Month: <span>September 2019</span>

Idaho state officials like to declare how their state is open for business, and in many respects it is. But in some areas it is fiercely stubborn — to the point of blocking interstate commerce.

Such as commerce in hemp.

Late last year a new federal farm bill passed legalizing on a national level commerce and transport of hemp, a plant product genetically similar to marijuana (both are considered forms of cannabis) but without its psychotropic capabilities. Hemp, remarkable versatile, is used in construction, for clothing and other cloth goods, paper, foods, medications and other uses. That follows legalization in states around the country, including most states around the west . . . but not Idaho. In Idaho, unlike many other states, no legal distinction is made between hemp and marijuana, which also is illegal in Idaho (though not in most of its neighboring states). There have been attempts throughout this millennium to change the hemp law in Idaho, including one in last year’s legislature, but it hasn’t happened yet.

One hemp industry website pointed out, “Hemp entrepreneurs say that hemp transportation has been an elusive promise of nationwide legalization. The Farm Bill promised protection for hemp transportation but left states with no uniform way to test THC content. So, cannabis plants that may go on a truck as legal hemp in one state can fail a THC test in another state and be seized as illegal marijuana.”

Last year, in one widely-publicized case, Idaho officials seized a truckload of industrial hemp from Oregon bound for Colorado, and criminally charged the truck driver. The case has been partly resolved, but the hemp remains seized.

The federal Department of Agriculture said in one memo, “States and Indian tribes also may not prohibit the interstate transportation or shipment of hemp lawfully produced under the 2014 Farm Bill.” But Idaho officials seem to have made clear they intend to do just that. (As the feds gradually release clarifying regulations over time, some of that trouble may ease. Then again, given the attitudes at stake, maybe not.)

Drawing your attention now to the states west of Idaho: Washington and Oregon, where the hemp industry is thriving.

In Oregon, where hemp growing has been legal since 2015, the expansion has been rapid. In year one of legalization the state had 13 growers operating on 105 acres of land; this year the growers number about 2,000, operating on about 62,000 acres. Roll down your car window in many rural parts of Oregon and you can smell the new industry. (Side note: Not everyone loves the odor.)

Since Washington and California to Oregon’s north and south also are substantial hemp growers, many Oregon producers look toward shipping east – which means through Idaho. But what they’re seeing is a big, bad road block to their commercial efforts.

That may mean a psychology is starting to develop in some places about how commercially to avoid Idaho. Like other states, Idaho pulls in substantial money, in public revenues and in the private economy, from trucking businesses. But what may be developing is a line of thinking that sends trucks south, over remote and lightly populated highways, through Nevada instead, on their way to other states.

States other than Idaho.

People in most states like to maintain their distinctiveness from others in various ways; just as there’s an Idaho Way of doing things, people in Oregon and Washington and Nevada and Montana and other states like to proclaim their own ways too. Fine.

But when some of those distinctive ways start shutting down economic and other communication with their neighbors, they might be worth reviewing.

One of the few certainties about war is its unpredictability: You can never be sure what you’ll wind up with, and that’s if you win. Impeachment, especially of a president, is the political equivalent.

A few thoughts, then, as the U.S. House of Representatives takes its initial steps in what looks like a probable impeachment of President Donald Trump.

Uncertainty is a central consideration. It might not happen in the House; at this writing (Tuesday afternoon) there’s not a clear majority in favor. (That could change.) We don’t know what an inquiry might turn up; it might make the case against the president stronger, or it might not. The Senate widely is assumed to be a lock for acquittal, since much of the Republican caucus would have to go along with conviction for that to happen; but even that is not necessarily a certainty. Republican consultant Mike Murphy made a compelling case today for the flipping of a number of Republican votes: “My Democratic friends assume the worst, seeing most elected Republicans as little more than a corrupt cartel of Trump bitter-enders. I think they underestimate the character of many of the men and women I know well who serve the Republican Party.”

Many analysts have pointed out that polling consistently for more than a year has shown more Americans opposing than supporting impeachment (something close to 55% to 37% has been a norm). Will that remain stable? It might not if congressional Democrats unite in favor of impeachment, since up to now only about 60% of Democrats on average have favored impeachment (and somewhat under half of independents). Many may have reflected the division on the subject they’ve seen in the Democratic congressional caucuses, and the numbers could rise considerably if Democrats (and Democratic-leaning independents) coalesce around it.

