Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg, seen here outside his watery lair

Every time I start emitting opinions re: Fred Van Valkenburg around people who work with sexual assault victims, they say he’s doing a good job. It’s weird, because the Department of Justice is investigating his office, and our county attorney is acting for all the world like a man with something to hide. The MCPD and the University of Montana cooperated with DOJ and concluded their investigations months ago, but Justice versus Van Valkenburg drags on. This week in the Missoula Independent, I consider whether he might have a PR problem of his own making, like the reactive but basically gentle octopus. All he wants to do is eat crustaceans and small fish. All we want to do is understand his ways, but somehow we both wind up covered in ink. It’s a conundrum, is what it is, and you can read all about it instead of reading a proper blog post. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Montana

There is no Combat! blog today, because I have been covered in a metaphorical avalanche of deadlines and a more literal avalanche of snow. For the second time since Tuesday, Missoula has been struck with a blizzard. Also for the second time since Tuesday, Charter Communications has effed up their DNS servers, so only a third of the internet works at my house. That third does not include Gmail or Weather.com, so I am cut off from the outside world in all ways that could mean anything to me. To sum up: winter is stupid, Charter is very stupid, and everything sucks. I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox, and they were okay, I guess.

My internet stopped working sometime during the night, presumably because Charter spent too much on mailing me digital phone offers every three days and ran out of money for electricity. Also during the night, Missoula got about six inches of snow on top of the eight we already had, so I am snowed in. Lacking both home Internet and the means to escape said home, I live as a nineteenth-century flaneur, painstakingly tapping out this record of my consciousness on my cell phone. Do you hear me, Charter? I already have a phone, and also your service guy is late. Maybe we’ll be back tomorrow with actual blog, or maybe we’ll die for lack of cat videos. We will certainly miss a valuable work day, to say nothing of our workout regimen. Pity me for the shut-in I am.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipMOZvONlM

Those of you who live in Montana have probably seen this ad one million times, give or take brief periods of internet outage. Produced by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, it attacks John Walsh, the lieutenant governor of Montana recently appointed to fill the senate seat vacated by Max Baucus. Montana’s next regular election for US Senate is in November, and the race is hotly contested. Walsh is by no means a flawless candidate; there’s plenty in his background to attack, but this ad pins its hopes on connecting him to Obama. That damned Obama! Merely saying his name is enough to send me into paroxysms, or it would be if I were an NRSC ad hack working on tight deadline. As it is, I am not shocked by Walsh’s connection to the leaders of his party, and I would like my negative politics to be a little sharper. You can read about in my latest column for the Missoula Independent. Or you can go pound sand. Either way, we’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.