Columns
Explore Daily Inter Lake Columns featuring local sports commentary, outdoor adventure stories, lifestyle tips, and community perspectives from Northwest Montana.
Giving Together: Turning Tax Season into Opportunities for Students
On a spring morning in Kalispell, a group of elementary students huddle around a table, testing a small robot they…
The Restoration Amendment: Putting the genie of big government back in the bottle
A recent letter to the editor got me thinking about the origins of our great country, and how far astray we have gone from the principles enshrined in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of th…
FDR, Obama and the need for opposition
Some time ago, a reader presented me with a yellowed newspaper clipping from 1936, which seems to grow more relevant every day.
Small-town life detailed in N.D. columns
Every year state press associations throughout the country dole out their annual newspaper awards for the best feature stories, breaking news, business coverage — you name it, there’s a category for it.
Power vs. liberty: A lovers' quarrel
The much talked-about schism in the Republican Party is better defined as a schism between the lovers of liberty and the lovers of power.
The Hostess Shuffle: Feds put the 'dough' in this doughnut
“The devil,” wrote Shakespeare, “hath power to assume a pleasing shape.”
One good reason not to trust Fox News
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and the same thing goes for Al Gore and Rupert Murdoch, right?
Two killers: Which received justice?
They say that justice delayed is justice denied. If that is the case, then surely the families of Harvey Mad Man and Thomas Running Rabbit can rightly complain that there is no justice in Montana.
Youthful puppy love dies hard
Tucked into the boxes of my childhood stuff I recently sorted through in Minnesota were a couple of big envelopes of Valentine’s Day cards from grade school, dozens of those little mass-produced cards with hokey se…
A declaration of sanity: Don't give up rights without a fight
What part of “self-evident” don’t Americans understand?
Cloward and Piven, immigration reform & 'nothing left to lose'
With apologies to Kris Kristofferson, “immigration reform” is just another phrase for “nothing left to lose,” and as Janis Joplin sang in her version of “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it…
School days: Merely a legend in my own mind?
Here’s what I realized after poring through five boxes of my old school papers last week in Minnesota: My perception of my childhood doesn’t jive with what those papers revealed.
Inaugural auguring: Clues from 2009 speech
President Obama’s second inaugural address is now history, and unlike various posthaste pundits, I will reserve to history the right to judge it.
Empire and resistance: Lessons from history
What do these all have in common: The Ottoman Empire, the Nazi Empire, the Soviet Empire and the New Islamic Caliphate?
Recalling a ride on the 'freedom' train of youth
One of the topics that came up more than once at the all-school reunion I attended in Minnesota last summer was how fortunate we were to have grown up in an era when kids, for the most part, were left to their own …
The two Als and a national shame
If you needed more evidence that the United States is in full self-destruct mode, you got it last week when it was announced that former Vice President Al Gore had sold his failed cable talk network Current TV to A…