The Whitehall Ledger - Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana

Dear Editor, What is a Living Constitution? Since I have gotten political (my youngest daughter’s fault), I have heard from time to time references to the Constitution as a living document. I have always thought of the Constitution as the law of th...

Dear Editor, One of the jobs the House side of Congress has is to plan a budget for the government to operate the following year. They are required to have this budget presented for a vote by the end of September, thirty days before the end of the...

Dear Editor, Well now, this is different. I know that my letters are usually long, but this is in response to the letter last week wondering whether or not big corporations were going to get any more tax breaks when the republicans take charge of the...

Dear Editor, As Vladimir Lenin said: control education, control the future. Well, it was something to that effect. Other nations understand this and use it to some extent in the United States. But no one has influenced education in the U.S. as China...

Dear Editor, A new alphabet soup set of initials has been floating around recently, ESG (Environment, Social, Governance). Simply put, this is the cooperation of the United Nations, countries, and corporations to change the world. Obviously, it is...

Dear Editor, The Dangers of Halloween: Halloween. Boy, oh boy. What great memories. As a child of the 60s (the 1960s) my brother Bob and I spent the days before Halloween planning what to be. Of course, I had been a Cowboy, Ghost, Soldier, and Cop....

Dear Editor, I read with interest and sadness the Letter to the Editor (LTE) in the September 28th issue of the Whitehall Ledger from John Driscoll of Helena. It started off so well. He wrote about how all political parties and most media are about...

Dear Editor, Commissioner Bob Mullen is a wealth of information when it comes to mental health. He worked for the State for 15 years at the Addiction and Mental Health Department. He has helped to bring mental health training to county employees. I...

Coming from a family which has been involved in every war from World War 1 to Vietnam, holidays honoring our military and civilian personnel during wartime past and present have always had a special place in my mind and heart. But none more than...

Dear Editor For the last two years, I have been following our County Commissioner (Leonard Wortman) around, getting an idea of how the system works and what is being done to Improve our little heaven in the United States. In doing this, I had the...

Dear Editor, For years we have watched as our government becomes less involved with our southern border. Now it is to the point where the border is wide open. People are coming into this country and we have no idea where they are from, what they...

Dear Editor, In the Whitehall Ledger on 3/23/22, there was an opinion piece by Jim Smith of the Daily Montanan pointing out Congressman Rosendale’s no votes. When Matt ran for office, one of the platforms he ran on was costs. When it comes to savin...

Dear Editor, THE STICK AND THE CARROT: Dishonesty in politics is a given. Those running for office have always whispered sweet nothings into our ears (the carrot). Promises that once in office, they either can’t convert or they just blow them off...

No sex, lots of lies and plenty of video tape... “The judge. The jury. The defendant. It’s white supremacy in action. This system isn’t built to hold white supremacists accountable. It’s why Black and brown folks are brutalized and put in...

Dear Editor, In last week’s paper, I read with sadness a letter to the editor comparing election laws to Jim Crowe laws. I say sadness because this person has absolutely no idea what the Jim Crowe laws were. She was just parroting a political...

Dear Editor, Years ago, there was a battle about water meters, I remember it like it was yesterday. It helped to push me into the world of politics (damn it!) Lots of people were upset because water meters were being installed and they didn’t have...

I read with interest last week’s letter to the Editor about the Senate and House bills that will endanger public lands. I have been watching what goes on in Helena and for the life of me, I didn’t remember any of those bills on the agenda. So, I...

By now I am sure that anyone who watches the news has seen the spat about the revamping of Georgia’s voting laws. I listened as the President stood at the podium and made many claims about the bill – calling it Jim Crow on steroids. That is...

Picture yourself standing on a scenic overlook, overlooking the Rio Grande at four in the morning in the Texas town of Roma. Next to you is a Counterterrorism Specialist. Across the river is the town of Miguel Aleman, Mexico and you can hear the...

For a few years I have watched our National Debt as it soared at a frightening rate, much like watching a teenager with a credit card. A basic description of our nation’s debt is what money our government has borrowed from sources, such as private...

Lawmakers in Washington are back at it again. As we speak, they’re debating whether they should send bailout money to the states. This is not the best path forward. Why? Because many states have mismanaged their budgets for years (well before this...