"What we are practicing here is not voodoo. I think our justice system will see that there’s enough science to support this, that they will understand that this is appropriate care."

Said nurse practitioner Katherine Mistretta, one of the plaintiffs, quoted in "Montana’s Ban on Transition Care for Minors Is Blocked" (NYT)("A state judge in Montana on Wednesday temporarily blocked a law that would have banned transition care for children under 18 starting on Sunday, while a lawsuit filed by patients and medical professionals proceeds").

A state judge who previously served in the legislature as a Democrat rules against the Democrat who was ousted from the legislature by Republicans.

I'm reading "Judge Rejects Montana Lawmaker’s Effort to Return to House Floor" (NYT).

The lawmaker, Representative Zooey Zephyr, was ousted... after making impassioned comments against a ban on hormone treatments and surgical care for transgender minors....

Ms. Zephyr, a Democrat from Missoula who is transgender, filed the lawsuit on Monday.... “I’m determined to defend the right of the people to have their voices heard,” she posted on Twitter....

Judge Mike Menahan, who served in the House as a Democrat before being elected to the state’s First District Court a decade ago, said... he did not have the authority to intervene in the legislative dispute.

It's somewhat encouraging to see a judge decide against a political figure from the party he is/was associated with, but — to resist overpraise — this was probably an easy case.

"Even as her Republican peers sought to isolate her in the wake of her impassioned comments against a proposed ban on what doctors call gender-affirming medical care for children..."

"... [Zooey] Zephyr said she would not remain idle. She spent much of the day on the bench, working with headphones in her ears to block the sound of chattering lobbyists, the hiss of a milk foamer and the voices of lawmakers ordering coffee. 'I am here working on behalf of my constituents as best I can given the undemocratic circumstances,' Ms. Zephyr said on Twitter."

From "A Transgender Lawmaker Is Exiled as Montana G.O.P. Flexes New Power/Barred by Republican lawmakers from participating in the legislative session on the House floor, Representative Zooey Zephyr reported for work on a hallway bench" (NYT). 

"The object flew over Alaska's Aleutian Islands and through Canada before appearing over the city of Billings in Montana on Wednesday..."

"... US officials said. Montana is home to some of the US's nuclear missile silos. The US decided not to shoot down the balloon because of the danger posed by falling debris, and the limited use of any intelligence the device could gather, the US defence official said."

From "Alleged spy balloon over US is weather device - China" (BBC).

"My nephew used to play a video game in which he gave digital haircuts to bears. That is less absurd than..."

"... founding two new separate 'blue' and 'red' countries. The party leanings of states can be fluid. Colorado, for instance — it’s almost as if a secret cabal of tech millionaires shoveled a mountain of cash into turning a Republican state into a Democratic one. The federal government owns almost 50 percent of the land out West, so how to divvy it up without antagonizing thrifty New Englanders? What would happen to swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania? Do they form a third Republic of Wishy-Washy? Somewhere around 40 percent of us do not live in the state where we were born.... How much of Florida’s economy is New Yorkers and Midwesterners waiting around to die?... Here in Montana, a state as deep red as a Flathead cherry, I’m a Democrat living in a blue county bigger than Delaware. Still, Republicans live among us and they look just like people. (Hi, Larry.) It’s hard to pick them out unless they step in front of the C-SPAN camera to fist-bump Ted Cruz. Mid-pandemic I stood in line for hamburgers between a snarling blonde who chewed me out for wearing a face mask and a high school classmate’s brother keen to talk about the Times linguistics newsletter writer John McWhorter. Both of my neighbors ordered French fries cooked in the same vat of oil. Where is the demarcation line in that scenario — the milkshake machine?"

Writes Sarah Vowell in "Civil War: I’m Against It!" (NYT).

Here are 8 TikToks to amuse you for a few minutes. Let me know what you like.

1. An odd roller coaster.

2. Can't you understand Gen-Z?

3. What do emo people do for a living?

4. Her mind is a vast chaotic wilderness.

5. Looks from the 1971 Sears catalog.

6. Noises that you can please choose not to make.

7. Cool geography facts about Montana.

8. How to feed the dog.

"A Kalispell woman allegedly called the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office to complain about being on the couch and her juice was in the kitchen...."