The other consideration is the new Ukraine scandal: The president apparently using the threat of withholding congressionally-approved United States funds from Ukraine to pressure a Ukraine investigation of his leading political rival. This is a clear-cut situation, little of importance about it is disputed, and it implicates both American national security and the willingness of the president to use the power of the presidency – and that of foreign governments – to interfere with the 2020 elections. The case is easy enough to understand; you can put it on a bumper sticker.

The one poll I’ve seen on impeachment that factors in Ukraine asked, “If President Donald Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to incentivize the country’s officials to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, would you support or oppose impeachment?” The result: 55% favor impeachment (44% “strongly”), and just 26% were opposed. The numbers on impeachment had more than flipped.

Of course, once these trains start, they take on a life of their own. The House Democrats, and their Senate counterparts, could make a hash of things, which wouldn’t be the first time. How might they not?

Stats specialist Nate Silver had a few thoughts about this, and three merit repetition.

First, “Be narrow and specific, perhaps with a near-exclusive focus on Ukraine.” The list of possible impeachable offenses is quite long, stretching out past the horizon. Democrats may see some temptation to throw in the kitchen sink; if they do, they’d just be lowering fog into the proceedings, something Trump surely would welcome. Forget about Russia; stick to Ukraine.

Second, point out why this action has merit even only a year ahead of an election when voters can make their own decision on Trump: Because that election is only a year away. If the president did what he’s being accused of – and in large part has admitted – then he has displayed a willingness to use the vast powers of the presidency to go so far as to steal the next national election. That would put the future of the United States as a nation governed by its people at direct risk. Many Americans could get the point that this is an extreme enough situation to merit an extreme action, which impeachment is.

The other key point Silver makes: Do it quickly. The core facts are out there, and many of the rest (those available in any event in near future) should be available soon. (Take note of the prospect of congressional testimony this week of the still-unknown whistleblower who raised the whole situation.)

Even done with optimum skill, this won’t be easy for anyone to navigate. And there haven’t been a lot of impeachments through American history to draw from. But some paths toward impeachment clearly are smoother than others.

About a century ago a bunch of cities were located in northern Bannock County, in the area of Pocatello. There was Pocatello and Chubbuck and, among others, on the northwest side of the larger community, Fairview and North Pocatello.

The Pocatello area was growing as a railroad, manufacturing and later education center, and all those small communities started bumping up against each other. In 1924 the villages of Fairview and North Pocatello decided to merge, and became the city of Alameda. The new city’s population was about 1,800 then. It continued to grow, and by 1960 it was more than 10,000. The city was then led by an ambitious political figure, George Hansen (later a U.S. representative), who did the unusual thing of arguing that his job ought to vanish: He supported a merger of Alameda with Pocatello. That merger happened, after people in the cities voted approval, in 1962.

Here’s the echo of today from all that: Alameda wasn’t the only city considering a merger with Pocatello in 1962. The municipality of Chubbuck, on the north side of Pocatello, was voting too, and its voters rejected the proposal. The two cities are separate to this day.

So far.

A group of Pocatello city officials, including long-time council member Jim Johnston, are supporting a new plan to merge the two cities. In another echo of the past, there’s sharp opposition from much of the leadership of Chubbuck. That difference in local leadership attitudes may have been one of the reasons for the 1962 vote happening as it did.

Some aspects of the current plan may draw some quick opposition around the area. There’s talk, for example, of renaming the merged jurisdiction Gate City, which probably would never fly. (Pocatello is among other things already a distinctive and reasonably well-known name; why re-brand from scratch?)

Chubbuck officials will tell you – at least they have for years told anyone listening – that the two cities really are quite different in character, and that’s more right than wrong. They also have a realistic, though possibly rebuttable, case about how finances would work (to Chubbuck’s detriment) if the cities united.

But the Pocatello advocates have some good arguments for a merger.

