By Denise Ross

The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council voted 12-5 Friday to let Cecelia Fire Thunder get back to work as tribal president.

This vote followed a morning pancake feed, a sideshow whipped up by the chief complainant against Fire Thunder — (Wm. Birdnecklace Tate tried to get a tribal council member ejected from the proceedings because of a criminal conviction) — and another break so that diabetics in attendance could eat. (Because, I’m guessing the pancake breakfast spiked their blood sugar out of the stratosphere.)

At about 3 p.m., the news crew in the RCJ newsroom wasn’t sure whether Fire Thunder’s fate would be determined today or postponed to a fourth hearing. We thought perhaps reporter Jomay Steen would be phoning in a story from Pine Ridge that would have read: “As of news deadline, the tribal council still had not voted.”)

I filed plenty of stories couched that way during legislative doings during my days in Pierre.

Alas, they did vote, and I just thought you might like to know the results.

Happy New Year.

By Bill Harlan

Welcome to Mount Blogmore Crystal Ball 2006, wherein all of us make our predictions for South Dakota politics in the coming year. But first, a brief recap of some of my predictions a year ago for 2005. Among those predictions:

8. South Dakota’s proposal to convert the Homestake mine into a national undergound lab proposal will make the next cut in the National Science Foundation’s selection process. I will write my 439th underground lab story, thus breaking Ty Cobb’s old record.

9. Environmental groups will sue to stop the Forest Service from implementing Phase II of the Forest Plan for the Black Hills, thus paving the way for another Guiness Book of World Records entry: Longest time taken to develop a 15-year forest plan. (So far it has taken 14 years.)

10. Ellsworth Air Force Base will be named to the base closure list.

Numer 8? Done!
Number 10? He scores! (although I admit I shied away from predicting whether it would be removed from the list, which it was.)
Number 9? Well, they’ve threatened to sue, but the lawsuit has not been filed.

You can see my other 2005 predictions by clicking on “December 2004″ on the calendar at right, though I’m not suggesting the trip would be worth it.

Nor am I suggesting that my predictions for 2006 are worth the electrons from which they are formed. In addition, I also aver that the following predictions are not based on any polling, any interviews or any research of any kind. That said, I predict for 2006:

1. South Dakota’s proposal to convert the Homestake mine into a national undergound lab will make the next cut in the National Science Foundation’s selection process. I will write my 511th underground lab story, thus breaking Gordy Howe’s old record. Then I’ll be forced to tearfully admit to a congressional subcommittee that I did it while taking human growth hormones. The committee chairman, after looking at my body, will suggest I try to get my money back.

2. This time, no kidding, an environmental group will sue to overturn the Phase II amendment.

3. Voter’s will approve Bill Napoli’s property-tax measure; members-elect of the 2007 Legislature will search eBay to get deals on seppuku swords.

4. Gov. Mike Rounds is re-elected in a landslide over Ron Volesky — either because of or despite the fact that Ron’s press conferences are much more entertaining.

5. Voters will reject an initiated measure to provide safe access to medical marijuana. (Supporters of the measure were holding their breath but not because they thought the vote would be close.)

6. More than 80 percent of voters who cast ballots on a measure “to revise certain provisions related to county zoning and conditional use permits” will have no idea what they just voted on.

7. Voters, feeling guilty about rejecting medical marijuana, will approve increases on cigarette and alcohol taxes.

8. Voters will reject changing the definition of gambling because there is no way you can persuade people that a Texas hold ‘em tournament isn’t gambling.

9. Voters will reject restrictions on the way state aircraft are used. Why. Not two seconds ago they voted for Mike Rounds. They just don’t care if he went to a football game during a trip on state business.

10. Voters will reject as measure to prohibit school from starting before Aug. 31. Although many South Dakota business people employee teenagers, it turns out that by the middle of August many more South Dakotans want to get kids of all ages out of their hair.

And now, Blogmorites, let’s have your predictions.

By Denise Ross

The hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing of certain Republicans over ANWR’s close-but-no-cigar status and the ass-end-over-tea-kettle conflagration of the Patriot Act was littered with what has become my least favorite word — obstruction.

