Montana

Wild West Woes: WashPost Whines for Wyoming Woman Who Drove 400 Miles for an Abortion
By Tim Graham | May 8, 2015 | 11:34 AM EDT

To liberal media outlets, the saddest thing about abortion is how women seeking to terminate their baby may have to drive more than 20 minutes to a clinic. The Washington Post on Thursday offered a 2,390-word opus on a woman named Emily [last name sympathetically withheld] who procured an abortion in Missoula, Montana, driving 407 miles from Wyoming.

The headline was “The long drive to end a pregnancy.” The story took up two entire inside pages with a page of scenic color pictures along the drive, but no people in them. Post writer Monica Hesse lectured in large letters on the front of the Style section about the “geography of abortion” being too taxing in red states:

Los Angeles Times Helps Democrats With 'Gutter' Tactic in Montana
By Melissa Mullins | November 5, 2014 | 7:42 AM EST

Ryan Zinke is the new Republican congressman for the state of Montaha. Darren Ehrlick, editor of the Billings Gazette, recently published an op-ed discussing the campaign between Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, and John Lewis, a former legislative aide to Democrat Max Baucus, and the leaking of an off-the-cuff comment from the Lewis camp.

Networks Avoid Scandal-Plagued Democratic Senator Dropping Election Bid
By Scott Whitlock | August 8, 2014 | 11:45 AM EDT

Despite a combined eight available hours of programming on Friday, all three network morning shows avoided the news that a scandal-plagued Democratic senator from Montana dropped a reelection bid. This move leaves the seat as a likely Republican takeover in the 2014 midterms. But viewers wouldn't know that on ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today and CBS This Morning.  

John Walsh left the race on Thursday, two weeks after the New York Times reported that the Democrat plagiarized extensive sections of his master's degree from the Army War College. With the networks avoiding the story, it was left to CNN's New Day to offer a brief amount of coverage. John King wondered if the seat will "most likely" go to the GOP. Maggie Haberman of Politico retorted, "Oh, yeah...I mean, most Democrats that I talked to believe Montana is not winnable anymore." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Daily Beast Contributor Laments 'Abortion Desert' in Mountain West
By Ken Shepherd | April 14, 2014 | 11:50 AM EDT

Taking a page from liberal activists concerned with "food deserts" in America's inner cities, it seems abortion rights absolutists are taking a rhetorical test drive with the arid metaphor for areas lacking many abortion clinics.

"There is a nearly 1,200-mile-wide desert of abortion providers stretching from the western boarder of Idaho to the eastern boarders of North and South Dakota," the Daily Beast's Robin Marty whines in her April 14 story, "America's Abortion-Free Zone Grows," adding that:

Chris Matthews: Montana's Sen. Tester Just 'Regular Guy,' Not Liberal; ADA, ACU, NARAL Scores Show Otherwise
By Ken Shepherd | April 18, 2012 | 6:35 PM EDT

Apparently MSNBC's Chris Matthews judges the political ideology of elected officials by inconsequential cosmetic matters such as their style of clothing or haircut. During a segment handicapping the tough reelection campaigns of a handful of Senate Democrats, the Hardball host described Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) as, "another guy who's got a crew cut, looks like a regular guy... [who] works on his tractor on weekends." Tester is "no Northeastern liberal, that's for sure," Matthews remarked to the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato.

Well, he certainly is no Northeasterner, but Tester most certainly is a liberal, judging by his low rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU), his high marks from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, and his 100 percent rating by the abortion-on-demand lobby NARAL Pro-Choice America. [MP3 audio available here]

WaPo Hypes Planned Parenthood As Rural Health Care Provider
By Ken Shepherd | April 19, 2011 | 12:12 PM EDT

Last week I noted how the Washington Post hyped Planned Parenthood as a provider of community health services in the District of Columbia although there were plenty of other full-service free or low-cost health clinics in the District run by other non-profit groups.

Today the Post is at it again, presenting Planned Parenthood as a crucial provider of health services in rural states like Montana.

But yet again, a quick Internet search shows Planned Parenthood isn't the only game in Big Sky Country when it comes to health clinics for the poor.

Unreported: Montana Governor's 'Senior Counsel' Not Licensed to Practice Law in State! (Dem, of Course)
By Warner Todd Huston | September 2, 2008 | 3:17 AM EDT

There is an ethics squabble going on in Montana perpetrated by the senior counsel to the Democrat Governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer. It has been revealed that the Governor's "senior counsel," a man named Eric Stern, has been caught trying to "back-door" the judge in a case in which he is involved on behalf of Governor Schweitzer. The ethics violation is bad enough, but it has also been discovered that, even though he is claimed to be an attorney and the Governor's senior counsel, Eric Stern, is not licensed to practice law in the state of Montana. This seems to say that Eric Stern is practicing law without a license, doesn’t it? Strangely, the media have not bothered to report this most important fact.