Johnston (who said he plans to make the case for unification as a key part of his upcoming council campaign) argued that, “If we could eliminate duplication of services, we would save huge dollars and be able to reduce the tax burden.” Maybe; merger proposals do not always deliver as clear savings as seem evident in advance.

But they usually do result in efficiencies and more cooperative work. A local area split into a number of jurisdictions has more obstacles to overcome when it tries to accomplish something region-wide. (The Ada and Canyon areas are experiencing the same thing, and while merger talk isn’t in the wind, many of the issues surrounding it are.) Pocatello and Chubbuck are distinct entities, but then parts of Pocatello (and to a lesser extent Chubbuck too) are sharply different from each other. And if the merger brought together a wider range of points of view and perspective, and forced people who think differently to interact with each other, some useful results probably would come from that.

There would even be a matter of civic pride and economic development, which could work together. If the cities were united, the urban population base would seem to increase. Pocatello’s population recently has been counted at 56,266 and Chubbuck’s 15,315; united, they would form a city of 71,581. That would make it clearly the biggest city in Idaho east of Boise or outside the Ada-Canyon area. It would gain some cachet, and also more attention as businesses consider optimal locations. The difference would be artificial, true, but first impressions do sometimes count.

Pocatello voters will get a chance to mull some of this during the council campaigns this fall. So will the residents of Chubbuck since, after all, they won’t have far to hear to the advocates over in Pocatello.

Compromise: An agreement or settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.
► Oxford English Dictionary

Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.
► Greg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

I first heard the word “squish” used by a group of college Republicans, to refer to someone who is not an absolutist and is open to compromise. It seems to have remained much more in use on the right than on the left, though there’s no particularly good reason for that: The point it implies is applicable about the same on either side of the fence.

The point is that compromise is caving – that it amounts to giving in and giving up, and an abdication of principle.

Compromise is not that – people who engage in politics often wind up fighting fiercely because they are principled – but it does involve the mature, as opposed to childish, idea that in a society where a variety of people want different things, you can’t (to coin a phrase) always get what you want. The word comes from 14th century France (a compromis), which refers to a willingness by two or more parties to submit to a joint arbitration, as opposed to, in their case, fighting to someone’s death.

Compromise, in other words, is in the DNA of politics in non-dictatorship situations; it is absent in authoritarian states, where only one point of view is allowed ever to win out. Compromise means that two sides have to come together and try to find common ground where they can, and agree each to concede a little in return for a larger agreement – one that can be lived with, if not become beloved, by both sides. The idea of a settlement reached by an easing back of demands, a willingness to make concessions, grew from that.

Compromise may not be as unpopular as it’s sometimes made out to be. In 2017 the Pew Research Center found “In general terms, the public continues to express a preference for elected officials who seek political compromises. About six-in-ten (58%) say they like elected officials who make compromises with people with whom they disagree, while fewer (39%) say they like politicians who stick to their positions. About seven-in-ten Democrats and Democratic leaners (69%) say they like elected officials who compromise. Liberal Democrats (76%) are more likely to hold this view than conservatives and moderates (63%). Republicans and Republican leaners have much more mixed views: 52% say they like elected officials who stick to their positions, while 46% say they like elected officials who make compromises with people they disagree with. By 56% to 41%, conservative Republicans prefer elected officials who stick to their positions. By contrast, a greater share of moderate and liberal Republicans say they like officials who make compromises (55%) than say they like officials who stick to their positions (43%). Those with higher levels of education are especially likely to have a positive view of officials who make compromises.”

Compromises often are messy, incomplete and unsatisfying. The congressional compromises of 1820 and 1850, two of the leading achievements of 19th century American politics, were stopgap measures, entirely pleasing almost no one; but they did keep the nation intact, for a while. (The breakup came when fire-eaters in the South decided they would compromise no more.)

But then in politics, issues are never over, completely: They’re always subject to relitigation. Compromises are temporary fixes but then, in the larger picture, there is never any other kind – even if, at a given moment, one side or another seems to have prevailed utterly.

In a 2016 column, New York Times writer David Brooks said, “Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups – best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right – want to elect people who have no political experience. They want ‘outsiders.’ They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power. Ultimately, they don’t recognize other people. They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.”