Just this morning I watched last week’s edition of Washington Week (I do love TiVo). And they played a clip of Bill Frist waxing frustration about all the Democrats and their stupid obstruction. (You can listen to a podcast of the show by clicking here.)

Back in his days as a construction foreman, my husband overheard a quite earnest lunchtime conversation amongst members of the crew: “You know what would make things so much better?” one fellow asked the others. “If we could just get rid of all the cops!”

“Yes!” the others refrained. They had stumbled into the solution to all their problems. Now they just had to figure out how …

On Washington Week, the panelists described the Patriot Act getting high centered as a Republican-versus-Republican problem. Republicans run the joint, and it was a moderates-versus-conservatives battle that unraveled the leadership’s plans for the Patriot Act.

Frist can blame the Democrats for fouling up his world, but it is, after all, his world. That he is not the master of it is perhaps his own doing. Leadership is the art of getting others to follow.

The mantra from the dawn of the Bush administration until Tom Daschle’s November 2004 defeat was that it was Daschle who was obstructing all the wonderful things the president wanted to do. (If we could just get rid of all the cops …)

Now that Daschle is gone and Republicans are in charge of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the crowd hell-bent to blame all their shortcomings on obstruction continues with the same storyline.

Could it be that they have failed in persuading, convincing and bargaining? Could it be that they have failed in leading? Did they honestly expect to frolick through Congress with the minions dropping flowers at their feet?

Whether you love Daschle or hate him, love the GOP leaders or hate them, this obstruction line is wearing thin. How long before those in charge accept the realities of politics and practice the art of persuasion rather than the art of pouting?

By Bill Harlan

The RCJ ran a Washington Post story at the top of page one. The headline: “S.D. laws among strictest; State makes abortion rare with laws, stigma.” Reporter Evelyn Nieves set her lede in the waiting room of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls.

I’d link to it, but we don’t put Wash Post stories on our Web site. I’m sure you’ll find it at their Web site or — and this is my personal recommendation — buy a paper.

I’ll offer the standard Mount Blogmore prize* for the Blogmorite who posts the 100th comment approved. ((I’ve got a feeling this one’s got legs.)

*That would be writing the topic of your choice. I know. We’re cheap.

By Kevin Woster

When I think all is lost in the world of TV, I watch C-SPAN. Isn’t it amazing, when you think about it, to sit in your living room and see live action from the U.S. Senate floor, debates in House committees, discussions at international trade conferences and presentations by top-flight authors at funky little bookstores in Washington, D.C.?

Wow.

Is there a place for a chronic insomiac to land better than Washington Journal? Not unless it’s Bear Butte at dawn.

Tonight, C-SPAN was replaying its 25-hour, 25th-anniversary viewer call-in program that includes big-name politicos. I caught several, including Pat Buchanan whose response to a viewer on the subject of conservative talk radio was interesting.

The reader, calling on the Democrat line, wondered why there was such an imbalance of conservative voices in AM radio, on the Internet and in syndicated columns. Buchanan’s opinion was that the mainstream media is and long has been so liberal that conservatives turned to talk radio and the Internet as their only way to express themselves and get “unfiltered” news.

It was interesting, because the guest just before Buchanan was Phil Donahue. Phil was lamenting the loss of aggressive reporting because the mainstream media has been consolidated into the hands of a few corporate entities who are more worried about the bottom line, about being labeled “liberal” and about offending George Bush than they are about producing true independent news.

Any truth there? And if so, where?

By Kevin Woster

The blogger Jakers had the management staff here at Mount Blogmore tapdancing today as we tried to decide whether to publish his very graphic post on sex education.

Jakers first sent the post - with extremely detailed decriptions of a wide variety of sexual techniques - on Friday night. He said he copied the info from a Planned Parenthood website and said it was an important example of the ills of sex ed.

First, I told Jakers we unlikely to run a post of that nature on Christmas weekend. So he gave us the holiday but came back strong on Monday, demanding to know whether we were dodging the issue.

I think I was, at first, because of the graphic nature of the descriptions. But after some discussion, Gutzon Harlan, Denise and I decided it had merit as a discussion topic.

