Fires rage about us, and Missoula has gone from mostly orange to that shade of blue that comes out of your car after Jiffy Lube sells you on the injector cleaner. There will be no Combat! blog today, because I did other stuff and am inexplicably sleepy. Everybody is. The Missoula valley is like the garage of a beeper salesman, filling with smoke as it lulls us into a restful end to our working days. Pray for wind, if you and God are still speaking to each other, and meet me back here Monday.

 

 

One of the few weathers to which my midwestern boyhood did not accustom me was “smoky.” Missoula is one big, smelly lighting effect right now, as smoke from any number of wildfires accumulates in our mountain valley. It’s red out. It itches. Probably a cold front will come through tonight and blow it all away, but maybe these are the end times. During the second reconciliation, Gozer appeared in the form of a giant slor. This year, he’s the Montana Republican Party, and he’s pissed.

As part of its ongoing lawsuit to overturn the state law allowing any registered voter to vote in either party’s primary, the Montana GOP has filed a motion to dismiss Deputy Attorney General Jon Bennion. Bennion, a Republican, serves under Attorney General Tim Fox (R), whom he joined after successful tenures with the Chamber of Commerce and the campaign of former Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R–MT). As it was throughout time, the Republican Party of Montana is again an ouroboros, forever swallowing its own tail.

This whole thing started with a close primary for state Senate in neighboring Ravalli County, where moderate Pat Connell narrowly defeated the more conservative Scott Boulanger. The county Republican central committee subsequently declined to fund Connell’s candidacy in the general, which he won anyway, see footnote. But along the way, Boulanger complained Democrats had crossed over to vote for the moderate Republican in the primary.

Earlier this month, Connell was subpoenaed in the lawsuit. The second sign appears! And lo: the matter of his questioning was a campaign letter from former state senator Jim Shockley (R), who sent a targeted mailing to Ravalli County voters likely to go to the polls to vote against embattled treasurer Valerie Stamey. Boulanger supported Stamey’s appointment.

I assume you are rending your garments and running around in a circle right now, shouting hosannahs. Valerie Stamey was the greatest story Montana politics ever told. I thought it ended when she fled the state. Now, somehow, she returns as the beginning of this story. The seventh seal is open. The ouroboros is at hand.

You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. Like a novel about a made-up baseball team, Montana politics speaks to universal themes. Get on board while it’s a real ur-text.

Those of you who do not live in Missoula for some reason might be unaware of the windstorm that blew through Monday night, which knocked down the big cottonwood outside by window, which in turn decapitated the utility poll in my front yard and shattered across the bridge, blocking Front Street. It was exciting.

Last night around 10:30pm, a work crew began chainsawing apart the pieces of the cottonwood and throwing them in a wood chipper. This process lasted until approximately 3am. I know the city has been scrambling to address the damage from the storm, but chainsaws and wood chippers—to say nothing of the cherry picker that beeped every time it moved up, down, or backwards—are daylight tools.

It was just another instance of big government colluding with big wood chipper to infringe on our constitutionally-guaranteed right to free sleep. I’m not sure what the noise ordinances are in times of emergency or whether the city was allowed to cut my perfectly functional—albeit hanging approximately six feet above the street—internet line, but I’m pretty sure the constitution settles all of that. What I need is an armed patriot to settle this question of constitutional law for me.

Unfortunately, they’re all in Lincoln. The Oath Keepers—last seen standing up to an obstreperous federal government on behalf of rancher Cliven Bundy—have decided to patrol a mining dispute between the Department of the Interior and George Kornec. Interior says Kornec needed a permit to build a garage on his claim. Kornec says his claim predates the 1955 law that requires such permits and is bound only by the General Mining Act of 1872. The Oath Keepers, who are neither geologists nor attorneys, have come out in force to make sure nothing illegal happens.

I’m not sure standing around with guns is going to help resolve this mining dispute. You can read about my skepticism, thinly disguised as enthusiasm, in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. Read it slowly, because I am flying to Toronto this afternoon and won’t be back until Monday. And Sunday is my birthday! I am hideously old, as evidenced by my anger at loud sounds in the night.

Update: The Oath Keepers have declared their mission accomplished in Lincoln, since the Forest Service has not used force to knock down Kornec’s garage but instead taken the matter to court. Sheriff Leo Dutton says there was no threat of force to being with. But who are you going to believe—a sheriff, or a posse of volunteers with guns?

This century, Montana’s Representatives-at-large have included Denny Rehberg—who denies he was drunk when he fell off a horse in Kazakhstan—and convicted goblin Steve Daines. Rep. Ryan Zinke has a tricky act to follow. Montana’s sole delegate to the House must join a coalition if he hopes to effectively represent our interests, but he also risks being swamped by national politics. Probably wisely, even if disappointingly, he seems to have taken up with the tea party caucus. But at least one of the bills he has co-sponsored with that bloc seems like a misstep.

[Four-hour break to vomit and sleep]

Oh, hey, is Thursday over now? It feels kind of over. I do not like using this blog to write about events of my personal life, but I sure have been throwing up a lot lately. I’m going to call expedience the better part of expression here and just link to today’s column in the Missoula Independent, which argues Zinke’s sponsorship of the Stop Birth Tourism Act is a poor political calculation. We’ll be back tomorrow with a one-way digestive tract and Friday links.