It’s interesting that a post about a state worker potentially misusing computer resources is the genesis of this post, because my job puts constraints on my ability to moderate comments on the site. During the school day, I not only can’t do anything related to the blog, but I wouldn’t, because I simply don’t have time.

I do occasionally moderate comments after I get home, but I hate to think about some of them sitting on the site for hours during the day, because there is nothing I can do about them.

And that’s why I’m asking commenters here to please try to remember a few guidelines. You can be acerbic, direct, bitter, and cynical. You can criticize people and tear down public figures. All fair game.

What’s not are personal attacks, sexism, racism, or homophobic rhetoric, to name a few things. If you want that, watch a Republican debate in South Carolina.

I love the idea of discourse that can happen online, but let’s try to keep it a bit more reasonable. Okay?

Now I’m off to moderate a few comments.

Highlighting some of the most interesting and provocative posts in the past week at Montana blogs.

D Gregory Smith pointed out, that despite constantly talking about his availability to Montanans, Representative Rehberg has been awfully unwilling to meet with them lately.

Montana Cowgirl found it interesting that Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill would depict himself as someone who struggled as a single father, given the reasons he became one.

I’m not sure that I agree with much of anything Ed Berry says, but I wonder if he’s right that far right conservatives will not support Representative Rehberg because of his support of the Defense Authorization Act and HR 1505.

Rob Natelson managed to blame liberals for the Citizens United decision. It’s really a conservative jurisprudence must-read.

Barb Rush showed once again why she should not ever be elected to the School Board.

Over here, I kept yammering on about Representative Rehberg’s continued dishonesty about Pell Grants, new poster Winston wondered why campaign web sites weren’t in better shape, and Gabriel Furshong argued for the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act.

Last week, as Representative Rehberg went on his Talking Points Tour of Montana editorial boards, he dropped by the Missoulian and offered this gem:

Among the priorities Rehberg said he’d protect from cuts, Pell grants for college students was the first mentioned. He said he worked to maintain the $5,550 annual top grant, but also put new controls on who could get them.

Working to protect Pell Grants which allow middle and working class Montana students to attend college would be a noble endeavor, but Representative’s rhetoric in the Missoulian has not, unfortunately, been matched by his record.

In just the past two years, Rehberg has done exact opposite of his claim, not only voting against $5,5000 maximum Pell Grants, but repeatedly voting to cut them.

• On March 25, 2010, Rehberg voted against the Reconciliation Act of 2010, which raised the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550
• On February 19, 2011, Rehberg  voted for his House Resolution 1, which cut the maximum Pell Grant to $4,705.
• On April 1, 2011, Represenative Rehberg infamously called Pell Grants the “welfare of the 21st century.”
• On Aug 22, 2011, Rehberg directly told the people of Montana that he personally cut Pell Grants by almost $1,000/year: He told the Mark Allen Show in Bozeman, “with HR 1, I just attempted to roll it back by $845 and you thought I was destroying the program.”

You just can’t have your TEA and drink it, too, Representative Rehberg. While the reactionary wing of your party wants you to gut vital services, you can’t tell them you’re making cuts while telling the rest of us you’re working to preserve programs.

At least have the decency to tell Montana families the truth when you’re working to make college less affordable for them.

It’s incredibly difficult for anyone to come forward when the victim of sexual assault. Victims are often unwilling to come forward because of social stigma, fear that their claims will not be believed, fear of further victimization, shame and other reasons. The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network says over 60% of sexual assaults are unreported.

The challenge of reporting rape makes the actions of the Missoula Police Department and the Missoulian almost impossible to understand.

On the day after the Missoulian reported that a UM football player has been charged with rape, the newspaper is giving top of the page attention to a story titled “Research varies on rate of false rape reports,” giving credence to the misogynistic, damaging idea that women are likely to manufacture claims of sexual assault.

The entire framing of the story is almost unimaginably insensitive. There’s been no public defense from the accused asserting he is the victim of a false claim. There’s been no evidence to suggest that women are making false claims about rape in Missoula.