"A woman called to report she and her fiance were 'having a little dispute about helping each other.'... Three to four dirty mattresses were spotted on the side of a road in Martin City.... A man’s friend might not be so friendly after all when they allegedly pawned a TV he left at their house.... A man was allegedly on the side of a road in Columbia Falls flailing his arms, yelling at cars and acting like he was going to 'jump into traffic.'"

From the Law Roundup at the Daily Inter Lake.

Low-level disorder.

Recent yelling in Kalispell:

Someone wanted Kalispell Police Department to check on a man’s welfare after they saw him throwing his arms around, waving his shirt, and yelling. Officers checked on the man who was "just being his normal self."...

A man reportedly jumped out from between two recycling containers, scaring a woman and her son.... 

A bearded man with scruffy dark hair was standing in a duck pond, yelling and throwing rocks.... 

About five people were yelling at each other....

"A man in his 50s with red hair and a beard allegedly approached another man to ask him if he wanted to help him 'take people.'"

"The man called the Kalispell Police Department to report the redhead who didn’t give any other specifics. A very intoxicated man seen lying on the ground reportedly turned down a bartender’s offer to call him a cab after they closed up for the night. The man did not want help from law enforcement either.... A white car containing a dog had reportedly been parked near garbage cans for two days and someone claimed they didn’t see the dog let out once.... Someone asked officers to check on the welfare of a teenage hitchhiker they picked up on the bypass and dropped off at a bike path. They said he was on a skateboard and was trying to get to Lakeside. Officers made contact with the skateboarder who was OK."

 
I don't know. There doesn't seem to be much news this morning. I'm reading The Daily Interlake police report and feeling vaguely encouraged.

"Supreme Court says Montana program aiding private schools must be open to religious schools."

WaPo reports.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for a conservative majority in the 5 to 4 ruling, said the Montana Supreme Court was wrong to strike down the program because of a provision in the state constitution that forbids public funds from going to religious institutions. The U.S. Constitution’s protection of religious freedom prevails, he said.

“A state need not subsidize private education,” Roberts wrote. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

AND: Here's the text of the opinion. I'm going to read it and give you more detail. I've taken out a statement I had up for a few minutes, criticizing the WaPo headline in a way that I no longer think was right.

ADDED: The state legislature enacted a tax credit of up to $150 for donations to scholarship programs, which could fund tuition for kids attending private schools. The state Department of Revenue interpreted the statute — which referred to "qualified education providers" — to exclude religious schools. That seems to be in line with the state constitution's prohibition of financial aid to "any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination," but the Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution requires strict scrutiny of discrimination against religion.

Under Supreme Court precedent, there's no Establishment Clause problem in including religious schools. The aid is defined in a religion-neutral manner, and it's only the parents' choice that determines that the money goes to a religious school. The hard question is whether the state court could use the state's constitutional "no aid" provision to strike down what the legislature did. The state's separation of church and state is especially staunch — stronger than the federal Establishment Clause — but can that be the "compelling state interest" that justifies discrimination against religion? The majority's answer is no, because the Free Exercise Clause is federal law.

But the state court took the benefit of the program away from everyone. So doesn't that achieve nondiscrimination? The dissenters say it does, but the majority says the legislature chose this program, and the state court's first step was a discrimination against religion. There was a second step, depriving everyone of the program, but that step was founded on the discrimination the court thought the state constitution required.

"Don’t Judge Montana for a Single Body Slam."

A NYT op-ed by Sarah Vowell. I like Sarah Vowell, but this grated on me.

She's talking about all the diversity there is in Montana — "farmers; ranchers; miners; artists, including folk singers, though let’s not underestimate our potters; the inhabitants of two lefty college towns, Missoula and Bozeman, where I grew up; and the coastal refugees such as Mr. Gianforte...."

She goes on:

So what’s the tally — at least 14 varieties of Montanan? Fifteen if we include the summer roofers-winter ski bums affectionately known in my home valley as “dirt bags.” The dirt bags might look like a bunch of Hillary-voting hippies, but based on my five winters during the Reagan-Bush era tending bar at the local ski area, Bridger Bowl, they’re stingy tippers and therefore, I suspect, secret Republicans.

Has it ever been established that conservatives are worse tippers than liberals? Is that even a stereotype? I'm offended that this is offered up as a laugh line, as if, of course, NYT readers will get this. Presumably, it has more to do with the idea that Republicans don't support generous governmental spending, but that assumes that Democrats, who are generous with the taxpayers' money, won't be stingy with their own money.

Research shows that conservatives give more to charity than liberals give.

