Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

Education groups are mixed on the bill. While they support the idea of state funding for all-day kindergarten, they also believe many schools - particularly smaller ones - need more money for basic needs first. They also want the state's share of school funding increased.

Pete Carparelli, executive director of the Montana Quality Education Coalition, said many school districts are cutting programs and teacher salaries to make ends meet, and added the Senate bill "left a number of our concerns unaddressed."

He and other education officials said a return to court over school funding is likely if the bill isn't substantially changed before lawmakers adjourn April 27.

Dave Puyear, director of the Montana Rural Education Association, called the bill's $150 million price tag "misleading" because of the money it includes for all-day kindergarten and a new fund to pay for school maintenance and construction.

Majority Republicans in the state House of Representatives have given themselves extra weight on a key committee, mirroring an identical decision by majority Democrats in the state Senate.

House Republicans, led by Speaker Scott Sales of Bozeman, assigned themselves a three-vote margin on the House Appropriations Committee, the panel that gets first crack at crafting Montana's two-year, multibillion-dollar state budget.

Sales said Wednesday that his choices in the House were influenced, in part, by what Senate Democrats awarded themselves in the Senate.

"I had to do that to match what the Senate (Democrats) did," Sales said.

Republican leaders of Montana's closely divided House of Representatives quashed a Democratic plan Monday to limit the amount of Republican power on committees that influence hundreds of would-be laws, including the state's budget.

On a 5-5 party line vote, the evenly divided House Rules Committee rejected a Democratic plan of dictating that Republicans, who have a one-vote majority over the Democrats in the full House, will have only a one-vote majority on House committees.

When Lucinda Hughes heard she would have to drink sea moss elixir while vacationing in the Bahamas, she was certain it would make her sick. Sure enough, three months later, Hughes is very sick — every morning — and expecting her first baby in April. She got pregnant after she and her husband went on a three-day Procreation Vacation at a resort on Grand Bahama Island.

It's part of a trend in which hotels around the world are luring couples who are trying to have a baby. Resorts are offering on-site sex doctors, romantic advice and exotic food and drink calculated to put lovers in the mood and hasten the pitter-patter of little feet.

The couple had been trying for only two months, since their wedding in May. But like most couples they have hectic schedules in Washington, where she is a freelance writer and he is a city employee. Cell phones are always ringing, day planners are jammed. "We're all overscheduled," Hughes said.

A Billings man who photographed himself engaged in sexual activity with children and had thousands of child pornography images on his computer will spend 30 years in federal prison.

Senior U.S. District Judge Jack Shanstrom on Wednesday sentenced Daniel Gerard Lacey, 31, to the statutory maximum on each of three counts to which Lacey pleaded guilty and ran the terms concurrently. He ordered $421 restitution.

A former minister accused in a civil lawsuit of molesting three young girls now faces criminal charges in the same case.

Terrance R. Passmore, 48, is charged with two felony counts of sexual assault and two felony counts of rape. He made an initial appearance in Justice Court on Tuesday. His attorney, Chuck Watson, said Passmore is expected to appear sometime this week in District Court, where he will plead not guilty to the charges.

Shanta was only 13 when her parents forced her to leave school and married her to a man twice her age. At 15, while most of her peers were in school, she gave birth. Now 17 and emaciated, Shanta is back in her parent's home after her marriage collapsed: Her husband is in prison for a serious crime that Shanta didn't want to reveal, just as she didn't want to reveal her real name.

"I didn't even understand what marriage meant at 13," she says, her eyes brimming with tears, as her 2-year-old lolls in the background. Shanta hadn't even seen her husband, let alone known him, before she tied the nuptial knot.

More than one-third of all brides in India are below the age of 18, an estimate that activists say could be low, as many marriages - both child and adult - seldom get registered. A Supreme Court decision in February now compels couples to register. Nevertheless, this month, on Akshaya Tritiya, an auspicious festival for Hindus, child marriages were reported to have been solemnized in parts of the country, under the nose of police and despite a 1929 law that sets the legal age of marriage at 18 for girls and 21 for boys.