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…
Do we need amendment to protect our liberty?
Just when you think there is no possible solution to the mess facing our country, you discover that the solution has been around for more than half a century.
One day, the handwriting won't be on the wall
I am a dinosaur. I know this because I not only receive the AARP Bulletin every month; I find much of it pretty interesting.
Liberals, conservatives and the Great Divide
When I first contemplated writing this column, I thought it would be interesting to show how moving from the East Coast to Montana and then living here for nearly 30 years had changed me from a big-city liberal to …
The more government we have, the less freedom we keep
Last week, I addressed the conundrum of “liberal Republicans” and the virtual absence of “conservative Democrats.”
A father's influence is far-reaching
It occurred to me at 4 a.m. the other morning (I do a lot of early-morning tossing and turning as I think of ideas for this space) that it took a lot of different fathers to raise our two daughters.
Do political parties matter - or not?
I get confused about partisanship. Apparently sometimes its good and sometimes it’s bad. I may be wrong, but I think it is good when the Democrats are the party in power, and bad when the Democrats don’t have enoug…
So just who was 'smearing' whom?
What if Barack Obama gave a “party,” and nobody came?
Fifty shades of white: My quest for a tan
A New Jersey mother with not much common sense in her bronzed noggin recently made headlines when she was accused of putting her 5-year-old daughter in a tanning bed. If you watch TV at all you’ve seen the “Tan Mom…
Freedom to choose? That all depends...
I was contemplating the joyous simplicity of writing a column about Mayor Bloomberg’s delightfully dim-witted plan to ban big Cokes in the Big Apple when something far more troubling occurred that made me rethink m…
Angry at coal? Then turn off your lights
The willingness of Americans to be persuaded to do things against their own interests seems to have no limits, which must give great encouragement to our enemies.
Will anyone in politics take the high road?
My introduction to politics came in 1968 when I was in the seventh grade. More specifically, politics showed up on my radar screen during a road trip with my family to Port Wing, Wis., to visit my grandmother that…
Compromising positions - and more politics as usual
More and more lately, we see establishment Republicans naively, innocently — perhaps foolishly? — lamenting the change in politics that has sent Dick Lugar and other longtime politicians to the sidelines.
Two women who mean the world to me
It was 10 years ago this coming November that my mother made her last visit to Montana, when she came to Kalispell to stay with me and my two children on Thanksgiving.
Call 911: Your country is being mugged
When did “we the people” become “we the bystanders”?
A parable for our times
If you want to know how screwed up this country is, consider the parable of the two singers.