The liberal vanity about personal generosity, empathy, and goodness, is on display in Vowell's op-ed. I guess I could say it's funny, even if you don't believe the stereotype that Republicans are stingy, because you can laugh at the stereotype that Vowell embodies by saying that. And she keeps it personal. She says "I suspect." And we can picture her as the young bartender, noticing the tip is bad, and getting some solace out of thinking: must be a Republican.

She put him in her tip jar of deplorables. 

"There are many decent, ethical highly professional people who work in journalism. I am happy to say that I work with a number of them at the Daily Inter Lake."

"But sadly, the standards that we try to hold ourselves to here in Kalispell, Montana, seem to be foreign to many reporters and editors on TV and at other newspapers around the country. Because of that, I could probably write a column taking my fellow journalists to task every week and never run out of material, but honestly I didn’t expect to return to the theme quite this quickly...."

ADDED: This is an excellent column, which I noticed because it's featured at Real Clear Politics, but I've had a place in my heart for The Daily Inter Lake, ever since I stayed in Kalispell a few years ago. I used to make the "Law Roundup" page a regular stop and blogged it often. I need to get back to that. It's written in a delightful style that makes petty crime seem almost comforting. From today's report:

Someone complained that a “little car” with a loud muffler kept going back and forth on Seventh Street West. An officer was unable to locate the pesky car....

Someone from a bar called to report a man had threatened to come back and shoot the place up.

A man entered a business on West Idaho Street and reportedly threatened to kill two workers before knocking over some beers and leaving. Workers wanted officers to tell the man he was not welcome.

"Big Mountain Jesus" survives an attack by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The 3-judge 9th Circuit panel was split, with Judges N.R. Smith and John Owens in the majority.

Smith and Owens found that the U.S. government had a secular purpose: "the statue’s cultural and historical significance for veterans, Montanans, and tourists; the statue’s inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places; and the government’s intent to preserve the site 'as a historic part of the resort.'"

And the majority had 6 reasons for rejecting the notion that the government was "endorsing" religion:

(1) there is nothing in the statue’s display or setting to suggest government endorsement; the twelve-foot tall statue is on a mountain, far from any government seat or building, near a commercial ski resort, and accessible only to individuals who pay to use the ski lift; (2) the statue’s plaque communicates that it is privately owned and maintained — “it did not sprout from the minds of [government] officials and was not funded from [the government’s] coffers”; (3) besides the statue’s likeness, there is nothing in the display or setting to suggest a religious message. The mountain’s role as a summer and winter tourist destination used for skiing, hiking, biking, berry-picking, and site-seeing suggests a secular context...

That's not the usual way we spell "sight-seeing," but I guess it's a site... and here comes a cite:

... the location “does not readily lend itself to meditation or any other religious activity,” and the setting “suggests little or nothing of the sacred,” Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 702 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment); (4) the flippant interactions of locals and tourists with the statue suggest secular perceptions and uses: decorating it in mardi gras beads, adorning it in ski gear, taking pictures with it, high-fiving it as they ski by, and posing in Facebook pictures; (5) local residents commonly perceived the statue as a meeting place, local landmark, and important aspect of the mountain’s history as a ski area and tourist destination; and, (6) there is an absence of complaints throughout its sixty-year history, see Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 702 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment) (reasoning that the monument’s forty-year unchallenged history “suggest[s] more strongly than can any set of formulaic tests that few individuals … are likely to have understood the monument as amounting … to a government effort to favor a particular religious sect, … to ‘compel’ any ‘religious practic[e],’ or to ‘work deterrence’ of any ‘religious belief’” (alterations in original)).

Note the emphasis on Justice Breyer's concurring opinion in Van Orden, which was the case about the 10 Commandments monument next to the Texas state house. This emphasis is justified, as Breyer was the deciding vote in that case and another 10 Commandments case that came out the same day and went the other way. Following Breyer, you end up with multifactored, contextualized judgment.

The dissenting judge in the 9th Circuit was Harry Pregerson. He didn't go for the Breyer-style multifactored analysis but asked whether a reasonable observer would perceive "a message of religious endorsement."

