Free Republic

Sen. Max Baucus and his wife, Wanda, may be splitting after 25 years... Baucus, a Democrat who is running for his sixth six-year term this fall... "In 25 years of spirited marriage, it is natural for differences of opinion to arise..."

Bob Kelleher, a former Green who sued the Montana University System for excluding the Green and Libertarian candidates from a gubernatorial debate in 2004, scored an upset victory in the Montana GOP primary race for U.S. Senate. Kelleher, who still maintains his Green beliefs, will be the Republican nominee versus Democratic incumbent Max Baucus. The Montana Green Party does not currently have ballot access. The theme of Kelleher’s campaign was “no more tax cuts until hunger, health, HRDC, and job needs are satisfied and social security, Medicare and Medicaid funds are secure.” Ballot Access News reports that Kelleher apparently raised...

As Jim Gransberry reports at the Billings Gazette this morning, state Rep. Mike Lange, R-Billings, has just announced that he will challenge Democratic Sen. Max Baucus. Lange, a pipefitter from Billings, told reporters he knew he has a long, hard road ahead of him, trying to unseat a powerful incumbent. He pledged to put "America first" during his campaign and focus on freedom, security and America's working class. Lange, who has served three sessions in the House but became famous during the last legislative session (in which he was the House Minority Leader) for the tirade against the governor, will...

5 out of the top ten US House Recipients of contributions (1989- 2001) from Arthur Andersen are democRats. Their names and the amounts are listed below. And, according to dim logic, they are guilty by association and should have their names shining in the bright lights of Reuters, AP, Drudge, The Washington ComPost, and more. After all, this is a hit piece. Here you go, Klayman, chase this ambulance too! Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) $34,687 Martin Frost (D-Texas) $32,000 Peter Deutsch (D-Fla) $24,200 James P. Moran (D-Va) $21,250 Ken Bentsen (D-Texas) $19,225 Other Rats also receiving Andersen dirty money include: Rick...

HELENA, Mont. - A nephew of Sen. Max Baucus serving in the Marines was killed in Iraq during the weekend, the senator's office said Tuesday. Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus, 28, died Saturday during combat operations in Anbar province, the Department of Defense said. It did not immediately release further information. In a statement, Baucus, D-Mont., said the family was "devastated by the loss." "Phillip was an incredible person, a dedicated Marine, a loving son and husband, and a proud Montanan and American," the senator said. "He heroically served the country he loved and he gave it his all." Phillip Baucus,...

State Sen. Mike Cooney, a well-known name in Montana Democratic politics, recently accepted an unadvertised $72,000-a-year job in state government. Cooney said the job had nothing to do with political patronage and ... Kelly also brushed aside the suggestion that Cooney got the job because he's a prominent Democrat. Cooney, who served as secretary of state for 12 years ending in 2000, will begin work as head of the Department of Labor's Business Standards Division on July 10, said Keith Kelly, the state labor commissioner who heads the department. Kelly, a Democrat appointed by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, said he approached...

Leahy, Salazar and Max Baucus of Montana — who announced his opposition to Alito on Wednesday — were three of the 22 Democrats who voted for Roberts' confirmation as the replacement for the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a conservative.

Court nominee Samuel Alito has the confirmation vote of at least one Senate Democrat but several other Democrats said Wednesday they had lingering questions about the nominee and will vote against him. Before Senate Democrats met to discuss the nomination, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., emerged from a morning meeting with Alito and said he would vote against President Bush's Supreme Court nominee as too far outside the mainstream of judicial thinking. "He's just not right for Montana, he's just not right for America," Baucus said. "He's very polished and he answered all of the questions I was going to ask....

WASHINGTON - Montana Republicans criticized Democratic Sen. Max Baucus on Friday for revealing his plan to reopen the closed runway at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls too early. Baucus said Wednesday that adding the Malmstrom provision to a massive highway spending bill moving through Congress was a "done deal." But House members objected to the language Thursday, delaying passage of the bill and forcing Baucus to abandon the plan Friday morning. "The timing was very bad," said Montana's other senator, Republican Conrad Burns. He said Friday that this week's public flap about Malmstrom will make it harder for...

Frustrated that a compromise has not been struck, conservative senators and their allies are threatening to schedule a vote that would repeal the estate tax permanently. Unless Democrats agree to a deal, Republicans are vowing to use the estate-tax vote as political ammunition in the 2006 cycle. There is a growing sense that achieving a reduction in the tax rate while indexing the value of the exemption to inflation has much broader appeal in the Senate. Lobbyists and aides said that a complete repeal would not garner 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. It remains unclear when a vote...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's top environmental priority — giving power plants, factories and refineries more time to reduce their air pollution — suffered a major setback Wednesday as a Republican-controlled committee rejected it in the Senate. The Environment and Public Works Committee deadlocked on a 9-9 vote on Bush's "clear skies" bill, a name that Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., described as "akin to calling Frankenstein Tom Cruise." The tie vote came after weeks of fruitless negotiation to get a bare majority required to recommend the bill to the full Senate. The committee vote doesn't preclude GOP leaders from scheduling the...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Animosity that runs endlesslyBy Mona CharenPublished July 3, 2004 Theaters are filling up with fans of Michael Moore -- a propagandist who makes Oliver Stone look like Alistair Cooke. Mr. Moore is, of course, free to say the war on terror is a clever cover story for George W. Bush's attempt to line his own pockets. Or to suggest that as nasty as Osama bin Laden is, he is nowhere near as bad as our president.     But the reception this preposterous pastiche of lies, warmed-over conspiracy theories and free-floating venom has received from the Democratic...

