Editorial Roundup: Idaho

Recent editorials from Idaho newspapers:

What do Crapo and Risch want the Supreme Court to be?

Post Register

Sept. 27

More than any national politician in recent memory, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has laid waste to the norms that once guided his chamber.

McConnell led the unprecedented charge to block President Barack Obama’s district and circuit court nominees. Democrats eventually responded by ending the filibuster on judicial nominees. Then, nearly a year before the election, McConnell blocked Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland — a deliberately moderate pick — using the justification that the people should be given a voice by waiting for the next election.

Once Donald Trump had won the electoral college, while losing the popular vote by a margin not seen in more than a century, McConnell ended the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees.

Now, McConnell has made clear he will move to confirm a replacement for recently deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — an announcement so rushed he couldn’t even wait until after the funeral — in an obviously hypocritical reversal of his stance on Garland.

Nothing better should be expected of McConnell, who has spent his entire career as an unprincipled, nakedly partisan warrior. Treating governance as if it were a sport, his side’s victory is the only thing that matters to him.

But could better be expected of Sen. Mike Crapo?

“The next Supreme Court justice will make decisions that affect every American and shape our nation’s legal landscape for decades. Therefore, the current Supreme Court vacancy should be filled by an individual nominated by the next President of the United States,” Crapo said.

Except, he didn’t say that at the end of September 2020. He said it at the beginning of March 2016. Is Crapo’s word as good two months before this election as it was nine months before the last?

McConnell’s shallow justification for his about-face is that both the White House and Senate are held by Republicans. This reveals what the true principle guiding his action has been all along: If you can do it, you should.

If Crapo and Sen. Jim Risch follow McConnell’s lead and confirm a new justice, they will do it with eyes wide open. They know what it means.

It means that the court will be seen as illegitimate by a majority of Americans. Polls show most believe Ginsburg’s replacement should be nominated by the winner of the next presidential election.

It means an era unguided by norms of respect for the minority — at a time where the GOP is increasingly likely to find itself in the minority. A Republican candidate has won only one presidential popular vote in the 21st Century. Younger generations skew heavily and increasingly Democratic.

Risch, in particular, has been telling every audience he can find that if the GOP loses the U.S. Senate this year they will never regain it — which is histrionic but has a bit of truth in it. Democrats who once scoffed at the idea of ending the filibuster are seriously considering it, given McConnell’s unrestrained use of it while in the minority and willingness to bulldoze it while in the majority. Others have floated the idea of granting statehood to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, both of which have larger populations than some Republican states.

And in this latest bout of hypocrisy, when Democrats no longer think Senate Republicans have any good faith left, the option of court-packing —adding new justices to the Supreme Court, which can be done with a simple Senate majority — is for the first time in nearly a century under serious consideration.

Is this the era in which Crapo and Risch want to cement McConnell’s standard? Is this the time when they want America to be governed by the old saying of Thucydides: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must?”

It could well mean trading a lasting 5-4 Republican majority for a 7-6 minority within a short timeframe, a forever-changed U.S. Supreme Court and an American people divided with no clear path toward reconciliation.

Online: Post Register

___

We’re in trouble when the COVID-19 death of a Middleton school staffer is a ‘hiccup’

Idaho Statesman

Sept. 24

Since when did we become so cavalier about the death of a fellow human being?

After it was revealed at a Middleton school board meeting this week that a staff member had died of COVID-19 and an elementary schoolteacher had contracted COVID-19 and was not well, and another teacher was in quarantine, one school board member showed a shocking lack of empathy.

“We can’t run and hide,” Middleton school board member Derek Moore said. “I know we have cases, but we cannot decide not to move forward. There are going to be hiccups in the road.”

Since when did someone’s death become a “hiccup”?

Coronavirus is deadly and highly contagious. What about that do people still not understand by now? We need to drop the machismo act (“we can’t run and hide”) surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, especially for these public officials, like school board members and health district board members who are tasked with making crucial decisions about public safety.

Of course, we’ve seen this cavalier attitude throughout the pandemic, as some have suggested that “only” the elderly and those with underlying health conditions are being killed by the virus, as if we should simply accept that those folks are going to die, so the rest of us might as well get on with our lives.

It’s no surprise, then, that the United States has more than 200,000 deaths from the disease.

It should be noted, as well, that the coronavirus continues to be highly unpredictable in who is affected and who is not.

We don’t expect to have no deaths from COVID-19. That would be unattainable. But we can reduce the number of deaths by taking certain actions that stop the spread of the virus. We should not callously throw up our hands and accept that “some people are just going to die.”

Making these difficult decisions is the responsibility of our public officials. Unfortunately, far too many of them are not living up to that responsibility.

Even with the death of a staff member and a teacher “not doing well,” Middleton board members considered moving kindergarten through fifth-graders to morning and afternoon schedules, so that students could go to school every day, but in smaller groups.

We are also hearing reports of schools having “mask breaks,” allowing students to take their masks off in the classroom for short periods of time, which defeats the whole purpose of wearing masks to begin with.

Middleton is in Canyon County, where wearing a mask is only a recommendation, per the Southwest District Health board, including Canyon County Commissioner Tom Dale.

We recognize these school board members are between a rock and a hard place, knowing that some of their students don’t have devices or access to the internet. But safety needs to be the top priority. If there is an outbreak in your school, the safest thing to do is move back to holding classes remotely before someone else dies.

Other schools have done it, such as North Star Charter School, which made the wise decision to send everyone home before it became a disaster.

These public officials need to commit themselves to fighting the virus rather than pretending it simply doesn’t exist, isn’t lethal or is somehow a hoax.

Think about the school your kids go to. Now think about which staff member there you’re OK with dying. The lunch lady? The janitor? The front desk secretary? Which person’s life is expendable so the rest of us can “move forward” and go back to normal?

Which teacher is it OK to send to the ICU, fighting for breath on a ventilator?

We’re just rolling the dice. The coronavirus didn’t go anywhere. It didn’t magically disappear. It didn’t become less lethal, less sneaky, less contagious. It’s the same virus we had in March, and we still don’t have a vaccine.

School and health officials need to take this more seriously before things get worse. A good first step is not looking at someone’s death or grave illness as a “hiccup.”

Online: Idaho Statesman