OPINION: Cheers and Jeers: Sunday School every day?

JEERS ... to Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center.

An unapologetic Christian nationalist, Conzatti has championed the scapegoating of transgender people, imposing the nation’s cruelest assault on the reproductive health of Idaho women and, against public opinion to the contrary, cowed state lawmakers into banning books at public libraries.

Now he’s moved on.

If Conzatti has his way, your children will be subjected to 20 Bible verse readings a day, every day, while attending public school. As the Twin Falls Times-News reported, there is no room in Conzatti’s world for other religious texts, such as the Quran.

“Government should promote Christian values,” Conzatti told The Idaho Statesman.

Not everyone believes that.

Not agnostics or atheists.

Certainly not members of other faiths such as Muslims and Jews.

And include among that number Christians who adhere to the long-cherished American constitutional tradition of separating church and state.

Conzatti is living in the past.

Idaho and the U.S. are much more diverse than they were when the U.S. Supreme Court blocked prayer from public schools in the early 1960s.

Even his legal precedents are ancient. Conzatti relies on an 1892 U.S. Supreme Court decision as an

end-run against the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against “an establishment of religion.” Isn’t that the same era that saw the Supreme Court embrace Jim Crow under its infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling?

Assume it takes 20 minutes a day to get through 20 biblical verses. Over the course of a school year, that might approach 6% of the time teachers have to work with their students. What gets lost in the shuffle? Math? Science? Reading? History?

Isn’t it enough that Idaho lawmakers are expected next year to finally raid the public purse, steering scarce tax dollars away from public schools into the pockets of families who rely on private — including religious — instruction?

“We are a Christian ministry and believe that government officials are God’s ministers and they are expected to uphold God’s standards of justice,” Conzatti told the Times-News. “They are expected to govern according to biblical principles.”

So here’s a suggestion for Conzatti and those who agree with him: If the church is going to force itself on the rest of us, then the reverse is equally justified.

When should we start collecting taxes from the church?

CHEERS ... to the 25 to 45 volunteers who devoted much of their weekends providing Lewiston with its 30th annual Winter Spirit Christmas display at Locomotive Park.

Nothing says happy holidays like 10,000 light strings, more than 1 million individual lights or the culmination of labors that began in mid-October to install them, including the use of bucket trucks to reach the tree tops.

“It’s beautiful. It’s awesome and it’s free. A family can come down and walk through it and enjoy it,” Winter Spirit member Robanna Brosten told the Lewiston Tribune’s Eric Barker. “It just makes you happy to be there. I’ve loved it since I moved to the valley 20 years ago.”

Throughout the three decades, the one constant has been Larry Kopczynski. First, he was inspired to decorate the locomotive. From there, he led the expansion, which included an electrical network, a river rock fireplace display and a recently upgraded sound system.

CHEERS ... to U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho.

Even The Bulwark’s William Kristol was taken aback last month when he read what the incoming Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairperson — as well as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee — told Jewish Insider at the Halifax International Security Forum.

“Hark! Are those a few swallows gliding and darting and swooping above, elegantly braving the Trumpian winter skies?” Kristol wrote. “Perhaps.”

At issue are two of President-elect Donald Trump’s most troubling Cabinet appointees:

-- Former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth to head the Department of Defense. Not only is he inexperienced managing such a behemoth as the Pentagon, but his nomination has been buffeted by allegations of sexual assault and alcohol abuse.

-- Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, to serve as director of national intelligence. In some circles, Gabbard is seen as a Russian asset.

If you expected Risch to resume the role of sycophant he played during Trump’s first term, you didn’t hear it at Halifax.

“Ask me this question again after the hearings,” Risch told Jewish Insider. “These appointments by the president are constrained by the advice and consent of the Senate. The Senate takes that seriously, and we vet these.”

JEERS ... to U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.

As incoming chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee, Crapo is responsible for the confirmation hearings of several Cabinet nominees, including Trump’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

There’s enough already known about Kennedy’s background, including his anti-vaccine activism and one-time heroin addiction, to raise red flags.

At the very least, you’d think Crapo would insist that the Trump transition team agree to the standard FBI background checks.

And you’d be wrong.

Here’s what he told CNN: “No, I’ll let that be a decision that President Trump makes. ... My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.”

So much for “advice and consent.” — M.T.