As the Rocky Mountain States are largely dominated by the Republican Party, a rise of ambitious Democrats are looking to build a network of support across borders to increase their presence in the region and ultimately convert some states from deep red to purple or even blue.

Montana was the first to “go” purple.  As a traditionally conservative state, they now have two Democratic Senators, Max Baucus and John Tester, and Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer, who currently has an approval rating around 70 percent.

Tester, a popular junior Senator, recently announced his backing of Larry LaRocco in a fundraising email.

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Things just don’t seem to be looking up for Idaho’s Republican Party and their leading Senate candidate, Lieutenant Governor Jim Risch.

First, there was Obamamania. Idaho’s depressed Democrats rallied to the first Democratic presidential candidate to visit the state in decades, giving him a stunning victory on Super Tuesday and continuing to turn out high volumes of volunteers and huge events, most popping at the seams.

Then Risch had to fight off seven other Republican candidates seeking to nab the nomination, although he succeeded and won the nomination with 65 percent of the vote.

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Idaho’s colleges and universities are infamous for their political activity…or lack thereof. In fact, most student groups from Idaho’s biggest universities are almost entirely defunct; they feature stale websites with expired leaders, almost no political content and no events for the foreseeable future.

That is, until 2008.

Prior to this heated election year, Idaho’s student political groups have been disorganized, lazy or entirely nonexistent. But a combination of factors have led to an increased awareness in politics among Idaho’s usually dormant youth, and it just might be enough to change the composition of Idaho’s voting blocs.

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The issue of the environment is one of the most important, and most overlooked, issues in the political scene.  This year, climate change has taken a front seat in the environment debate, but the environment still registers in single digits when voters are asked what their number one voting issue is in the United States.  This is part 1 of a two-part series about Idaho's natural environment and what some people are doing about it.

Click here to watch it!

Idaho held its highly-publicized primary last night with John McCain and Barack Obama winning the Republican and Democratic primaries, respectively. However, an interesting side story has begun to unfold with most of the polling in the Mountain States completed.

The underlying headline after Idaho’s primary was that Representative Ron Paul finished with a stunning 25 percent of the vote. He also scored that back on Super Tuesday (Feb 5) at Montana’s Republican Caucus, actually placing ahead of Senator John McCain (though the state was won by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney). Rep. Paul also outvoted Sen. McCain in Nevada despite, again, falling to Romney. In Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, Paul ran competitively behind the two. 

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(R. Keith Roark, chair, Idaho Democratic Party and Idaho Democratic superdelegate)

Senator Barack Obama picked up the endorsement of R. Keith Roark, Idaho’s last superdelegate this morning, topping off his record 62-point Super Tuesday win in the state and clinching the state’s entire superdelegate prize.

To date, only Idaho’s four superdelegates and Nebraska’s six superdelegates are unanimously committed to Obama. No states are entirely committed to Obama’s chief rival, Senator Hillary Clinton.

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Although, this time I’m going to approach the topic from a completely untapped angle.  We have heard about the liberal media bias, the conservative media bias, whether journalists can even avoid a bias and what should be done about said bias if it does indeed exist and cannot be eliminated.

But what about the monetary media bias?  Here’s the theory – the media isn’t biased to the left or the right.  Sure, some anchors, hosts and pundits are biased, since that is their job, but when it comes to the producers, the owners, the decision makers,...