JEERS ... to Idaho Republican Party Chairperson Dorothy Moon.
This is Moon’s party. Look at what it’s up to: Imposing loyalty oaths. Undermining your rights at the ballot box. And perpetuating the “big lie.” It’s all underway at the Idaho Republican Party State Central Committee summer meeting, which begins today in Challis.
There, you will find debates about:
Reprimanding Rep. Lori McCann, R-Lewiston, and 13 other House Republicans who helped sustain Gov. Brad Little’s veto of a bill to harass librarians out of the state by requiring them to filter out materials deemed “harmful” — whatever that means — to minors.
Allowing party hardliners to effectively veto the voters’ nomination of candidates in a primary election if those candidates become too independent.
Removing the voters’ ability to create their own laws through the initiative process — the same vehicle that may end the GOP’s rigged primary election system.
Eliminating the bipartisan, citizen’s commission that has successfully redrafted Idaho’s legislative and congressional districts for three decades and restoring the GOP-led Legislature’s gerrymandering power.
Creating a nanny state by prohibiting “the sale and distribution of COVID injections and mRNA injections in the state of Idaho” regardless of whether the patient wants the vaccine.
Arguing that the FBI had “foreknowledge of the events that transpired on January 6th,” and calling for “the abolition of this corrupt government agency.”
What you won’t see is anybody talking about how to improve your lives.
CHEERS ... to Senate Democratic Leader Melissa Wintrow and House Democratic Leader Ilana Rubel, both of Boise.
Just looking at a map tells you Idaho’s assault on women’s reproductive rights is an anomaly within its own neighborhood. State laws protect women’s rights in Oregon and Washington. The state constitution preserves those rights in Montana. Court actions have blocked anti-abortion rights actions in Wyoming. And even Utah’s trigger law is on hold pending judicial review.
But did you know Idaho may be an outlier for the entire nation?
That’s the word Wintrow and Rubel brought back from a White House conference.
And it’s hard to dispute, considering the following:
Even among red states with six- or 12-week bans, Idaho’s law stands out with its lack of exceptions for a woman’s health or fetal anomaly.
Idaho has the only law making it a crime to transport a minor to have a legal abortion in another state.
Only in Idaho has the attorney general suggested that a doctor could be prosecuted for even discussing a patient’s option for obtaining a legal abortion in another state.
Among the 13 states that have banned abortions, only Idaho refused to extend 12 months of postpartum maternal Medicaid coverage. A bill to do that, with a price tag of $6.3 million in state dollars, was shelved in House Health and Welfare Committee Chairperson John Vander Woude’s desk.
And, again thanks to Vander Woude, Idaho is the sole state to disband its Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which chronicles the state’s rising maternal death rate.
There’s possibly only one thing worse than living under the most extreme anti-abortion rights laws in the nation and that’s not knowing how extreme they are.
JEERS ... to Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador.
Nobody asked him to seek the state’s top legal position. But now that he has it, would it be too much trouble for him to explain himself to the people who hired him?
Here’s the question: Why is he playing politics with the open primary initiative?
His office is responsible for reviewing — and issuing legal advice about — the wording of proposed ballot measures. But even before proponents of the measure to end a dozen years of Idaho’s rigged Republican primary brought their initiative to his desk, Labrador tweeted: “Let’s defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups.”
Next, Labrador assigned to the review process his chief litigation and constitutional defense chief Lincoln Davis along with Deputy Attorney General Jim Rice — who in his previous role as a state senator worked to undermine Idaho’s initiative process in 2019 and again in 2021.
With his impartiality under question, Labrador refused to farm out the analysis to an independent law firm.
When Labrador’s office released its review, it veered beyond the typical analysis of drafting errors into declaring it unconstitutional — leading former Idaho Supreme Court Chief Justice and Republican Attorney General Justice Jim Jones to label Labrador’s work product “patently baloney.”
But every time the Idaho Capital Sun has asked Labrador to explain, he runs away.
What’s he afraid of?
CHEERS ... to Lewiston Mayor Dan Johnson and Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport Manager Mike Isaacs.
You can thank them for goats — not “greatest of all time” — but actual, weed-chewing goats.
When Michelle Schmidt of the Lewiston Goat Project approached them, they agreed to a privately-funded pilot project to put goats to work on invasive weeds at the walking trail between Bryden Canyon Road and Preston Avenue.
The launch of the three- to five-year program is meant to provide an alternative to the ongoing use of chemicals to control weeds and restore self-sustaining vegetation. It’s easier on the environment. Goats are especially effective with yellow star thistle. The technique leaves behind enough vegetation to control for erosion.
And besides, when 400 goats from Pomeroy’s Petty Family Goats were munching on weeds last week, it gave people something entertaining to watch.
JEERS ... to U.S. Reps. Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher, both R-Idaho, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.
Wednesday, they joined a party-line vote to censure Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., on the dubious grounds that he somehow victimized former President Donald Trump about his campaign’s ties to Russia.
In Simpson’s case, it’s particularly disappointing. Just a week ago, he joined 19 fellow Republicans in voting against a similar measure as an example of what he called “revenge politics.”
This time, Simpson apparently felt obligated to comply with the GOP leadership.
Putting party before principle is what got us where we are today. — MT