What this leads to in politics – and in American politics notably – what a failure to compromise often leads to is trench warfare, a long-running series of battles between two dug-in sides, with no reasonable resolution in sight.

The only way out involves climbing up from the trenches and starting some serious, and honest, discussion.

Boise’s long-time mayor, David Bieter, has faced light opposition since he first was elected to the job in 2003. This year, in contrast, he faces a crowd. And, likely, a tougher contest.

In some ways, that larger crowd might work to his advantage. But there’s a real chance the shape of this year’s contest could cost him the job in this year’s elections.

Begin with this: The criticism of and opposition to Bieter, who at this point is the longest-serving mayor in Boise’s history, is greater this time around than it has been before. That includes voting sectors that traditionally have been his base, and this is a more recent development. Across issues ranging from development to construction of a new library building, a common thread running through the complaints is that City Hall has stopped listening to the citizens, and rams its agenda through without broad enough consideration, and Bieter has been the focus of those complaints. I won’t try to litigate the pros or cons of that complaint here, but the criticism is more broadly-based than it was in earlier election years.

And it has helped generate anger at city hall, maybe enough to lead to some upsets this time around.

Bieter, who has coasted to re-elections before, drew opposition early this time. His chief opponent appears to be Lauren McLean, a member of the city council and well-connected around town; she has been campaigning hard for months, and her campaign has gotten some good reviews. But there are other contenders too: Adriel Martinez, Cortney Nielsen, Wayne Richey – and two more of note, former Mayor Brent Coles, and Rebecca Arnold, president of the Ada County Highway District. Coles resigned amid scandal, and his entry drew plenty of surprised head shakes. Both Coles and Arnold took direct shots at Bieter, and Arnold warned that McLean would be more of the same kind of administration as Bieter has run. The case for how Coles or Arnold might win the mayorly seems . . . obscure. But the two of them could add to the incoming fire Bieter has to deal with.

The usual political science 101 take on crowded campaigns is that when an incumbent is running for re-election, the campaign is mostly about that incumbent. This means the opposition tends to split the anti-incumbent vote, which tends to help the incumbent prevail.

Boise, however, is one of those cities with a runoff: If no candidate draws more than half of the overall vote in the general election, the top two contenders go into a runoff election.

This year’s election could be different. While the splitting of the opposition field among many more candidates might help Bieter to win at least a plurality of the vote, it won’t necessarily help him win a majority. While re-election contests usually are more about the incumbent than the challenger, those challengers do tend to bring in some personal support, additional votes, of their own. They also can change the content of the debate in unpredictable ways.

If Bieter’s support in town still is strong enough that he can win the first contest outright – with more than 50 percent of the vote – then that’s that. But the larger number of candidates in the field likely makes that more rather than less difficult.

And incumbents who are forced into a runoff tend to lose more often than they win, because the opposition vote, which earlier was split among many candidates, usually consolidates behind the one challenger who remains.

That 2003 contest Bieter won – which didn’t include an incumbent – was relatively simple in its dynamics. This one is much more complex, and more treacherous for an incumbent to navigate.

Mark this as a race to watch in Idaho this fall.

(note: The column was edited to remove a reference to the 2003 election.)

What shall we discuss? Or, what shall we discuss and be taken seriously? A person can throw out almost any idea, but many of those ideas may be batted aside as nonsense. At least, they may be batted aside as nonsense today; tomorrow, the idea might be more acceptable, or even a majority opinion.

That’s the concern of the “Overton Window of Political Possibilities.”
Joseph Overton, an academic at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, developed the concept in the mid-90s. The center described it this way:

“Imagine, if you will, a yardstick standing on end. On either end are the extreme policy actions for any political issue. Between the ends lie all gradations of policy from one extreme to the other. The yardstick represents the full political spectrum for a particular issue. The essence of the Overton window is that only a portion of this policy spectrum is within the realm of the politically possible at any time.”

This doesn’t amount to a value judgment, but it does suggest what’s realistic, as a matter of public policy, at a specific moment.
Same-sex marriage would be a useful case study of how a subject once considered out of bounds – an abomination or a joke if considered at all – could move over time into the window of political realism. Marijuana legalization may be a similar example.