Before we brought it to the mountain, however, we had to make sure the information actually came from the Planned Parenthood site (it did). We also had to make sure we bookmarked the site for future, uh, research purposes.

So, Jakers’ post is No. 98 under “Everybody Stay in Your Seats.” You can go check it out in person or simply believe me when I tell you there are few possibilities of a sexual nature that aren’t detailed there.

Which begs the question: Does this type of information help prevent unwanted pregnancies and the transmission of disease or does it simply encourage kids to expand their sex repertoires?

By Bill Harlan
Tom Daschle had an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on Friday. He wrote about domestic surveillance. Check out Power We Didn’t Grant.

Daschle argues that neither the Constitution nor the Patriot Act give President Bush the authority to do the type of warrantless surveillance alleged in recent news stories.

Daschle ends the piece thus:

In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.
That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat terrorism.

By Bill Harlan

KW is currently in an e-mail conversation with a Blogmorite who raises valid questions about sex education. Part of his comment was a cut-and-paste of a very long and explicit sex-ed passage that came from a group he opposes.

We’ll get his post up in some form or another, as soon as we can verify the link. (We’re having a problem doing that.) It’s a worthy subject. But this long post raised another issue. Long cut-and-paste passages from other sources give us heartburn, and not just cut-and-pastes that explain the details of anal sex. Another Blogmorite, for example, recently offered a series of posts from the abortion task force. I approved them, but only with reservations.

I have two objections. First, such posts often are unreadable. Second, some of them may violate “fair use” or copyright rules.

KW, DR and I all agree that we’d prefer, in the future, that Blogmorites paraphrase other sources, maybe with a few quotes that illustrate the point. Then link to the site. Please avoid the wholesale cut-and-paste technique.

By Bill Harlan

Blogmorite Doug Wiken had a great idea in his comment to the previous topic. Doug wrote:

” … There should be a “Top 10 Stories that Never Hit the Newspages”.. stuff like the 99-year leases Janklow gave to a Mexican corporation have still not been investigated or challenged. And so on…..”

Now here’s topic tailor-made for a little place we like to call “the Internet.” What are the state’s top unreported stories? To make it more interesting, you can include the under-reported stories.

The top under-reported story on my list remains poverty on South Dakota Indian reservations in general and on the Pine Ridge Reservation in particular. We report on that issue regularly at the RCJ. I just think that in terms of persistence, scope and severity of impact this is by far the worst disaster in the state. It’s a century-long disaster. Longer, actually. But for most of us it’s out of sight, out of mind.

That’s my soapbox. What’s on your “top 10 ignored” list.

By Bill Harlan

Here are the Top 10 stories in South Dakota, according to the Associate Press:

By the AP
1. An ice storm and blizzard paralyzes about a third of South Dakota.
2. Ellsworth Air Force Base survives the latest round of base closures.
3. Legislature approves $20 million for an interim lab at the old Homestake mine.
4. South Dakota holds its first-ever mountain lion hunting season.
5. Six South Dakotans die in Iraq and Kuwait in 2005.
6. Nineteen people get Legionnaire’s disease in the state.
7. State and local officials quickly prepare shelters for Hurricane Katrina victims.
8. The Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad says it’s applying for a $2.5 billion loan.
9. South Dakota’s new abortion law is temporarily blocked by a judge.
10. An investigation shows the governor took personal trips while using state airplanes.

Two things struck me about this list.

-Four of the top six were West River stories. That’s got to be a record.

-The mountain-lion season ranked ahead of the deaths of six South Dakota soldiers in Iraq. It also ranked ahead of Legionnaires disease, which sickened 19 people in Rapid City and killed one woman.

Now it’s the Mount’s turn to rearrange this list or add and remove stories from it.

Conservatives like Sibby - and some who are unlike him - are fond of saying that the mainstream news media tells a slanted story about the Iraq war.

Bombings and other bad news are emphasized, they say, while successful elections and ongoing reconstruction work is slighted. It’s all part of a liberal MSM agenda to derail the war effort and hurt the Bush presidency.