Lawprof Eugene Volokh — at the first link, above — approves of the outcome. He says "the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence" is "not quite right" because: 1. It's too "tricky" to look into "government’s supposed motive" ("[M]ost things that people do — and even more so most things that multi-member government agencies do — have many different motives, whether policy motives or political motives"). 2. The lack of complaints "might simply reflect that complaints about such things are often highly unpopular in many circles, and that many people can be quite upset and yet still not want to fight a thankless and uphill legal battle." 3. It's "unrealistic" to take account of "divisiveness." And what about history? Volokh says: "[T]he Big Mountain Jesus isn’t quite the Bamiyan Buddhas, but 60-year-old items are still pretty historical by American standards," and even though Big Mountain Jesus wasn't really treated like your usual historical monument: "[T]his sort of historical monument ought not be ordered off government land."

The litigation goes all the way back to 2011. Here's my original post on the subject from then. I said:

... I think removing the statue is not necessary to comply with the Establishment Clause. I go back to what Justice Breyer wrote in one of the 10 Commandments cases that the Supreme Court decided in 2005 [Van Orden]. Breyer... was the only member of the Court in the majority in both cases.

Justice Breyer quoted the 1963 school prayer opinion written by Justice Goldberg: "[U]ntutored devotion to the concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or approval of results which partake not simply of that noninterference and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious."

And Breyer concluded that taking down the old stone monument in Texas would "exhibit a hostility toward religion that has no place in our Establishment Clause traditions" and "encourage disputes concerning the removal of longstanding depictions of the Ten Commandments from public buildings across the Nation," which would "create the very kind of religiously based divisiveness that the Establishment Clause seeks to avoid."

Big Mountain Jesus is a 50-year-old part of the landscape, so it's probably a good idea to take Justice Breyer's advice seriously and ski clear of divisiveness and a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular.

Jon Krakauer semi-exposes himself to criticism in Missoula, the target of his new book "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town."

"Krakauer previously said he wasn't planning a tour or any other public appearances to promote the book, but he wanted to give critics in Missoula the chance to confront him."

Instead, he received an enthusiastic welcome and applause throughout his interview with University of Montana Journalism School Dean Larry Abramson before a standing-room only crowd of more than 550 people.

That warmth was shattered when a man who identified himself as Missoula attorney Thomas Dove made his way to the front of the room just as the interview ended, called Krakauer a liar, accused him of bias and of breaking the law by citing confidential documents in his book.

The crowd tried to shout down Dove, while a few others disappointed that Krakauer did not take questions from the audience demanded that Dove have his say. Krakauer started to answer Dove's questions, but eventually became exasperated and walked out of the room as the crowd became more hostile toward Dove.

So Krakauer purported to offer his critics in Missoula a chance to confront him, and he got a comfortable event to be staged somehow, through the auspices of the University of Montana, which has a big interest in shoring up its reputation. (The book is about things that happened to the university's students.) And a Missoula man shows up, prepared to confront Krakauer, but Krakauer takes no questions from the audience. When the man insists on speaking anyway, he seems like a heckler, and the huge Krakauer-friendly crowd tries to shout him down. But there are "a few others" present who, perhaps, felt burned that they showed up for what was purportedly going to be a confrontation with critics but turned out to be a well-cushioned platform for Krakauer. The "few others" and whatever they said were apparently enough to push Krakauer to start to answer, but somehow he "became exasperated." We're told the crowd got "hostile" to Dove, so I guess we're supposed to be satisfied that Dove really was a heckler and that the wisdom in numbers — "the crowd" vs. the "few others" — has determined that Krakauer was justified in walking out.

I want to see the transcript.

ADDED: There's some audio here. I learned that Dove was given a microphone, but then (for some reason) Dean Abrahamson cut things off. After that, Krakauer had some interaction with Dove but then walked out.

FINALLY: The commenter Carter Wood pointed to the video, and it's quite disturbing.



Dove isn't heckling. He has a microphone, and Krakauer endeavors to answer a few questions. Then the crowd takes up yelling and booing, perhaps to help Krakauer. Then Krakauer stomps over and snatches the mike out of Dove's hands. From the audience: a woman laughing, people booing, and a man saying "Get out of here!"

ALSO: To be fair, Dove was being boring. He had a sheaf of papers and took the liberty to read from them. That was after he'd gotten Krakauer to straight out admit he was biased and engaged in confirmation bias. That was a long enough turn for Dove, but he took advantage, like he was going to lead an inquest. That really wasn't going to work, but the way the crowd, the Dean, and the author shut him down made them all look awful. Stupid.

"A black briefcase on the side of Bernard Road was found to contain not business files but a dead animal."

