The worst recession in a generation isn’t over yet, but now is the time to start thinking and planning for the recovery. What will the recovery in Montana look like? Will it be a V, W, or even the dreaded L?

Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Chairman of the Senate Western Caucus, is standing up for Wyoming agriculture and speaking out against the Administration’s job-killing Cap-and-Tax plan.

The Montana Farm Bureau Federation Young Farmer and Rancher Committee is asking you to take action now in the fight to keep the next generation of ag producers on the land. The future of American agriculture depends on whether or not beginning and expanding farmers and ranchers can afford to purchase the land they need to run farm and ranch businesses. Because estate taxes influence the sale price of land, the tax can interfere with the orderly transfer of farmland to the next generation of farmers and ranchers.

Individuals, family partnerships or family corporations own 98 percent of our nation’s 2 million farms and ranches. Estate taxes threaten family-owned farm and ranches and the livelihoods of families who make their living in production agriculture. It takes two and half years of farm returns for a moderate-sized farm operation to pay off the estate tax owed.

Senator Baucus (D-MT), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is pushing a propos ...

Congressman Denny Rehberg is introducing legislation to require the mint to issue 1907 Augustus Saint Gaurdens Palladium bullion $20 coins, instead of gold, as a way to help Stillwater Mining Co., which was dropped by General Motors as a supplier of the metal used in catalytic converters.

Seven contaminated underground storage tank sites in Yellowstone National Park will be cleaned up at a cost of $3.9 million, starting this fall, taking four to ten years to complete, among thousands nationwide from which fuel and other contaminants that are leaking from aging underground tanks.

Attorney General Steve Bullock has issued a formal opinion, settling a dispute whether county commissioners may levy mills to support new county hospital districts in the affirmative, in response to questions raised by Granite county commissioners about a new countywide hospital district created in 2008.

A study of prices received on calves sold through seven video auction sales in 2008 reveals that cattle producers received the highest premiums since 1995 on VAC45 and VAC PreCon calves, and the second highest premium on VAC34 calves. Fourteen years of Pfizer Animal Health price data shows an increasing value for preconditioned calves.

Several livestock and hunting groups have intervened in a lawsuit brought by environmentalists who want to stop public hunts of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies. The case is before U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, who stopped wolf hunts proposed in the region in 2008, and ordered the animal returned to federal protection.

U of M gets high marks in the "Best 371 Colleges" guidebook put out by Princeton Review, in the "quality of life" and "green" categories, but rank 12th for having the worst dorms in the country. The student body is described as Montanans who love football and big trucks, and out of state hippies who love the mountains.

Border patrol agents, working with the Cut Bank Police Department, and the Glacier County Sheriff's Department, arrested a man who had threatened to kill a large number of people to, in his words "wake u society." This, a week after customs and border protection released its third quarter statistics for 2009, which found that narcotics seizures were at an all time high.