Rather than focusing on the fact that a Missoula police officer was merely “counseled” for telling a woman reporting a rape that women make false claims to avoid “trouble with their boyfriends,” the story lets Missoula Police Chief Mark Muir justify treating rape victims as criminals:

When Muir visited in person with that woman and another who’d filed a sexual assault complaint, "we had a discussion here in my office about the fact that there is false reporting that does take place," he said. "There are studies that have shown numbers are closer to 40 to 50 percent."

Later he emailed the woman a 2009 article about those studies, two of which used polygraph tests. One of those examined 1,218 reports of rape on Air Force bases in the 1980s and subjected 546 of those making allegations in "unresolved" cases to polygraphs.

"Twenty seven percent of these complainants admitted they had fabricated their accusations just before taking the polygraph or right after they failed the test," the Forensic Examiner article said. That study combined the finding with other results to come up with a false accusation rate of 45 percent.

The officer who made the remark should be exposed and disciplined, rather than protected by his boss and the media. Chief Muir should either make it clear that he doesn’t believe 50% of women who report rape are lying—or he should resign, because Missoulians—both men and women—deserve to know that the police will help them when they are victims of any kind of assault.

I have to admit that I had little hope for the discussion section on today’s story in the Independent Record about the proposed anti-discrimination ordinance—and as is usually the case, the troglodytes raced right off to demonstrate just how hate-filled their cowardly, anonymous hearts can be.

Tiger Woops offered a slur and what seems to be a vague reference to Matthew Shepard in his comment:

Michael S demonstrated his keen sense of tolerance and a disturbing predilection for bestiality:

Steeline suggested that

These comments are precisely illustrative of why Helena needs an ordinance like the one Commissioner Haque-Hausrath and the Montana Human Rights Network are proposing. Despite real progress

And it usually comes from cowards who hide their hate behind masks or online pseudonyms.

A couple of quick notes about the Independent Record, on this issue, too. Given that their comments are moderated, should any of these comments have been allowed on the site? The IR policy states:

Name-calling, crude language and personal abuse are not welcome. Moderators will monitor comments with an eye toward maintaining a high level of civility in this forum.

I’d say hate speech falls somewhat short of a high level of civility.

It’s always both disheartening and a bit amusing watching conservatives contort themselves to justify discrimination against GLBT Americans, especially when it comes to marriage equality. They couch their arguments in specious claims about judicial activism, but the truth is, their position rests on the bigoted idea that a group of people can be denied equal protection under the law simply because some people are uncomfortable with relationships that are different from their own.

The latest example? The media darlings and deep thinkers at Treasure State Politics.

When this is your argument, you’re in trouble:

I understand it is vital for every citizen, no matter their personal choices, to be guaranteed the same rights under our laws. Marriage isn’t a right, it’s a tradition. When a court begins to compromise the meaning of marriage that Montanans have overwhelmingly agreed on, the reverence of marriage can be quickly destroyed.

The Supreme Court has disagreed with the idea that marriage is not a right, most specifically in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, which outlawed anti-miscegenation laws. As the majority wrote:

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men …

To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.

Loving v. Virginia is an especially instructive example, as it illustrates the absurdity of relying on popular opinion to determine the right to marry. In the 1960s, the majority of Americans opposed interracial marriage:

A Gallup Poll indicated in 1965 that 42 percent of Northern whites supported bans on inter-racial marriage, as did 72 percent of southern whites.

The “logic” offered at Treasure State Politics must, therefore, endorse the position that the Supreme Court was wrong to strike down inter-racial marriage laws in the United States. Surely, these future voices and current campaign staffers for the Montana Republican Party are not suggesting the Supreme Court should have left such an abhorrent remnant of Jim Crow laws on the books, are they?

They have to be—and that shows just how wrong the argument is.

Of course, the deeper issue is the bind the Republican Party finds itself in when it comes to the issue of gay marriage: in the short term, they have to take a hard line against equality for all Americans, because it plays well with their base. Long term, it’s not only a bigoted position, but one that’s a political loser.