Ideas move in and out of the window with some regularity, over the span of time. Judgment comes into play when we decide which ideas should or shouldn’t move, and in which direction.

Why ideas move is a question for political scientists, and many have weighed in (whether or no specifically citing Overton).

And there are other uses. Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck released a novel called The Overton Window (2010), a political conspiracy potboiler about a powerful elite seeking to take over the United States by moving an unacceptable concept – “one world, ruled by the wise and the fittest and the strong, with no naive illusions of equality or the squandered promises of freedom for all” – into the Overton window.

Whatever the virtues of the novel (few, reviewers seemed to agree), it got the point of the “window” backward: It is not something that can be manipulated by a “wag the dog” strategy, but rather serves as a measure of how the public changes its mind.

Writer Maggie Astor described it this way: “The key is that shifts begin with the public. Mr. Overton argued that the role of organizations like his own was not to lobby politicians to support policies outside the window, but to convince voters that policies outside the window should be in it. If they are successful, an idea derided as unthinkable can become so inevitable that it’s hard to believe it was ever otherwise.”

The pieces of the word suggest an integration of several things, and they do, but we’re not talking here about racial integration, in the civil rights sense. This is something far different.

The Wikipedia description says that it suggests “a fully integrated social and political order, based on converging patrimonial (inherited) political, cultural, religious and national traditions of a particular state, or some other political entity. Some forms of integralism are focused on achieving political and social integration, and also national or ethnic unity, while others were more focused on achieving religious and cultural uniformity.”

To get more specific, a lot of the discussion grows out of a long-running – centuries long – discussion within the Roman Catholic church, arguing that the state should serve the church. (Presumably the Vatican, in which church and state always have been integrated, is exempted from the discussion.) The term seems to come from the 1905 decision by the Third French Republic formally to separate itself from the Catholic Church; French Catholics who opposed that decision called themselves Catholiques integraux (integrationist Catholics). The idea has been adapted since, and the argument has ebbed and flowed since the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, which among other things seemed to loosen the church-state relationship.

Integralism in anything like a doctrinaire sense is not likely a majority view, or even more than a sliver-sized minority view, in the Catholic community.
R.R. Reno of the Institute on Religion and Public Life noted that there’s plenty of deep church doctrine against integralism: “Our supernatural destiny is other than our natural end. As St. Augustine put it, though they are intermixed in this age, the City of God is ordered to a different end than the City of Man. As a consequence, a Catholic politics never seeks to be a sacred politics, never proposes a full and complete integration of statecraft with soulcraft.”

It was that point John F. Kennedy made when he addressed Baptist ministers in Houston in the 1960 campaign, speaking to concerns about whether his Catholicism would lead to subservience to the Pope. He said, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute – where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote – where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference – and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him…. I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”
The speech won a great deal of praise, but some – not all – Catholics disapproved. Catholic writer John Courtney Murray (who had seen the speech before it was delivered) said that “to make religion merely a private matter was idiocy.”3 (Be it noted that religion being a private matter was a central point in the idwology of Thomas Jefferson.)

There are many perspectives pro and con, but one of the most concise pro- arguments may have been expressed from writer Daniel Pink:

“Integralism – the need for a confessional Catholic state – is part of Catholic teaching about grace. Grace is required to repair and perfect all of human nature. Human nature involves the political not as a mere expression and instrument of the private, but as a distinctive sphere of existence and understanding in its own right. Unless we commit ourselves to Christ as a political community, a vital part of human reason will remain untransformed by grace. The result will be spiritual conflict and degradation. … [The Catholic tradition] takes the state, and coercive authority in general, to have a teaching function. One central mode of teaching is through legal coercion. The supposition that it is the proper business of the state to teach, and teach coercively, extends back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.”

Another analysis by Timothy Troutner (in describing integralism advocates, not his own view) takes this a step further, to the point where the argument becomes fully joined: “The maintenance of a neutral public square forbids the dominance of any thick conception of the good not shared by all. This quickly leads to the privatization of religion and the secularization of society, manifesting liberalism’s hostility to any religion which sees itself as more than a private concern.”

