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Sen. John Walsh’s name has been removed from the U.S. Army War College’s academic rolls and grinded (sic) from a plaque listing the members of the graduating class of 2007 after the college stripped him of his degree for plagiarism. The announcement that the war college revoked the Montana Democrat’s 2007 master’s degree on Friday marked the end of a swift-moving controversy that began with a newspaper story in July and led to Walsh’s withdrawal from the U.S. Senate race weeks later. The lingering question is what effect the academic review board’s plagiarism report will have on the Senate race...

A Supreme Court order legalizing same-sex marriage in five states reverberated further on Thursday, with the attorney general of West Virginia conceding that its ban on same-sex marriage was no longer defensible but South Carolina officials vowing to keep fighting to restrict marriage to a man and a woman. Since the Supreme Court decision on Monday and a ruling from a federal circuit court on Tuesday, new developments have appeared almost hourly as gay-rights advocates press for action in nine other states: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The U.S. Army War College revoked Democratic Sen. John Walsh's master's degree after an investigation completed Friday concluded he plagiarized a research paper required to graduate, a college spokeswoman said. ... The board found that then Colonel John Walsh did commit the offense of plagiarism and thus his Master's Degree and status as graduate of the U.S. Army War College should be revoked," War College spokeswoman Carol Kerr said in a statement.

DALLAS — Due to close contact with a patient diagnosed with the Ebola virus, a second person is under the close monitoring of health officials as a possible second patient, said the director of Dallas County's health department Wednesday morning in an interview with WFAA. Zachary Thompson, the director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, says all those who've been in close contact with the diagnosed patient are being monitored as a precaution. However, Thompson pointed to one person in particular as a potential second case. "Let me be real frank to the Dallas County residents, the fact that...

There are four places in the United States set up to handle a patient sickened by the Ebola virus, and Missoula is one of those. .... And any hospital equipped to care for a tuberculosis patient can care for an Ebola patient, according to Dr. George Risi, an infectious disease specialist who recently returned from spending 20 days in a Sierra Leone Ebola ward. Accompanied by St. Patrick’s intensive care nursing director Kate Hurley, Risi helped local clinic staff care for up to 95 patients at a time. While untreated Ebola kills more than 70 percent of its victims, more...

The proposed 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada to Steele City, Nebraska may be the second most famous crude oil pipeline in American history after the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline. One has yet to be built while the other has been operating since 1977, but the two pipelines share a common history marked by environmental controversy in its approval process. The TAPS line, as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline became known as, was proposed in 1969 to move the recently discovered Alaskan North Slope oil to the Lower 48 market via tanker from the Port of Valdez. The Prudhoe Bay oil...

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead issued a statement Tuesday saying that he expects the state to seek a stay of Jackson’s decision. He said the state will seek an emergency rule from the Fish and Wildlife Service to allow continued state wolf management. ... Wyoming took over wolf management in late 2012 after the federal government ruled that wolves no longer needed protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.

A rescue armored vehicle arrived at the Bozeman Police Department in May, but city commissioners said they didn't know about it until this week. City Commissioner Chris Mehl was driving on a ride-along Friday night, when he was at the police station and saw a 14-foot-8, 17,000-pound rescue armored vehicle. "I was surprised, you can imagine. Surprised," said Mehl. The Bozeman Police Department purchased the armored vehicle, also known as the Bearcat, in May for a little more than $250,000 through a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. Mehl said normally the city commission looks at any large expense,...

Dr. George Risi had to pass a dozen armed checkpoints to leave Sierra Leone – four of which ordered him out of the car so a guard could take his temperature. The Missoula infectious disease specialist is still checking his thermometer twice daily since his return from 20 days of volunteer work in an Ebola virus ward. He and fellow Missoulian intensive care nursing director Kate Hurley cared for up to 95 patients, from babies to grandparents, suffering from the often-fatal disease. ... While untreated Ebola tends to be 70 percent fatal, Risi said about half of the patients in...

Rod Coronado, a convicted eco-terrorist, is the leader of the controversial “Yellowstone Wolf Patrol,” a new environmental group that plans to shadow legal Montana wolf hunters during the state’s fall and winter wolf season and document the hunts with a video camera. Coronado, a resident of Michigan, is a radical environmentalist who “sank whaling ships nearly 30 years ago in Iceland and later went to prison after torching a Michigan State University lab in 1992 for conducting research for the fur industry” according to The Buffalo News of Buffalo, NY. He also serves as a spokesman for the radical, militant...

