Free Republic

.Gov. Brian Schweitzer, talking Friday to a national news website, said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney might shy from talking about his family’s Mexican roots because they came from a “polygamy commune” in Mexico. Schweitzer made the remark in an interview with The Daily Beast, a news and opinion website, after being asked whether Montana might be a swing state during this year’s 2012 election. According to The Daily Beast, Schweitzer said Montana likely would vote for Romney, but that Romney, a Mormon, might have trouble nationally because his father, George Romney, was “born on a polygamy commune in Mexico.”...

A longtime state Commerce Department official says the Schweitzer administration forced him to quit Friday because he responded to a Republican senator's inquiry about why $3.5 million in local government grants were being stalled. David Cole, administrator of the department's Community Development Division until Friday, said Wednesday he had planned to retire March 31 to end a 37-year state government career. Last Friday was going to be his last day in the office anyway, because he planned to use his remaining vacation and compensatory time before month's end. Instead, Cole said, he was ordered to pen a hasty, handwritten resignation...

Although creation-based organizations have reported for over a decade on the technical scientific journal articles published about soft tissue found inside dinosaur remains, mainstream media outlets have largely been silent on the subject. But a recent segment that aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes finally broke the news to a broader audience. The soft tissue issue may be gaining more traction, and even “may be changing the whole dino ballgame,” according to correspondent Lesley Stahl.[1] The program is currently viewable online at the CBS website. In a field test demonstration to determine whether a dinosaur fossil was real bone, and not...

Montana Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer ribbed Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin Friday for announcing at the last minute that she will not be attending a Sunday discussion of energy policy that the two governors were scheduled to lead at this weekend's meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA) in Washington. "I don't know where she's going to be. You'll be stuck with me," Schweitzer told ABC News. "There will be no glamour, certainly no snappy dressing. I brought my best two pairs of jeans. There's a little bit of a horse shit stain by the knee. But I've been washing...

Governors’ Fight Over Stimulus May Define G.O.P. By ROBERT PEAR and J. DAVID GOODMAN Published: February 22, 2009 WASHINGTON — Republican governors split sharply over the weekend over how to respond to the economic crisis, a debate whose outcome will go a long way toward shaping how the national party redefines itself in the wake of its election defeats of recent years.While the $787 billion stimulus bill might help avert draconian budget cuts by deeply stressed states, Republican governors clashed over just how much of the stimulus money to accept. And governors of both parties said that they did not...

After his strange speech in Philadelphia, Gov. Brian Schweitzer may have just hand-delivered an issue, wrapped in red ribbon on a silver platter, to his Republican opponent and his critics. The Democratic governor has seemingly been coasting to an easy re-election victory over Republican Roy Brown ... Schweitzer's meteoric rise may have been slowed down a tad last week. That's when reports surfaced of his odd speech July 14 to a national trial lawyers' convention in Philadelphia in July. "And the advantage is, you know, when you've got a governor on your side, whoa!" Schweitzer says in the speech. "You...

Schweitzer 'joke' may have grain of truth By JENNIFER McKEE Gazette State Bureau UPDATE 3:30 p.m. : HELENA - Gov. Brian Schweitzer said this week he was "just joking" this summer when he suggested he tampered with the hotly-contested 2006 Senate election. However, at least one Big Horn County observer was escorted out of a Crow Indian polling place that election night, (snip) Schweitzer has been criticized this week for remarks he made to a lawyer’s group in Philadelphia this July. In the remarks, Schweitzer insinuates that he tampered with election to secure a victory for Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon...

Gov. Schweitzer boasted in a speech in Philadelphia in July that he tampered with the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Montana to help Democrat Jon Tester win. Bozeman Republican activist Tamara Hall found the speech on the Internet and filed a complaint accusing the governor of vote-tampering in the race in which Tester narrowly unseated Republican incumbent Conrad Burns. She submitted a citizen's complaint against the Democratic governor this week with U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer and two state officials, Attorney General Mike McGrath and Secretary of State Brad Johnson. Hall said Schweitzer boasted in the speech that "he designed a...

Obama in Billings Wednesday Presidential candidate Barack Obama will be in Billings next Wednesday on his way to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, state Democratic Party officials confirmed Thursday. The trip will mark Obama’s fifth trip to the state during the campaign this year, an unprecedented amount of attention for a state with less than a million people and only three electoral votes. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has not yet visited the state. Art Noonan, executive director of the Montana Democratic Party, said no details of Obama’s Montana visit are yet available. He said he didn’t know if...

HELENA - Despite having already raised more than $775,000 for his re-election campaign, Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer is now turning to Republicans for money. In a highly unusual move, Schweitzer is soliciting money for his 2008 re-election campaign from individuals who donated to Republicans running for governor in 2004. The solicitation tells exactly how much the recipient gave to a Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2004 and asks for an identical amount to be given to Schweitzer and Republican Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger's re-election campaign. "We've been reaching out to people," Schweitzer said in a phone interview. "We only received 51...