And Troutner adds, “Integralists argue that if Catholics do not dictate terms, others will dictate to them.” That fully gives the game away, making clear the real point in the last paragraph: Integralists simply want to be those who dictate the terms. To everyone. Including everyone who thinks something other than what they do. Under such a system, freedom of religion belongs only to one group, not to others; it’s a redefinition of what “freedom of religion” means (freedom only for certain believers).

The term integrationist primarily is Catholic in usage and then mainly among a core of scholars and pundits, but the concept is open for adoption elsewhere. Many fundamentalist Protestants could adopt it structurally – and a good many have already, even if they haven’t used the specific word. In that quarter, many extend the concept further: There’s the expressed fear there not only that they may be dictated to, but that if their views are not the diktat for all of society, that all of (unsaved) humanity may be condemned to hell … or something like that.
Shorter version of integralism: My way or the or the highway; believe as I do, follow all the rules I deem righteous, or get out of town, Jack.

In his memoir, former Governor Phil Batt recalled when, in 1996, he had to decide whether to allow or block execution of a convicted killer.

The killing was horrendous, and the convict, Donald Paradis, was connected to it – he admitted to helping with transport of the body – but he maintained consistently that he was not the killer.

Batt was a death penalty supporter. He was no fan of Paradis or his fellow “group of unsavory characters,” nor even of his attorney (Bill Mauk, who was a Democratic Party leader and candidate in Idaho around that time). On the question of whether to sustain a Pardons and Parole Board decision to stop an already-ordered execution, Batt admitted, “I went into my deliberations with a skeptical attitude.”

But also a careful, investigative and thoughtful one. He cleared his calendar for day after day as he reviewed the record, weighed the physical evidence, and even talked with the mother of the victim. He struggled with it. His final conclusion: There was enough doubt as to Paradis’ guilt that he should not be executed.

That was not a universally praised decision – the governor just kept a killer from getting what he deserved, right? – but Batt’s instinct was sound. Five years later, after new evidence came to light, Paradis’ conviction was vacated. (He was convicted instead of being an accessory after the fact.) It took a lot of careful sifting of details to come up with the right answer.

The Batt-Paradis incident comes to mind in the new case of Adree Edmo, also an Idaho state prisoner but one whose decision point is different: He, a state prisoner born male who identifies as a woman, is asking the state of Idaho to pay for sex-reassignment surgery.

Edmo has been behind bars after conviction of child sexual abuse. In a statement, Governor Brad Little notes that, “Edmo would have been eligible for parole by now but has chosen not to follow the prison’s rules of conduct. There are numerous instances of Edmo engaging in violence and other prohibited conduct while incarcerated, eliminating the opportunity for parole. … Edmo’s doctors and mental health professionals … universally agreed gender reassignment surgery is neither medically necessary nor safe given Edmo’s mental state and incarceration.”

These are all relevant points and worth bearing in mind. But in dismissing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision imposing the responsibility for surgery on the state as simply another case of “activist federal judges [who] overstepped yet again,” and warning that the state could be on the hook for big medical payouts in this and other cases like it, he focused on urging opposition to the decision in the name of “what is reasonable and right.”

After all, who wants their hard-earned tax money being used to pay for a sex abuser’s sex-change surgery? It just seems a matter of common sense, right?

But is it that clear-cut?

Two news stories last week, both from the Idaho Press at Nampa, throw some shades of gray on the question.

One took the trouble to ask: How much might the state actually have to pay? The answer seemed to be: Maybe not much, maybe nothing at all. It said, “the state’s contract with its prison health care provider, Corizon Health, includes the cost of appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria, meaning the cost for the inmate’s surgery could be covered by the existing contract.”

The other story stopped to ask what has happened, in recent years, to other prisoners in the Idaho pen system who have had gender issues that went unaddressed behind bars. The answer wasn’t comforting. Their ranks included suicides of at least “three Idaho inmates – two who had gender dysphoria and one who was living with sexual identification issues.”

Bear in mind that, whatever these people did and whatever we may think of them, the people of Idaho are responsible for their well-being as long as they’re in state custody.

This is not an argument that Little and the state are wrong; the facts may be with them. But as Phil Batt found, first impressions can mislead and you often have to do some digging to be sure. In considering questions like this, beware of bumper-sticker simplicity.