The Powder River Basin, well known for its abundant coal supply, is experiencing a turnaround in oil production. Production has rebounded from a low of 38,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2009 to 78,000 bbl/d during first-quarter 2014. Although U.S. oil production growth is occurring primarily in the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian Basins, the Powder River Basin is among other regions of the country that have also benefitted from the application of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The increase in Powder River Basin oil production is largely attributable to production growth in the Turner, Parkman, and Niobrara-Codell formations, which...

Jim Geragthy, acclaimed author and National Review’s chief campaign analyst, has been grousing about the lack of quality polling in key Senate races this year. His frustration is well-founded. So yesterday must have felt like Christmas in September for Jim and political junkies everywhere, as two pollsters released a deluge of surveys covering the most contested races in the country. In light of the results, I’d expect that national Republicans are kicking off the week with an extra spring in their step, as well. We were leaked an advance copy of last week’s much-anticipated Politico/GWU Battleground poll, which was packed...

In the chambers of the Nebraska Supreme Court in Omaha, a hearing was held Friday about the decision by Lancaster County District Judge Stephanie F. Stacy claiming that the law under which the state’s governor had approved the route of the Keystone XL pipeline was unconstitutional. The judge, in a case brought by three landowners, decided that LB1161, the law passed by the state’s legislature at the end of its session in 2011 that shifted the approval of the pipeline route from the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) to the governor, was unconstitutional, and as such the judge instituted a...

District Judge Ed McLean has denied a motion to change the trial venue for Markus Kaarma, the Missoula man accused of fatally shooting a German exchange student in his garage last April. In a 208-page motion to move the trial, Kaarma’s attorneys argued that local media reports have tainted Missoula’s jury pool by painting Kaarma as a “cold-blooded killer.” Katie Lacny, who filed the motion, argued her 30-year-old client has been held captive in his Grant Creek home and received death threats as the media “aroused sympathies and created a community outcry against” him. “The pretrial publicity has stirred up...

<p>Montana's attorney general plans to appeal a judge's ruling that a voter-approved law requiring immigration checks of anybody applying for state services goes against federal immigration laws.</p> <p>The 2011 Republican-led Legislature wrote the proposal meant to deny government jobs and assistance to people who are in the U.S. illegally. Legislators sent the plan to the 2012 ballot, where the referendum passed with nearly 80 percent of the vote.</p>

Just how far kooky left does a Democrat candidate have to go before ABC News will cease hyping him or her? Apparently so far left that we can't even imagine. Writing articles for a far left socialist website or posting a profile photo of a former chairwoman of the Communist Party USA on your Facebook page is still not kooky enough to deter Benjamin Siegel of ABC News from writing an adulatory article about just such a person, the Montana Moonbat herself, Democrat Senate candidate Amanda Curtis. Here is Siegel gushing over her in a way that you just know...

Montana State Senator Amanda Curtis (D-76 Dist.) is running for U.S. Senate and will no doubt be trying to run away from her past statements mocking guns, Christianity, the Bible, and the family. She just stepped into the race in place of John Walsh, the Democrat candidate who had to step down amid a plagiarism scandal.

Curtis last summer attended a Mayors Against Illegal Guns rally, which aimed to pressure then-Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to support expanded background checks. Curtis's brother killed himself playing Russian roulette when he was 16. "If Montana has 2.5 times the suicide rate of states with comprehensive background checks, maybe we should try that out,” she told the Montana Standard at the time. A year later, the Montana Standard wrote an article mentioning that newly christened candidate Curtis had attended the rally. She told them, “I haven’t said anything that average Montanans wouldn’t agree with. I have simply stated that guns...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is simply living in an alternate universe. While yelling into the clouds over the Koch Brothers’ evil plot to destroy America, he said today that Democrats “are doing really well in Montana.” And is optimistic that they'll maintain control of the Senate (via the Hill): Reid predicted Democrats would lose a seat in South Dakota, but was optimistic about Montana despite Sen. John Walsh's (D-Mt.) recent decision to drop out of the race after a plagiarism scandal. We are doing really well in Montana," Reid told reporters on Monday. … If the election were held today, we'd...

What does it say about the Montana Democrat Party that they nominated a flat out moonbat to be their Senate nominee? Perhaps they knew that since they were going to lose that seat anyways, they would entertain us with a laughable candidate. Just by reading the Associated Press description of the new Senate nominee, Amanda Curtis, hastily chosen in the wake of the John Walsh plagiarism scandal, you would have no idea that she has issued statements that are both bizarre and offensive. According to AP she is a fresh face with "blue-collar roots." However, a video of Amanda Curtis...