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - Sen. Max Baucus suffered minor injuries Saturday in a motorcycle crash, his spokesman said. The Montana Democrat was going to a family picnic when he hit some gravel and lost control of his Harley-Davidson on a road near Lincoln, about 40 miles northwest of Helena, spokesman Barrett Kasier said. Baucus swerved to miss a car and hit a guardrail, Kaiser said. Kaiser said Baucus suffered cuts on his foot and leg and bruises and scrapes on his hands in the afternoon crash. The five-term senator was being treated in the emergency room at St. Peter's Hospital...

By CARRIE SCHUMAKER Associated Press Writer June 2, 2004, 12:03 PM EDT WASHINGTON -- The wife of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., reached a deal Wednesday with federal prosecutors to avoid prosecution on a misdemeanor assault charge that stemmed from a dispute with another woman in a garden center parking lot.

Wanda Baucus and her lawyer say they plan to vigorously fight a misdemeanor assault charge that was brought against her after an argument over mulch at a Washington, D.C., garden center. "This will not be over until the big bell rings out in the end," the wife of Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said when reached at her Washington home. The incident between Wanda Baucus and Tierney Augusta Barron took place on April 20 at Johnson's Garden Center. Baucus was charged with simple assault on April 21 and is scheduled to appear in D.C. Superior Court Monday morning. The main...

WASHINGTON -- The wife of a U.S. senator is in trouble with the law Wanda Baucus is the wife of Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana. She is accused of assaulting a woman Tuesday at Johnson's Garden Center on Van Ness Street, Northwest. Mrs. Baucus was released Wednesday afternoon after an appearance in D.C. Superior Court. She was officially charged with assault in court. The incident happened in the parking lot of the garden center. Sources told News4 that Mrs. Baucus was upset because another customer was getting help with mulch ahead of her. Sources told News4's Pat Collins that...

Helena, Mont. (AP) Sen. Max Baucus undergoes emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain.

Some Senate Democrats are so angry at Max Baucus that they want to strip the Montanan of his seniority on the Finance Committee, writes Al Hunt in The Wall Street Journal.

Dovish Wife Pecks at Sen. Baucus, Praises Saddam Poor Sen. Max Baucus. To trick Montanans into re-electing him he did everything possible to fudge his identity as a Democrat and all but licked President Bush's cowboy boots. Now his appeasement activist of a wife is causing him problems. The senator's wife, Wanda, a painter and anthropologist, has gone so far as to desecrate the American flag by replacing the stars with doves on an appeasement poster prominently displayed at their home in snooty Georgetown. "We are way out of line" and have no right to fight Saddam Hussein, Mrs. B...

Poor Sen. Max Baucus. To trick Montanans into re-electing him he did everything possible to fudge his identity as a Democrat and all but licked President Bush's cowboy boots. Now his appeasement activist of a wife is causing him problems. The senator's wife, Wanda, a painter and anthropologist, has gone so far as to desecrate the American flag by replacing the stars with doves on an appeasement poster prominently displayed at their home in snooty Georgetown. "We are way out of line" and have no right to fight Saddam Hussein, Mrs. B told the Washington Post. "Baghdad is where...

<p>In his reelection campaign last year in conservative Montana, Sen. Max Baucus did everything possible to associate himself with President Bush and fudge his identity as a Democrat. Now that U.S. soldiers are dying and bombs are falling on Baghdad, the 62-year-old five-term senator "believes strongly that Saddam Hussein and his regime must be disarmed and removed from power," his chief of staff, Zak Andersen, told us yesterday through a spokesman.</p>

Filed at 3:03 p.m. ET CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- President Bush insisted Monday that welfare recipients put in a 40-hour work week and said a Senate bill requiring less is riddled with ``so many exceptions, so many loopholes'' that it would reverse six years of welfare progress. Bush leveled his assault on the Democrat-written legislation while on a $1.2 million fund-raising hop to South Carolina for the state's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Sanford. He faulted legislation passed last month by Democrats, who control the Senate Finance Committee, because it does not include the stiffer work requirements he seeks, would not...

<p>Montana Sen. Max Baucus is emerging as the new darling of Hollywood's glitterati, and his Republican challenger says that shows the incumbent is out of touch with the state's conservative voters.</p> <p>Stars like Barbra Streisand, Michael Douglas and Rob Reiner have donated to the campaign of Mr. Baucus, a four-term Democrat up for re-election in Montana, a state where George W. Bush won 58 percent of the vote in 2000.</p>

Associated Press KALISPELL (AP) - Time and collaboration are necessary to increase the timber industry's access to national forests, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., told the Montana Logging Association when it pressed him for a commitment to help open federal lands. "We fight too much, so nothing happens," Baucus said Saturday at the association's annual convention. "We've got to get a solution in the middle. We've got to be negotiating between the forest products industry and the environmental people." Loggers indicated lingering dissatisfaction with the Bitterroot National Forest's agreement, involving environmental and timber groups, for removal of trees burned in the...