State Sen. Roy Brown, R-Billings, said Monday he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in 2008. He is the first GOP candidate to announce a challenge to Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who has announced a re-election bid next year. Brown will formally announce his candidacy on Thursday with a six-city fly-about and a 50-towns-in-10-days ground tour beginning Monday. Elected to the Montana Senate in 2006 after serving four, two-year terms in the Montana House, Brown has held several GOP legislative leadership posts. He said he was "compelled to run because state spending is completely out of control."...

HELENA - Gov. Brian Schweitzer ordered flags to fly at half-staff in Montana in memory of a soldier killed in Iraq. Flags should be lowered from Tuesday through sundown Thursday to honor Army Staff Sgt. Yance Gray of Ismay. Gray was killed Sept. 10 when the cargo truck he was riding in overturned in Baghdad. A member of the 82nd Airborne Division, Gray was one of the authors of a high-profile New York Times opinion piece critical of the progress being made in the war.

NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen suggested himself as a model for Democratic presidential nominees Monday, though disavowing any interest in a national position and declining to state a preference for any of his party’s presidential candidates. “If one of those presidential candidates who chose not to come here today can sell themselves in Tennessee, they can sell themselves in mainstream America,” Bredesen told the Democratic Leadership Council. None of the Democratic presidential candidates spoke at the DLC gathering, though they were invited. Still, presidential politics was a topic in speeches by former President Clinton, Bredesen and three other Democratic governors...

HELENA - The state's top campaign cop has dismissed a Republican Party complaint that said Gov. Brian Schweitzer accepted an illegal corporate contribution by attending political events at the Kentucky Derby this spring. Schweitzer, a Democrat, traveled to the Derby in Louisville, Ky., the weekend of May 5 at the expense of the Democratic Governors Association. Schweitzer is finance chairman for the association, a private organization that raises money and otherwise assists Democratic candidates running for governor in states across the nation. The Montana Republican Party alleged that association activities could help promote Schweitzer's re-election in 2008, and therefore corporate...

During its May special session, the Montana Legislature approved a one-time tax rebate of $400 for Montana homeowners proposed by Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Great. Everyone likes money. But unlike the famous Bush administration rebate of 2001, this rebate is not an automatic process, which raises the question: How do I get paid? The reason the process is not so simple is the manner in which Montana property taxes are collected. The law specifies that only primary residences in which the owner lived for at least seven months during 2006 are eligible for the rebate, and according to Montana Department of...

HELENA - Gov. Brian Schweitzer has raised slightly more than $600,000 for his 2008 re-election campaign and reported having about a record $500,000 left in the bank on June 30, a report filed Thursday showed.... As of June 30, Schweitzer's campaign showed an ending fund balance of $506,505, which his campaign claimed to be a record amount of cash on hand for a candidate for governor at this stage.

HELENA - The House Republican majority leader, Michael Lange, unleashed a profanity-laced tirade at Gov. Brian Schweitzer Wednesday, saying the Democratic governor "can go straight to hell." Lange, of Billings, exploded during a meeting of House Republicans Wednesday morning and repeatedly attacked Schweitzer, who was not present. The GOP leader called Schweitzer an "SOB on the second floor that thinks he's going to run this state like a dictator." He later apologized to fellow House members on the floor. Rep. Bill Wilson, D-Great Falls, then rose on a "point of personal privilege" to respond, saying he had never heard anything...

State Sen. Mike Cooney, a well-known name in Montana Democratic politics, recently accepted an unadvertised $72,000-a-year job in state government. Cooney said the job had nothing to do with political patronage and ... Kelly also brushed aside the suggestion that Cooney got the job because he's a prominent Democrat. Cooney, who served as secretary of state for 12 years ending in 2000, will begin work as head of the Department of Labor's Business Standards Division on July 10, said Keith Kelly, the state labor commissioner who heads the department. Kelly, a Democrat appointed by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, said he approached...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, May 27, 2006 – A delegation of U.S. governors arrived here yesterday to visit with servicemembers. Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt visits with servicemembers serving here in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom May 26. Blunt and fellow governors Brian Schweitzer, of Montana, and Mitt Romney, of Massachusetts, shared lunch with servicemembers to check on the welfare of their constituents. Photo by Staff Sgt. Robert R. Ramon, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Govs. Brian Schweitzer, of Montana; Matt Blunt, of Missouri; and Mitt Romney, of Massachusetts, shared lunch with servicemembers to check on their constituents...

MISSOULA - The national popularity of Gov. Brian Schweitzer and the upsurge of Democrats in office in Montana may give the state a serious political role in the next presidential election, Montana Democratic Party Chairman Dennis McDonald said Thursday in Missoula. "The whole country is watching what's going on here in Montana," he told an audience brought together by the Missoula Organization of Realtors. "We've become a blue state." People watched with "fascination and wonderment" as Democrats won back the governor's office - for the first time since 1988 - and control of the state Senate last fall. "Brian's obviously...