And:

A mortified motorist called the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office after going through a Whitefish Stage Road intersection and having another driver come running up to her vehicle and pound on her window, yelling at her to open her door. She said she may have turned out in front of the vehicle but that there was plenty of room, and that she was now in a parking lot getting her composure back.

The police news from Montana, where, also, a boulder fell on U.S. 93 South. Cars drove around it.

It seems like a David Lynch film, perhaps one that is a distillation of traditional Chinese culture.

"Sack of potatoes subdued without incident."

"A Kalispell Police officer and a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officer were able to remove a five-pound sack of potatoes reported hanging from a tree on Seventh Street East that looked like it might fall into the street. Apparently, the potatoes were subdued without causing any mayhem."

"An extremely drunken man who lost track of time called 911 to ask what day it was."

News from Flathead, Montana.

"The people of Iowa are a whole lot like the people of Montana. And, of course, New Hampshire’s a lot like Montana."

"We don’t have a sales tax. 'Live Free or Die' — we understand that notion in Montana."

Thinking out loud about running for President.

That thought, expressed by Brian Schweitzer — ever heard of him? — reminds me of the discussion we were having last month about "national psychology" — "the (real or alleged) distinctive psychological make-up of particular nations, ethnic groups or peoples, and... the comparative study of those characteristics in social psychology, sociology, political science and anthropology."

The assumption of national psychology is that different ethnic groups, or the people living in a national territory, are characterized by a distinctive "mix" of human attitudes, values, emotions, motivation and abilities which is culturally reinforced by language, the family, schooling, the state and the media.

It's out of fashion:

Politically and morally... it is conducive to racist generalisations about people... [and] may lead directly to ascriptive discrimination against foreigners, meaning that one's own people are regarded as naturally superior....

Scientifically, because... [even if] generalizations and distinctions drawn are valid, they may be too general, or require too many qualifications, to be useful. There is an intrinsic difficulty involved in verifying national-psychological characteristics scientifically in any positivistic sense.... 

But when we step down a level of generality and talk about the psychology of the people of the various states of the United States, we somehow lose the sense that we're doing something wrong. Why?

1. Because this is a type of thinking that springs quite naturally to the human mind, and so much of it is forbidden. What little access to the relief of spewing such notions remains is so valuable to people that they self-protectively inure themselves to the problem.

2. Because even consciously thinking about it now, stereotypes about people from particular states don't seem too harmful. We're fortunate as Americans to have inherited these strange internal borderlines with charming names like Iowa and Montana, and our various thoughts about the people in these places gives texture and dimension to our concept of the people of America. It's not one big mass, it's We the People of the united STATES of America. It's a helpful visualization, even if it's pretty dumb — a map, with farmers standing on Iowa and so forth.

3. ???

Concerned... and vindictive...

... in Montana:

A concerned Lakeside Boulevard resident reported two men and three women, all drunk, were shooting a potato gun in the park to the south, and wanted to know if the activity was legal....

A concerned passerby reported a vehicle parked in the middle of 13th Street West with a rifle leaning against the passenger seat. The passerby just wanted the motorist advised that he can’t park in the middle of the street.

A vindictive 12th Avenue West resident contacted the Columbia Falls Police Department to report that her neighbor complained about her on Monday, and now she wanted to complain about the neighbor.

ALSO: "After receiving a 911 hang-up call, [Whitefish Police Department] called the man back to check on his well-being. He said everything was OK and that he was testing his phone and that he thought he hung up before it went through. He then said he was a 'sovereign United States citizen' who pays taxes, and that the person who called him back was invading his space."

Green stuff... a kick in the head... U R Dead... hypochondria on U.S. 93 South...

Let's take a break from our mundane cares to check out — as we often do on this blog — who's been calling the police in Montana:

An irate motorist on Helena Flats Road reported a big sprayer truck spraying green stuff all over and was adamant the [activity] be stopped. It was eventually discovered the truck was only spraying grass seeds and mulch.

A Martin City man was knocked unconscious when his daughter kicked him in the head. When he came to, she was kicking him in the face. He refused medical treatment....

An astute Elk Trail woman in Whitefish suspected her ex after finding “U R Dead” scratched into the hood of her vehicle....

A hypochondriac on U.S. 93 South asked a passerby to call 911 after he stepped on a thermometer, claiming he now had mercury poisoning. The passerby reported the man smelled like alcohol and was hard to understand, and all the passerby could see was wrong with the man was that he was dizzy.