We drove Aryan Nations out of Idaho. Why are we changing domestic terrorism law? | Opinion
Terrorism
Dear Senator Anthon, I want to go on record as opposing the “Domestic Terrorism” SB 1220. My primary question on the bill: What is the purpose of linking domestic terrorism to any kind of foreign terrorist group? I don’t see in the bill itself or in public print any explanation of that supposed connection that makes sense.
I am one of the founding members of the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force (early 1990s). We organized primarily to push back against the Aryan Nations. They were certainly home-grown, even if their toxic ideology came from Naziism. We still seek to stand up against domestic terrorism in whatever form it presents itself in north Idaho. At no time have we tried to condition our efforts on whether a group has some kind of foreign tie.
Frankly, I spent more time wondering about the “foreign” connection, so I don’t feel conversant enough with the rest of the bill’s provisions. But the foreign component is enough for me to ask you and your committee to re-think the need for, and wisdom of, the bill itself.
Paul R. Graves, Sandpoint
Texas
Gov. Little, I am absolutely appalled that you have joined with other Republican governors in support of Texas’ inhumane, illegal and disgusting treatment of migrants!
It’s bad enough that you and our legislators are dragging Idaho into the dark ages. How do you sleep?
Three innocent people, including two children, drowned in the river. Shame on you!
Cynthia White, Garden City
Transgender
Thank goodness there are still people like Rep. Julianne Young who are grounded in reality and science. While it is good that people with gender dysphoria are not persecuted, the idea that society must pretend that their perception is indisputable reality is ridiculous. Normal people see 6’4” “Lia” Thomas towering over Riley Gaines as he deprives her of her gold medal and see lunacy, not fairness. Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco shows what the overwhelming majority of normal people think. Most physicians see the biopoliticians running our professional organizations’ capitulation to the transgender mob as a shameful betrayal.
It took half a century for women’s athletics to achieve the funding and the recognition that women fought for. This transgender craze sweeps that aside, and relegates women to the sidelines again.
Although Justice Brown Jackson doesn’t understand, a “woman” is an adult human female, with two X chromosomes and, without surgery, a uterus and ovaries. No one else is a woman. All the wishing in the world cannot change that. Pretending “sex” in Title IX means “gender identity, an internal sense of gender, experienced gender, gender expression, or gender role” is an affront to science, reality, decency and common sense.
Stephen D. Leonard, Boise
Ship of fools
I was thinking about the ship that Senator Risch believes will be “righted” with a Trump presidency. Would that metaphoric ship welcome the disabled or would they be ridiculed? Would our mothers and daughters sit at the captain’s table when 26 women have claimed sexual misconduct? Would the ship find safe harbor in countries around the world when during his last term, our reputation was significantly tarnished? What would the name of the ship be? Not the USS Constitution when he blatantly refused a peaceful transition of power, making our ship forever unstable. What party loyalists would be thrown overboard if they are not willing to be blindly loyal to his every whim; remember Bolton, Kelly, and Bossert? There would be plenty of “wind” to fill the sails as the “Big Lie” was bolstered with more of the 30,573 falsehoods he claimed in the 1st term. Plato warns us not to enlist in a “ship of fools.”
Cathy J. Brown, Boise
Dams
Dam breaching is the only answer to the U.S. people to honor the treaty that we as Nez Perce have to take salmon from the Columbia, Snake and other rivers. Any other solutions lead to the salmon going extinct in the next 10 years. The salmon need action now.
Julian Matthews, Lapwai