According to reports, Eric Stern "a senior official in the governor's administration" improperly contacted the commissioner of political practices "outside of official proceedings in an ongoing ethics case." In effect, Stern is accused of trying to "back-door" the judge by discussing the case outside of official proceedings, an extremely blatant ethics violation.

ABC Story Ignores Reason That Canadian Mother Fled Country to Give Birth
By Scott Whitlock | August 22, 2007 | 5:45 PM EDT

On Wednesday’s "Good Morning America," anchor Chris Cuomo completely glossed over the health care implications of a Canadian mother giving birth to quadruplets in America and not her home country. According to Cuomo, Karen Jepp and her husband, the new parents of identical quadruplets, had to be flown 300 miles from Calgary to Montana on August 16, because "every neo-natal unit in their country was too crowded to handle four preemie births."

Apparently, it didn’t occur to Mr. Cuomo to wonder why all the hospitals in Canada, a nation with universal health care, were full. During a subsequent interview with Jepp and her husband J.P., the co-host continued with this unquestioning explanation. He elaborated, "...Towards the very end, it gets even more complicated....You know, they're not ready for them at the hospital. Your doctors have to make calls. You have to fly 300 miles to have [the children]." Considering that back in June, "Good Morning America" co-anchor Diane Sawyer announced "a commitment to take a hard look at the health insurance industry," it seems odd that unusual circumstances, which forced a very pregnant mother to fly to another country and give birth, would be of such little interest to Mr. Cuomo.

Montana Paper Documents Failures of Socialized Medicine on Indian Reservations
By Ken Shepherd | July 23, 2007 | 5:32 PM EDT

Something tells me Karen Ogden doesn't have a future in health care reporting in any large mainstream media publication or network. In the July 23 edition of her paper, the Great Falls Tribune editor took a sobering look at painkiller addictions and the black market for the narcotics on American Indian reservations in Montana. "Free" socialized medicine and the long wait times for surgery were partly to blame, she found. :

A perfect storm of factors is feeding the pill problem: grinding poverty coupled with handsome prices for contraband pills (a methadone tablet sells for up to $20 on the Blackfeet Reservation), a long history of addiction in American Indian communities and the fact there is no charge for patient visits or prescriptions at IHS clinics.

Some allege that crushing workloads for IHS doctors and political pressure on physicians from tribal officials and relatives — a function of life in close-knit reservation communities — also are to blame.

Another culprit, they say, is a budget crisis within the IHS that is forcing patients nationwide to wait months and often years for hip replacements, knee repairs and other badly needed surgeries.

N.Y. Times Hails Montana's Daily-Kos Democrat As A 'Prairie Pragmatist'
By Tim Graham | November 14, 2006 | 8:05 AM EST

Now that the Democrats hold the majority in the Senate, the New York Times is painting the new Senators firmly into the political middle. Reporter Timothy Egan profiled Sen.-Elect Jon Tester, one of the hard-left Daily Kos Democrats, in a story headlined "Fresh Off the Farm in Montana, a Senator-to-Be." Egan began his ode to the liberal man with a crew-cut: "When he joins the United States Senate in January, big Jon Tester — who is just under 300 pounds in his boots — will most likely be the only person in the world’s most exclusive club who knows how to butcher a cow or grease a combine." You have to read quite a way into the article to see that this good old boy is raising "organic lentils, barley, peas, and gluten-free grain" on his farm. No boutique liberal there, eh?

Egan insisted "the senator-elect from Montana truly is your grandfather’s Democrat — a pro-gun, anti-big-business prairie pragmatist whose life is defined by the treeless patch of hard Montana dirt that has been in the family since 1916." That definition would work, if your grandfather opposed wiretapping enemy communications in World War 2 or would have opposed a Patriot Act to help fight the Nazis.

Tom Brokaw Touted Daily-Kos Democrat Over Montana Sen. Burns on NBC
By Tim Graham | October 13, 2006 | 12:06 PM EDT

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw returned to the Nightly News set on Thursday night to forecast big trouble in Big Sky country for Montana’s Republican Senator, Conrad Burns: "This campaign sums up a lot of the Republican problems nationwide." Brokaw theorized that the country’s just tired of less-than-honest GOP majority rule: "For Burns and other GOP candidates across the country, their toughest opponent may be their own party, after six years of White House and Congressional rule.&q

Omission Watch: Media Ignore Menendez Probe, Even As He Poses In Courtroom
By Tim Graham | September 18, 2006 | 8:56 AM EDT

While the national media begin to revisit the "corruption" issue -- largely as a Republican problem, as you can see from Monday's front page Washington Post story on GOP Sen. Conrad Burns -- it's important to remember where Democrats could have problems. Take appointed Sen.  Bob Menendez, who's now the subject of a federal investigation for accepting $3,000-a-month rent from a group he's also sought to enrich with federal funding.