This Pew Research Center chart shows that Americans are headed in the right direction when it comes to marriage equality, but equal access to rights shouldn’t depend on  either public opinion or what conservatives believe marriage means.

Equality under the law means equality under all laws, no matter how contorted the argument used to justify discrimination.

As a final note, the bloggers at Treasure State Politics might enhance their credibility if they didn’t write things like “the gay blog alienated the people it needed to convince.”  I don’t know what the hell a “gay” blog is, but it sounds complicated.

You may have noticed that a new paper has begun publication in Helena, with the second print issue dropping this week. It features an extensive story about the lawsuit against the Helena Diocese (something almost entirely ignored by Helena’s daily) and other interesting pieces by local writers.

You can find the print edition all over the local area, including   Birds and Beasleys, Star Salon and Photography, The Man Store, Papa Tony’s Cuisine, Park Avenue Bakery,Miller’s, the Holter,  the Bagel Company (either), Frayed Sew,four0six,The Staggering Ox, Last Chance Cup, MT Book and Toy Co., No Sweat Cafe, Firetower Coffee, Fireside Coffee, HUB, The General Mercantile, Café Zuppa, The Donut Hole and other locations around town.

Support local journalism and check it out today.

In events across the state yesterday, Representative Rehberg drew crowds of nearly a handful of people as he promised to “Liberate Main Street.” And the media was there to cover his tiny crowds and even smaller ideas.

Rehberg’s personal reporter at the Billings Gazette, Tom Lutey, neglected to mention the size of the massive crowd, but a photograph shows that at least six people unrelated to Ken Miller attended Rehberg’s session in his hometown. He also neglected to mention Mr. Rehberg’s opponent in the Senate race, who spent the day actually earning his pay, working in the Senate.

Contrast Mr. Lutey’s story with the one on the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and you might begin to see why find Lutey’s perpetual boosterism for Representative Rehberg is so objectionable. The Chronicle story mentions the size of the crowd (near twenty) and gave the Democratic Party an opportunity to respond to Rehberg’s spin.

We were even treating to this insight from Mr. Rehberg’s brain:

“It’s just more of the same from Jon Tester and Montana Democrats,” he said. “A press release has never created a single job in Montana. Today Denny held and organized events all across the state, highlighting the need to liberate Main Street from policies that are coming out of Washington, D.C.”

I think Mr. Iverson may want to do a bit more research into job creation. I’m hard-pressed to understand how awkwardly fumbling through some prepared remarks to a clutch of Republican candidates for elected office created many jobs for Montanans today.

In the end, though, Rehberg and Iverson achieved their goals from a press far too willing to fill column inches with trivia and showmanship.

While I understand the cutbacks that make media coverage more complicated these days, news outlets would do a great deal to enhance both their credibility and the depth of their coverage if they stopped treating these manufactured theatrical productions as if they were worth covering—and spent some real time investigating the records and results from candidates.

With ballots beginning to roll out this week and a peculiar endorsement coming from the Independent Record this past Sunday, it’s time to discuss the election for Helena City Commission. While I respect both of the new candidates willing to invest the energy necessary for running a city-wide campaign, an honest assessment of the candidates makes it clear that Helena should retain Matt Elsaesser and elect Katherine Haque-Hausrath.

(Given Elsaessaer’s status as an incumbent, I’m going to focus on the choice between Katherine Haque-Hausrath and Lora Behlmer in this post.)

Experience

Haque-Hausrath brings more experience to the table. Her experience as an attorney (one admired by her co-workers for her intelligence and hard work) will be invaluable to the commission as they tackle complex questions about Helena’s future.

Policy Proposals

She’s also got substantive policy proposals for the community. Her issues page on her web site demonstrates that she understands the needs of our evolving community when it comes to growth, the environment, and health.

I’m especially impressed that Haque-Hausrath is willing to push for an overdue anti-discrimination ordinance to ensure that all Helenans are treated equally under the law.

