s super secret container, I noticed something that made me a little ticked off.

To vote in Silver Bow County was going to cost me $1.41 in postage.  Why?  Because the powers that be in the SBC elections office decided to use a return envelope that is 12 in. by 16 in. The darn thing is so large that I could use it as a welcome mat or a baby blanket.

As I affixed the postage to the American flag sized envelope, I began to wonder, “What happens when voters don’t realize they need to add postage?  Or when they don’t add enough postage?”

At least in Great Falls, the county picks up the tab in the interest of democracy.

According to the Tribune, almost one-third of all Cascade County’s primary ballots are arriving sans proper postage.  Most are arriving with one stamp, but do to the weight of the envelope it takes two to cover the fee.  This gap in price is costing the county $100 per day.

But when the alternative is disenfranchising voters, what else can they do but pay the postage?

Given the growing popularity of absentee balloting with college students, senior citizens and workaholics like myself, this trend is likely to cost the counties (read: the taxpayers) a pretty penny.  Especially when you consider that the general election ballot is even larger than the primary ballot.

So, if you too are voting by absentee, make sure to affix enough postage.  Two stamps for a normal sized envelope, and four stamps (ah!) for the flying carpet sized ones Butte is using.

I guess it’s true what they say, democracy isn’t free.

Over at Montana Headlines, we have noted on a couple of occasions the importance to supply-side tax policy of the Laffer curve, even reproducing it more than a year ago for interested readers when writing a post in support of an opinion piece that Sen. Roy Brown had written about tax policy in the state of Montana. Briefly stated, the Laffer curve demonstrates why cutting high taxes can actually result in increased government revenue, and why raising taxes can result in decreased revenue.

Recently appearing in the Wall Street Journal is a piece that demonstrates yet another inconvenient truth about taxes in a simple form. Economist Kurt Hauser plots revenue as a percentage of GDP against the top marginal tax rates. Not surprisingly, what is demonstrated is that revenue as a percentage of GDP remains constant at about 19.5%, regardless of what is done with taxes at the top rates.

This of course reflects the fact that people at top income levels have a great ability (and motivation) to come up with ways to shelter, under-report, reclassify, or decrease their incomes. As tax rates increase and as incomes increase, those motivations also increase. That is one of the reasons why in 2004 we learned that Sen. and Mrs. Kerry paid a far lower percentage of their income in taxes than did President and Mrs. Bush (and indeed a far lower percentage of their incomes than did the average middle-class voter.)

Since raising taxes generally decreases GDP, this is yet another demonstration that raising the top marginal tax rate actually is more likely to lower revenue than to increase it.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand rhetorical flourishes, and one hopes that the Hauser graph joins the Laffer curve in the tax-cutting (or at least anti-tax raising) Hall of Fame.

Over at Montana Headlines, there was the pleasure of hosting our candidate for governor — Roy Brown — in a guest editorial about the governor’s testimony in support of the “Clean Water Restoration Act.”

We of course immediately had a member of the loyal opposition show up (all of those kids working for Sen. Baucus have to have something to do) to give highlights of the governor’s testimony before Congress.

The governor’s remarks, if these excerpts are representative, seems truly to have been a tour de force of style over substance — not that this should be particularly surprising.

At root, the governor’s folksy rhetoric is irrelevant.  What is relevant is what the bill actually will do to erode the ability of individual states to control their own water, and that the governor supported this erosion of Montana’s sovereignty.

Check out what Sen. Brown wrote, follow whatever discussion ensues, and decide for yourself who is more likely to put Montana’s interests first.