CHEERS ... to Lourdes Matsumoto, the Northwest Abortion Access Fund and the Indigenous Idaho Alliance.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit to overturn Idaho’s notorious “abortion trafficking” law, their complaint filed with the U.S. District Court tells you everything you need to know — in ordinary language — about how the Republican-led Legislature believes it can infringe upon your constitutional rights.
Read the complaint. There you’ll find a law that imposes a felony conviction and a prison term of two-to-five years on any adult who enables a minor to obtain an abortion in another state without parental consent. Some young women can’t go to their parents — for a variety of reasons, up to and including the fact that they’re being abused. That works a particular hardship on young women who are economically disadvantaged or members of minority populations.
Next, consider freedom of movement. Idaho’s law not only interferes with your right to cross state lines. It also could impede your intrastate travel — if the purpose is to help a minor ultimately obtain an abortion in another state. Driving up to the Washington border is just as bad as crossing it.
Having a parent’s permission is no guarantee. A prosecutor still can bring criminal charges. Parental consent is an affirmative defense to be presented at trial.
The bill is so poorly written, so vague and so littered with such ambiguous terms — addressing one who “procures” an abortion or “obtains” abortion-inducting medication or engages in “recruiting, harboring or transporting” a person — that you can’t be sure when you’ve violated the law. Is it merely discussing the option of traveling to another state? What happened to free speech?
Not far down the road could be restrictions on your right to legally purchase marijuana or legally gamble in another state.
Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, one of the bill’s cosponsors, admitted as much to the Senate State Affairs Committee.
“As a Legislature, we define what crimes are in Idaho, so in this case, we are saying that conduct constitutes a crime,” Lakey said.
Pressed on the point, Lakey said: “Yes, if we decide to go down that road.”
There you have it — this group of lawmakers say they decide what the laws are.
Fortunately, the courts take a different view.
JEERS ... to Idaho Republican Party Chairperson Dorothy Moon.
She doesn’t like the open primary initiative for good reason: Giving the broadest swath of voters a choice over who governs in the Gem State is going to send a lot of GOP extremists — Moon in particular — back to political exile.
If passed by the voters next year, the measure would replace the closed GOP primary — which puts most of the political power in the hands of a sliver of registered Republican voters — with a top-four primary in the spring and ranked-choice voting in November.
“Such diabolical schemes, like ranked-choice voting and open primaries, are already being promoted by Democrats and leftist groups in Idaho, despite the Idaho Legislature passing a law that bans ranked-choice voting,” Moon wrote last week.
That’s simply untrue. Democrats have not taken a position on the initiative.
On the other hand, a coalition consisting of mainstream Republican leaders and Reclaim Idaho is responsible for the open primary initiative.
And as far as undermining conservatives in electoral politics, no less than the libertarian think tank Cato Institute’s Walter Olson called such claims “bunk.”
With the exception of former Gov. Sarah Palin — whose national ambitions had so alienated voters that they rejected her congressional campaign — conservatives fared well under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting. Olson cites research from the center-right R Street Institute that found the new system provided voters with more choices, fewer uncontested races and a more civil dialog.
Much the same story occurs in Australia and Ireland, as well in a growing number of American nonpartisan municipal elections. Most notably, the system replaced leftist New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio with more moderate Eric Adams.
And you know who agrees with Moon? California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. He vetoed the idea in his state.
CHEERS ... to Chief Justice Richard Bevan and the Idaho Supreme Court.
They’ve expedited the process to examine Attorney General Raul Labrador’s labeling of the open primary initiative.
Backers of that initiative say Labrador — who called for its demise before even completing his own certificate of review — has written ballot titles so biased they encourage people to vote no.
Initiative backers have filed a lawsuit to overturn Labrador’s ballot titles.
The longer this goes unresolved, the more it plays into Labrador’s hands.
Initiative backers already have canceled 30 signature-gathering events for July and August. They have until May 1 to collect 63,000 signatures from registered voters — which translates into the need to collect about 100,000 to adjust for those who are disqualified.
With luck, the Supreme Court will resolve this early next month.
JEERS ... to Idaho Freedom Foundation Legislative Affairs Director Fred Birnbaum.
In a recent column, Birnbaum dressed up the canard that immigrants illegally crossing the southern border are smuggling fentanyl into the U.S.
Then he added: “I can’t think of a clearer case for impeachment than a president deliberately creating a border crisis, one that makes it harder to stop fentanyl smuggling.”
There’s just one problem with that — it’s patently false.
People illegally crossing into the U.S. are responsible for less than 0.02% of fentanyl.
The vast majority of the drug is smuggled across U.S. ports of entry.
And closing the border — during the COVID-19 pandemic — helped accelerate the trend because fentanyl is so profitable and much easier to move.
Last year, 70,000 northbound trucks crossed the border at San Ysidro every day.
Every year, more than 800,000 trucks cross the border at El Paso.
If Birnbaum truly wants to stop fentanyl, he’d focus on stopping Chinese chemicals from reaching Mexican drug cartels.
Or he would do something about reducing the demand for drugs in this country.
Impeaching President Joe Biden won’t accomplish either.
Birnhaum knows that — doesn’t he? — M.T.
