At issue is whether Schweitzer's line-item vetoes of their Treasure State Endowment Program projects in House Bill 351 is constitutional.
The local governments argued that state law "does not provide the governor with authority to strike out the projects approved by the Legislature in HB351 to receive TSEP grants and declaring such strike outs void and otherwise without effect."
They contended that the approved projects are not items in an appropriations bill and therefore aren't subject to the governor's veto power. Instead, the various items in HB351 were approved by the Legislature in priority order as a condition of how the money appropriated to TSEP is to be used.
In response, Schweitzer's spokeswoman, Sarah Elliott, said, "The Montana Constitution grants the governor the authority to veto items in appropriation bills."
The constitution grants the governor the authority to "veto items in appropriations bills, and in such instances the procedure shall be the same as upon veto of an entire bill."
"It is ironic that local governments are suing us to spend more money against the advice of their own local legislator," Elliott said. "The governor remains committed to being fiscally prudent with taxpayers' money."
The local governments called their stricken public works proposals "high-priority projects" recommended to the Legislature for approval by the Commerce Department. The grants are needed to address "urgent and serious public health or safety problems," they said.
In a scary new study published in the the journal Animal Cognition, researchers discovered that bomb-sniffing dogs are susceptible to the prejudices of their handlers.
The researchers recruited 18 dogs certified by law enforcement agencies. As a test site, they used four rooms in a drug-and-explosive-free church. The researchers left the first room untouched. In the second, they taped up a sheet of red paper. In the third, they hid a few Slim Jims as a decoy. And in the fourth, they taped red paper to a stash of Slim Jims.
The dog handlers were told they might encounter the scent of pot or gunpowder up to three times per room, sometimes marked with red paper. It was a flat-out lie—there were no target scents. But the dog teams still called 225 false alerts—most often at the site of the red paper, whether there were Slim Jims there or not.
The Plymouth was sprayed with cosmoline, wrapped in plastic, and buried in a concrete tomb, placed on a steel plate so the wheels were off the ground. Stuffed in the trunk were five gallons of gasoline in glass jugs, oil, a case of beer, and other artifacts. Placed inside the glove compartment at the last minute were the contents of a woman’s purse containing fourteen bobby pins, a ladies compact, plastic rain cap, combs, a tube of lipstick, pack of gum, facial tissues, $2.73 in money, and a pack of cigarettes. Also placed in were unpaid parking tickets and a bottle of tranquilizers which the winner of the car may need. During the party in 1957, residents were asked to guess the population of Tulsa in 2007; the guesses were sealed in a steel container and placed in the car. The winner or their heir will receive the Plymouth and a $100 trust fund which was accruing interest since 1957, (reportedly now containing $400). The car was buried in downtown Tulsa with traffic cruising nearby; some were concerned that vibrations may have cracked the concrete tomb allowing moisture to enter. Will the 1957 Plymouth be in mint condition or will it require itself to come back to life like its sister car Christine? I will be there for the unveiling on 15 June 2007 for either a pristine 1957 Plymouth with 7 miles on her or a pile of rust with four dried out rubber tires!
It will be the event of a lifetime!
When the capsule was opened, the prize was not what everyone wanted.
unsurprisingly mostly involves tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Oliver Williscatches Romney engaging in a pretty blatant example of chart fraud, highlighting job loss during 2007 and 2008, the last two years of the Bush administration, as part of the "Obama recovery."
Chris Jeon, a 21-year-old university student from Los Angeles, California,shrugging cooly, declared: “It is the end of my summer vacation, so I thought it would be cool to join the rebels. This is one of the only real revolutions” in the world.
In a daring, one might even say foolhardy, decision two weeks ago, Mr Jeon flew on a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to Cairo. He then travelled by train to Alexandria and by a series of buses to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. From there, he hitched a ride with rebels heading west towards the Libyan capital of Tripoli. After a 400km (248-mile) trek across the desolate North African landscape, he was now in the town of An Nawfaliyah, the toast of his comrades and a newly anointed road warrior.
