Opinion
As principals we strive to ensure our schools are engaging, safe and healthy environments that promote learning. However, youth vaping in Montana is threatening our kids’ health and safety and creating unnecessary barriers to academic success. Montana has a serious problem with youth e-cigarette use. Our most current Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey data tell us 26% of our high school students currently vape and nearly half (48%) of them have tried vaping. We are encouraged that most Montana youth report they do not vape, but we are very concerned about the health and well-being of the one in four students who do. While youth vaping is a discipline problem that can disrupt lea...
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Or is it? People enjoy decorating for the holidays, cooking, baking, writing those non-brag family letters and finding the ideal gift for everyone on their list. Or do they? For some, many even, this is the most wonderful time of the year. Peo...
Editor, December is National Impaired Driving Prevention Month. It opportunely coincides with the holidays when folks are going to parties, reconnecting with old friends, and maybe indulging more than they do the rest of the year. Wherever you’re going this Christmas season, please never get b...
Editor, Our nation, the United States of America, is presently in political crisis. We have never had a person running for president who wanted to lead our nation with a political system other than a democracy. Donald Trump is the first person trying to accomplish this with an autocratic/dictatorial form ...
Editor, We are writing in response to an article written by James C. Nelson in the Dec. 6 issue of the Valley Journal. He is also a frequent contributor to the Missoulian. Mr. Nelson was an associate justice of the Montana Supreme Court from 1993-2012 and was appointed by Marc Racicot. This position, by d...
Mid-morning sunshine poured through the windshield feeling much like a warm hug during a recent weekend trip to the office. I was headed to work on this week’s newspaper pages. And this week’s issue is special. It is our 1000th. The 1000th consecutively published Valley Journal. As I drove in sil...
The United States government has failed catastrophically in its obligation to protect our borders and our citizens. Representative Ryan Zinke is seeking to protect us from the latest move towards national suicide emanating from the Democrats, the Uniparty, and other elitist masterminds seemingly hell-bent on...
Editor, Der Fuhrer is here. As I read James C Nelson’s letter to the editor I was impressed with his candor and his inability to judge what is actually happening, especially since he is a former judge. As a former judge I thought he might be measured in his inflammatory rhetoric, but I was sadly ...
As we close out National Native American Heritage Month, I would like to introduce myself and my new role as the Montana Department of Labor & Industry’s (DLI) first Tribal Liaison. My name is Donnie Wetzel, Jr. I come from the Blackfeet Nation on my father’s side and Missoula/Bitterroot as a...
Have you ever thanked God that you never lived Nazi Germany? Well don’t get off your knees just yet; you might still find out what that was like. Donald J. Trump is straight out of fascism’s, central casting: think Hitler (who Trump seeks to emulate and whose speeches he quotes), Bolsonaro (wh...