In contrast, Ms. Behlmer simply hasn’t offered any specifics in her campaign—not on her web site and not in the media. I take her at her word that she wants to listen to the people of Helena, but I don’t have any idea what agenda she would promote as a commissioner—and neither did the IR, which didn’t ask her to address a single policy issue in their endorsement.

Civic Engagement

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Haque-Hausrath has earned our support because she has demonstrated a willingness to engage in the community. She’s campaigned tirelessly in the past few months, going door-to-door to meet with voters, place signs, and yes, raise money. That a first-time candidate has raised over $6,000 from almost 130 donors demonstrates her commitment and energy.

That’s real engagement—and from someone with a six-month old son.

In contrast, the IR offered this curious justification for its endorsement of Ms. Behlmer, along with their excitement about online polls:

It’s here that we drew another distinction between Haque-Hausrath and Behlmer; the latter struck us as more aggressive and ambitious in seeking input from all corners of the city, and not just those willing to attend the meetings.

All the evidence from this campaign proves the opposite. Ms. Behlmer has only raised just over $530 from fewer than ten donors, has done little door-to-door campaigning, and hasn’t articulated a plan to increase public involvement.

Ms. Behlmer may believe in increased civic engagement, but Haque-Hausrath has actually done it during this campaign.

Bottom Line

None of what I’ve written above is intended to slight Lora Behlmer. I commend her willingness to enter public life and run for office. I absolutely respect that, but Haque-Hausrath is the better choice for Helena.

Unfortunately, what seems quite clear in all of this is that, once again, the Independent Record is using its platform to push a conservative social agenda rather than the interests of the community. Consider this line about Haque-Hausrath from the news story about the three candidates:

She says she’s seen support from environmentalists in Helena as well as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

I think that’s tremendous. Helena needs another leader to stand up for the rights of all members of our community, regardless of their sexual identity and beliefs about the environment.

A responsible piece of journalism, though, would have noted that Haque-Hausrath has received a wide range of support from all parts of our community, from the mayor, current and former commissioners, both Democratic candidates for Attorney General, and the owners of a small, local ice cream shop. While the Independent Record may oppose her because she is committed to social justice and a healthy environment, it’s simply irresponsible to depict Haque-Hausrath as anything but a candidate who has drawn support from the whole community.

The transparent agenda behind the IR’s endorsement for Ms. Behlmer (online polls and affirmative action for small business owners notwithstanding) makes it clear once again that the dominant media player in our community is putting politics ahead of the interests of Helena once again.

When you receive your ballot this week and return it by November 8, the choice is clear: vote for the new candidate with policies to improve our community and the energy to engage with all of the community’s citizens.

Vote for Katherine Haque-Hausrath.

I’ve been enjoying a new Montana blog, Montana’s Bully Pulpit, a collaborative blog dedicated to preserving the heritage of conservation in Montana and the United States. In particular, I enjoyed their take on Representative Kris Hansen’s entirely illogical editorial about the need for spear hunting in Montana. Definitely a blog to keep an eye on for hunting, fishing, and conservation issues.

4and20 blackbirds has the most information on the spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement in Montana. For more information about the movement in Missoula and Helena, follow the links.

Enjoy out of state billionaires manipulating our political system? Then you’ll love Dennis “Cash Poor” Rehberg taking his marching orders from the Koch Brothers.

While the local media seems unwilling to cover the absurdity that is Denny Rehberg’s effort to appropriate, you can learn all about his efforts to cut HIV/AIDS prevention efforts and pursue fraudulent lunchroom taco eating.

The Electric City Weblog and MT Cowgirl discussed the the costs of a power-hungry mayor and overzealous city attorney cracking down on someone with the temerity to speak out against a city policy. It’s about $500,000.

On the media side, Politics in the ‘Root offeed an in-depth look at the continuing budget tensions in Ravalli County and the Missoulian Cops and Courts blog discussed its stories plagiarized by the content mill Examiner.com.