JEERS ... to Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho.
He is not President Donald Trump's White House press secretary. That's Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
He is not the secretary of state. That's Mike Pompeo.
He's not even Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham or a member of the legion of shameless Trump sycophants on "Fox and Friends."
He is the chairman-in-waiting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That obligates him to safeguard the national security of the American people.
And when a president returns from a summit with one of the bloodiest dictators on the planet holding a piece of paper in his hand and - borrowing a line from Neville Chamberlain - assuring Americans they can "sleep well tonight!" - you'd hope a senator holding such a sacred trust would ask:
- North Korea's Kim Jong Un basked in the aura of the presidential summit his country has long wanted.
What did we get?
- Trump pledged to stop joint military exercises with South Korea - something the north and China have long sought.
What did we get?
- Trump raised the prospect of removing nearly 30,000 U.S. troops from South Korea.
What did we get?
- How does threatening a trade war with China enhance American leverage with Kim?
What did we get instead?
Here was Risch Tuesday with CNN's Erin Burnett:
"You would have to be the most naive person on the face of the earth to think that the president of the United States is going to walk in, meet with a guy for a bit, walk out and say, well, I trust him and that's it."
Burnett observed that's precisely what Trump did.
"Look, I know you people are trying to put a rough spin on this," Risch countered. "But this is an entirely different situation than we had 120 days ago. Give him a break. At least give him some credit for saying that there is no longer testing."
Serving as the president's cheerleader is falling short of the legacy set by two Idaho giants who scaled the heights of the foreign relations chairmanship.
In the 1920s, Republican Sen. William E. Borah vigorously opposed a president of his own party, Calvin Coolidge, for sending American troops to Nicaragua.
In the 1960s, Sen. Frank Church debated fellow Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War.
But Trump trusts Kim.
Risch trusts Trump.
Sleep well.
CHEERS ... to Whitman County Prosecutor Denis Tracy.
With this elected Republican, party loyalty goes only so far.
Case in point: Former Washington State University College Republican President James Allsup's election as a GOP precinct captain for Whitman County's 129th precinct.
Allsup marched with white nationalists at the deadly Aug. 12 "Unite the Right" rally at Charlottesville, Va.
Under his leadership, the WSU College Republicans constructed a spray-painted wall to convey Trump's intolerance for immigrants during the 2016 campaign.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with being pro-white," Allsup said in a recent interview. "I think you can be pro-white just like people can be pro-black or pro-Hispanic without being anti-any other group."
Allsup's election was a fluke. He ran unopposed. But that didn't stop Tracy from sounding the alarm in Monday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
"To me, being a Republican means supporting equal rights and equal treatment under the law. It means promoting respect for our country and our system of government. To me, being a Republican means promoting social justice and it means working to keep Whitman County a great place for anyone to live and raise a family," Tracy wrote.
"I will condemn Allsup's push to preserve his white 'European' race from the imagined perils of Americans who happened to not look exactly like him. I will speak until I have no more breath to say it: Allsup can try to put a nice new dress on his old despicable Nazi ideas, but I recognize them for what they are. They aren't Republican. They aren't American. They are not me."
CHEERS ... to Idaho Board of Correction member Cindy Wilson of Boise.
Monday, the board learned Idaho will need a $500 million prison expansion to make room for a burgeoning prison population. The state's prisons and jails are crammed solid, requiring Idaho to rent space for 250 inmates at the GEO Group-operated Karnes County Correctional Center in Texas.
Wilson, the Democratic nominee for Idaho superintendent of public instruction, asked the right questions:
- Why is Idaho locking up so many people?
- How come so many of the incoming inmates are serving time for drug offenses?
"I mean incarcerating people because they have an addiction doesn't work," she said.
Unfortunately, the state is headed in the wrong direction. While it's not the only factor, the Legislature's retreat from reasonable reform in the criminal justice system plays a role here. Unheralded at the time, the Legislature in 2017 unanimously rolled back measures meant to avoid imprisoning people for technical violations - not new crimes - of the terms of their parole.
If you want to know why the state's once stable prison population is on the rise, start there.
CHEERS ... to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lynn Luker, R-Boise.
Along with Wilson, he slammed Board of Correction Chairwoman Debbie Field's suggestion that the state at least consider resorting to a private contractor to solve its crowded prison problem.
Remember the nightmare Idaho endured at the hands of Corrections Corporation of America?
CCA - which now goes by the name CoreCivic - lined its pockets by understaffing the Idaho Correctional Center outside Boise, thereby inflaming inmate on inmate violence to such extremes that the place gained a worldwide reputation as "the gladiator school." Inmate lawsuits led to a federal contempt of court citation and before the state sent CCA packing four years ago, it learned the private prison outfit had bilked taxpayers for phantom shifts.
Idaho accepted a $1 million settlement - but many believe CCA got the better end of that deal.
"Corrections is one of government's core responsibilities, and it should be in-house," Luker said. "From a legislative standpoint, from a constitutional standpoint even, I think it needs to be in-house. ... I don't think the public's going to like going down that road again."
Good for Luker. - M.T.