It doesn’t seem that way to me. Sure, much of the news is bad. But cars that blow up are newsworthy. Cars that don’t blow up are not. Failed missions and the inadvertent killing of civilians will quite naturally get more coverage than a quiet day of troops strolling the neighborhoods of Baghdad, chatting with kids.

The coverage overall seems mostly fair and mostly accurate to me. How does it seems to you?

By Denise Ross

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, trying his best to look like a lead character in a Shakespearan drama, stormed out of the Senate, threw himself on the ornate Capitol hallway and kicked and screamed and pounded his fists because he didn’t get his way — again.

For, like, the millionth time in his 82 years, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory in Stevens’ life-long quest to let the oil rigs fire up in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. (Yo, Ted, you’re in Groundhog Day, not anything by Shakespeare.)

This twisted little tale took a detour through South Dakota and became part of the 2004 Senate race and Thune’s slapping around of Daschle over the lack of an energy bill. (Yeah, I know it was a lot more complicated, but this was a factor.)

In this chapter of the ANWR saga, Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., voted with most of his fellow Dems to filibuster a Defense spending bill until the provision to allow drilling in ANWR was stripped out.

While the Dems were doing a happy dance in a circle around the tantrum-throwing Stevens, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., was sitting on the Capitol steps, frowning. Not only does this keep the nation from a source of precious energy, the ANWR provisions also included $2B for emergency heating assistance (so Thune staffer Kyle Downey tells me.)

A press release from Thune’s office reads:

“The legislation would have also taken revenues from ANWR and directed them towards other programs, including LIHEAP. Because the Senate Democrats’ filibuster forced the Senate Leadership to strip out all the ANWR provisions, $2 billion in additional LIHEAP funding was blocked.”

That press release rolled in right after the one that said this:

“Today, the Senate passed the conference report for the Fiscal Year 2006 Defense Appropriations bill, which includes over $17.6 million of Senator John Thune’s requested funding … I am pleased to announce this significant funding … I’m pleased we were able to push through the partisan obstruction engineered by a minority of Senate Democrats and pass this important bill.”

So I guess he was sitting on the Capitol steps and smiling, too. Just like those drama masks. But I bet what they’re all really thinking is — Can we go home now?

By Kevin Woster

Apparently Game, Fish & Parks Department policies for handling wandering moose differ between East River and West River.

Out here, GF&P officers blasted the moose that wandered into a Rapid City residential area a couple years back. Over in the Sioux Falls area just today, they helped a local veterinarian tranquilize a moose and took it to the Great Plains Zoo.

Please understand, I didn’t lose any sleep over the Rapid City moose incident. And I’m sure the fact that the Minnehaha County moose was out in the country, rather than in town, provided more latitude for GF&P in handling the big critter.

Still, it makes you wonder.

By Denise Ross

Did the Summerset map that ran on page A2 of Monday’s RC Journal strike anyone else as odd?

The dark reddish color indicates Summerset. Those blue lines denote housing developments. You can see where Exit 49 is, where Piedmont is and where a bar named Rookies — the subject of Monday’s story — is.

Several of the housing developments considered to be part of South Dakota’s newest municipality not only aren’t in the boundaries, it appears as though the boundaries were deliberately drawn to exclude them.

As has been said about some of the congressional districts in the South, drawn to pack in one kind of voter or another, you could drive down the highway with your car doors open and not be fully within the boundaries.

So, like, what is up with that?

By Bill Harlan

An AP story in tomorrow’s RCJ will quote the quotable state Sen. Bill Napoli, R-Rapid City, who thinks South Dakota should dump the state fair. Napoli made the remarks on KOTA Radio earlier today. An excerpt:

“I’m done with it. Seriously,” Napoli said. “My goal this session is to sunset the fair. It’s outlived its usefulness. It’s not ever going to make it, especially as long as there is that underlying thought that, no matter what happens, the Legislature will bail it out one more time.”

Well, there goes the Huron Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year Award.

By Kevin Woster

Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson built his political career from the mortar of moderation on key issues. He showed that, and then some, last week in voting to support the controversial Patriot Act championed by President Bush.

