It’s Hump Day, and here are the topics for today’s column:

• Montana Ballot Initiatives
• Sheehy Misses Votes
• AG Pam Bondi & Senate Judiciary
• Safest States in America
• One More Thing

MONTANA BALLOT INITIATIVES: 

There are at least two stories from the Montana media about a group called “Montanans Decide,” which claims that Montana’s citizen initiative process is under attack. 

I think they are correct.

According to a report from MTN News, the Montana Constitution already guarantees the public the right to pass laws and constitutional amendments through ballot issues. However, some advocates say, in recent years, the state Legislature has passed laws making it more complicated to exercise that right.

“They’ve implemented exorbitant fees in order to file an initiative, which I think is meant to deter the average Montanan from participating in the process,” said SK Rossi, a spokesperson for Montanans Decide. “They’ve layered in a lot of bureaucracy and administrative rigamarole meant to make it harder for signature gatherers to gather signatures, and generally kind of gum up the works.”

Check out the report from MTN News HERE. The Daily Montanan covers the story HERE.

You can visit the Montanans Decide website HERE. 

SHEEHY MISSES VOTES:

I see that Montana’s junior U.S. Senator, Tim Sheehy, missed two votes on October 7. 

One vote was #547. On the Nomination (Confirmation: En bloc Nominations Provided for Under the Provisions of S. Res. 412 ). (Source) 

According to several reports, including a report from The Hill:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday confirmed a second bloc of President Trump’s nominees, cementing 107 into place after changing the rules last month to grease the skids and overcome Democratic gridlock.

Back in April, I sent a politely worded email via Sheehy’s official website asking why he missed two votes. He never answered me. 

I think elected officials should send a press release to the media announcing why they missed a vote and how they would have voted. They are paid about $174,000 per year to be in Washington, D.C., and vote.  

AG PAM BONDI & SENATE JUDICIARY: 

I have witnessed several U.S. Senate hearings and actually sat in on a few in my life. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi testifying, may make for a good skit on Saturday Night Live, but in all honesty, the decorum during these hearings (from both sides) has gone into the shitter. The loss of decorum did not start yesterday, but has been circling the drain for several years. 

It seems that when Senators know there is a lot of public interest in a hearing, they do their best acting – and I mean Oscar nomination-worthy acting!  

As C-SPAN so eloquently reports:

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on oversight of the Justice Department. She shared her concerns about law enforcement not being paid due to the federal government shutdown and fielded questions on numerous topics, including reports of the Justice Department under President Biden subpoenaing phone records of Republican senators, the current indictment of former FBI Director James Comey by her Justice Department, the legality of deploying the National Guard to American cities, the Epstein files, Border Czar Tom Homan, and political speech, among other topics. 

Bondi did field questions from fellow Republicans, but mostly fired back with non-responses or attacks when the questions were asked by Democrats. I’m sure President Donald Trump is proud of his AG!

If you have time, catch the video of the hearing HERE. The Associated Press covered the hearing HERE. 

SAFEST STATES IN AMERICA: 

I thought it was interesting to read WalletHub’s report of the Safest States in America for 2025. 

The top five safest states are:

• Vermont
• Massachusetts
• New Hampshire
• Maine
• Utah

It seems four of the top five are blue states. By the way, Montana is ranked #39. 

The bottom five states are:

• Arkansas
• Florida
• Texas
• Mississippi
• Louisiana 

The bottom five are all red states. 

The methodology used according to WalletHub:

In order to determine the safest states in which to live, WalletHub compared the 50 states across five key dimensions: 1) Personal & Residential Safety, 2) Financial Safety, 3) Road Safety, 4) Workplace Safety, and 5) Emergency Preparedness.

We evaluated those dimensions using 52 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest level of safety.

We then determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.

Check out the full report from WalletHub HERE. 

ONE MORE THING:

Never again should anyone be amazed at how Jim Jones got his followers to drink the poison.

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