Category: Uncategorized

From a release:

2015-2016 Officers Announced for Pennington Co. GOP.

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015, the Pennington County Republicans disclosed the results of their biennial officer election. The new officers (all residents of Pennington County) are as follows:

Ben Treadwell – Chair
Patricia Johnson – Vice Chair
Heather Gosch – Secretary/Treasurer
Sandy Marlette – State Committeewoman
Jeff Marlette – State Committeeman

The Republican party’s by-laws dictate that only members of the county’s GOP Central Committee may vote for county officers. The five above were unanimously elected for the 2015 – 2016 term. Despite adverse weather, turnout for this election was greater than any internal election in the party’s recent memory, with more than eighty persons in attendance.

From Representative Fred Deutsch, the first compilation that I’ve seen in one place of penalties for breaching cell-phone etiquette in the South Dakota Legislature:

(Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared my the daily original piece for the SDWC Daily Digest for 1/14/2015. Although I missed last night’s edition due to illness, it’s delivered daily for those who don’t monitor the blogs on a constant basis. If you’re not subscribing, you should be. Original content, a daily review, items of note and more.)

Is this “the better” LRC?

If you hadn’t heard, the South Dakota Legislative Research Council has taken a few hits in the last couple of years.

In recent years it had employees accused of sharing confidential legislative drafts with other legislators. It saw long-time hands & managers retire and be replaced, and had a decade-long veteran executive director resign after a critical review commissioned by the National Conference of State Legislatures which recommended sweeping changes, some of which were implemented.

A new Executive Director, Jason Hancock, was brought in in late summer/early fall from the Idaho Department of Education, where Hancock served as Deputy Director, and many claimed that this would right the ship from the problems that the LRC had in recent years.

However, for a ship that is supposed to be on a corrected course, the LRC seems to be somewhat limping along as it finds it’s way. For the past decade of on-line bill filing, pre-filed measures were available beginning in mid-December on the LRC’s web site. This year? They finally appeared a day or so before session.

In previous years, as measures had been introduced and filed by members, they had been promptly filed and placed on-line for public review. But the new LRC? We’ve ended two days of the legislation session, and nearly no new  measures (besides those pre-filed) are yet to appear on the LRC’s web site.   One Legislator I spoke with today echoed the lament, and noted that their performance was slower than any other year they’d ever seen. (And that’s saying it in a far nicer manner than they did.)

When it had been brought up by this and other web sites earlier, Capitol news stringer Bob Mercer was quick to rush to their defense, and claimed the LRC was “proceeding with caution.”

The LRC’s cautious speed might work for Bob, but for Legislators and the public, we were told this was going to be a better LRC.

We’re still waiting to see it.

As I’m trying to regulate my influenza wracked body temperature, it’s probably a good time to note that it will be light posting today, as I attempt to be on the mend. I even got a flu shot and everything, but with as many kids as I have, someone was bound to being it home.

Here’s an interesting take on “global warming” from a glacier scientist living in the state. Humans have little to do with it, and warming is a lot better than cooling:

Hughes even agrees that human activity probably have something to do with it.

“It may have given it a nudge,” Hughes said. “But there are so many natural events that swamp that out, for example, the eruption of Vesuvius, or Krakatoa. The industrial revolution was more gradual, over decades.”
As recently as the 1970s, Hughes recalls, his colleagues feared for another ice age.

Hughes says a number of his colleagues at places such as NASA and the University of Maine “have urged me to march in lockstep with Albert Gore, the drum major in the parade denouncing global warming as an unmitigated disaster.”

But Hughes – who returned a few years ago to live in Fort Pierre now that he has retired – has demurred.

“It’s human nature for them to pound the panic drum,” said Hughes, but added he isn’t convinced global warming won’t be as bad as feared.

“In fact, it’s going to be a big plus, in the balance.”

Read it all here in the Capitol Journal.

From Tony Mangan at KCCR comes the first note from Marty Jackley that an appeal is forthcoming:

Jackley says the appeal could be heard fairly soon because other states with similar cases, such as North Dakota, also will likely be heard by the same Eighth Circuit panel. Jackley expects some type of ruling this year.

While the U.S. Supreme Court may have the final say on the issue, Jackley says he is compelled to defend the state’s ban because it was approved by the voters. Jackley says the state believes this is an issue best decided by the voters than the courts.

Since most of the briefs and documents are the same in each case, Jackley says the expense to South Dakota for defending the ban has not been expensive. He says an appeal may eventually cost about $1,000.

Read it here.

New US Senator Mike Rounds expects strong support for Keystone XL, and hints that an amendment may be coming to increase support even further:

U.S. Senator–Elect, Mike Rounds said, “The Republican leader has said we want open debate, we want to have honest discussion on these issues and we’re going to start with up to 30 hours of discussion and debate and then we’ll vote. I believe the Keystone XL pipeline bill will move forward, I think right now there’s about 63 supporters right now that we know of, but there may be an amendment which might bring other supporters on as well.”

Read it all here at KEVN.

As stolen from Facebook:

Umm…. I can’t imagine Shantel Krebs (R) or maybe Angelia Schultz (D) posting this to facebook. But now that the election is over for 2014 Libertarian Secretary of State candidate Emmett Reistroffer, it’s just another day on facebook:

WHO POSTS THIS KIND OF STUFF TO FACEBOOK?!? FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!?!

I’m speechless.

Put a fork in Reistroffer’s Medical pot legalization efforts for 2016. I suspect it’s over before it started.