Tribes, Greens and Democrats hope to ambush Washington Sen. Slade Gorton in November
Politics
Posted inOctober 9, 2000: The hunters and the hunted
On the Trail
In the close presidential race, even New Mexico’s five electoral votes are worth a fight. George W. Bush has visited three times, Al Gore has stopped by twice, and Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman both showed up in Albuquerque in mid-September. “For the first time in recent memory, New Mexico appears to be playing an […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
On the trail
Congressional races in Montana are heating up. Brian Schweitzer, the Democrats’ maverick Senate candidate, is still well behind two-term Republican incumbent Conrad Burns, but he’s made some small gains in recent polls. Schweitzer, a mint farmer from Whitefish, defends small-scale agriculture and criticizes rising health-care costs. Over the last year, he has shepherded busloads of […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Bush camp backpedals on toppling monuments
Vice presidential candidate Richard Cheney may have spoken too soon in August, when he said George W. Bush might rescind national monuments created by President Clinton (HCN, 9/11/00). U.S. presidents have created 114 monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act, and undoing them is unlikely, according to University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson. In 1996, […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Remembering an establishment revolutionary
John Sawhill wasn’t planning to stick around as president of The Nature Conservancy for much longer. As he told some associates, 10 years is a long time for one of those high-powered jobs, and as a 63-year-old diabetic, Sawhill was starting to think about a life with fewer plane trips and less tension. Maybe he […]
Posted inAugust 28, 2000: The mine that turned the Red River blue
Floyd Dominy: An encounter with the West’s undaunted dam-builder
The name Floyd Dominy still rings loud in the West. As the head of the Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to1971, he built Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River and many more of the West’s dams, persuading Congress that the region needed to control the flow of rivers to generate electricity, control flooding and […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Farewell, Marc Reisner
In 1995, when we first asked Marc Reisner to write an article for High Country News, we didn’t know what to expect (HCN, 3/20/95: The fight for reclamation). Would the man who had changed how America thought about dams and reservoirs accept suggestions from an editor of a small paper in a small town in […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Can ‘property rightsniks’ stop a popular bill?
WASHINGTON, D.C. – You know folks are going to lose when they choose Helen Chenoweth-Hage to close their argument. Resplendent in a red suit, perhaps symbolic of going down in flames, the Idaho Republican stood at the well of the House and used her two minutes to … well, that wasn’t quite clear; her rhetoric […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
He’s worried about weeds
UNCOMMON WESTERNERS Steve Monsen is a stocky, modest, self-contained man. Sixty-three years old, the son and grandson of Utah sheep ranchers, he works as a botanist for an organization that could not sound more unassuming if it tried – the USDA Shrub Lab in Provo, Utah. There, he wears short-sleeved shirts and jeans and cuts […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
The U.S. isn’t dead yet
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On the first day of the first spring of the millennium, one of the world’s largest and most powerful global corporations did as it was told. Parke-Davis, a division of the multibillion-dollar Warner-Lambert Company, announced that it was withdrawing the diabetes drug Rezulin from the market, as directed by the Food and […]
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The beauty of self-reliance
Reader Portia Masterson walked into the office on a drizzly day in late March. It was an unusual moment for a couple of reasons: first, Portia usually sticks close to her home in Golden, near Denver; second, when she’s out and about, she’s usually riding her bike. Masterson owns Self-Propulsion Inc., a bike shop that […]
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
The West’s power game
The West is caught between congressional representatives beholden to resource industries, and federal officials with a conservation agenda. Can we find a middle ground?
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Notes from a fence-sitter
Though extremists on either side would never admit it, ranchers and greens care about the same things
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
In search of a politics of union
So far, a bigger table for decision-making has not led to more agreement, just more litigation
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Learning to think like a region
Environmental issues have nothing to do with political boundaries
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Beyond the Revolution
The struggle for the public lands is ending. Now what happens? Will the Interior West remain a rogue region, or will it choose to rejoin America?
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Tom Watkins has left us, but his Western dream remains
Tom Watkins, another pathfinder, has passed from the campfire circle. “He was a strong, clear and important voice backed by a good old-fashioned Rooseveltian-Ickesian liberal heart,” says Bozeman writer David Quammen. “Now we’re all older and more alone again, as we knew we were when Ed Abbey died.” T.H. Watkins died last week from cancer […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Marc Racicot: One of the would-be president’s men
You never know who you’re going to meet on an airplane. Last summer, on a flight to Helena, Mont., as the seats in coach class began to fill, a handsome, middle-aged man walked up the aisle and slipped into the seat next to me. He appeared exhausted. His name was Marc Racicot, and he was […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
The last Celtic warlord lives in New Mexico
LA JOYA, N.M. – Jim Catron, lawyer and history enthusiast, is sitting in his living room discussing the noble and inconvenienced Celt. He isn’t talking about modern-day Scotland or Ireland, however, which to his mind have degenerated into Socialist republics populated by barfly poets. He’s talking about real, live Celts. He’s talking about cowboys. Catron […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Montana loses an environmental leader
WHITEFISH, Mont. – The works of great men last long beyond their passing, so it was fitting that the memorial service for Ben Cohen was in the community theater he helped found, at the base of the mountain he loved to ski. Friends, family, former and sitting Supreme Court justices, legislative colleagues, ski buddies, and […]