Johnson joined Republican Sen. John Thune - and broke ranks with 41 other Democrats in the Senate - in voting to end a Democratic-driven filibuster on the new Patriot Act. Even with Johnson’s support, Republicans fell eight votes short of ending the filibuster.

Johnson said he joined the Republican majority because the act is important to the war on terror. Opponents of the measure in his party - and even a few Republicans - said the act needs revision to fight terror while protecting esssential civil liberties.

Did Johnson make the right move here? The smart move? The political move?

All of the above?

By Kevin Woster

Let’s pick things up where the abortion task force failed. Let’s discuss ways to reduce the number of abortions in South Dakota.

It’s my subject, so I get to make the ground rules. Let’s limit this discussion to ways to reduce abortions OTHER THAN outlawing abortion or tightening the current abortion laws in South Dakota.

Be creative. Be nice. And please, no walk-outs. Limit your protests to simple hand gestures.

By Denise Ross

I heard this word used to describe Stan Adelstein this past week: guileless.

Stan’s detractors — and he does seem to be one of those people who can be referred to with a single name — his detractor’s will scoff when they read that word. Others might see it as somehow demeaning.

Stan Adelstein

At the moment, Stan is a Republican state senator known most recently for being part of a group that walked out of the state abortion task force meeting on Dec. 9 — and then speaking publicly about his disgust over the protocol used by the task force’s anti-abortion majority. (He does so a little more in this podcast.)

I think I might have honed in on the root of Stan’s candid nature during our interview for this week’s edition of Talkin’ Smack: The South Dakota Political Junkie’s Weekly Fix on the Inside Dope. He talks about being a “free person” and he talks, at one point, about how his father owned the company. Aahhh, economic freedom — something few of us can know. When you cross economic freedom with the passion this engineer possesses to tinker with systems that aren’t working, to solve problems great and small, to, essentially, fix things, you get guileless Stan.

His only problem seems to be — manifest in multiples — that not everyone agrees with him on what is broken and how so. And that is, to Stan, another thing that needs fixing. (However, he says he is NOT behind the recent push-poll conducted about his fellow Republican senator from Rapid City and nemesis, Bill Napoli.)

Stan’s seat in the state Legislature and the dust-up at the abortion task force are only the most recent chapters in a political life that started with a long-shot gamble almost a half-century ago. He plans to open the next chapter just as soon as he can speak with the governor — and his problem is not in getting such an audience. For all intents and purposes, Stan financed Mike Rounds’ eleventh-hour election surge in the 2002 primary.

Listen to our conversation here.
(PS - Since this interview was done in person and not over the phone, the techincal problems that have plagued this podcast in recent weeks are not present. I am trying a few potential fixes, but I’ll do only the in-person interviews until I find a workable fix for the phone trouble. Maybe Stan can help.)

By Bill Harlan

I got some backchannel queries about a remark state Rep. Gordon Howie, R-Rapid City, made at a crackerbarrel meeting yesterday. My correspndents said that during a comments about abortions, which Howie opposes, he noted that pregnant cows were worth more than the non-pregnant variety.

I called Gordon this afternoon to get his side of it. “My wife told me I was going to get in trouble for that,” he told me. “I was not attempting in any way to compare women to livestock. ”

Gordon also apologized for the remark. He said he only meant to say that South Dakotans value life. If we value unborn livestock, he said, why wouldn’t we value the lives of unborn human beings. “I freely admit I said that very poorly,” Gordon said.

By the way, my correspondent also wondered why RCJ reporter Celeste Calvitto didn’t report the remark her story. Celeste told me she didn’t catch all of it because someone near hear said something that distracted her. But she’s following up on the remark as part of a column she’s working on for Tuesday.

By Kevin Woster

Regular poster Sophia made an interesting point with her assertion that most South Dakotans oppose efforts to outlaw abortions.

I think I’ve seen public-opinion surveys that support her position. Yet the state Legislature has consistently shown support for a ban on abortion.

That raises a couple of interesting questions: Is the Legislature out of step with the citizens of this state? And, if so, why do those citizens continue to elect and reelect a strong anti-abortion majority?