By now, Idaho legislators sitting on a federal lands task force have got to be getting some inkling that they're on the wrong track. Deputy Attorney General Steve Strack put it as mildly as he possibly could last Wednesday. As the Tribune's William L. Spence reported, Strack steered the panel through 19 decades and seven iterations of public lands debates. Among them were the Carey Act, which opened vast acreages of irrigated farmland, as well as the Sagebrush Revolution of the 1980s. But then he gently delivered some harsh news: The theory advanced by Utah Rep. Ken Ivory last winter was just so much wishful thinking. It's folly for Idaho lawmakers to take Uncle Sam to court to demand the feds transfer ownership of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management properties to the state. Standing in the way is the U.S. Constitution - which gives Congress this authority exclusively - and more than 200 years of precedent/Marty Trillhaase, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: It's my opinion that any legislator or elected official involved in the quixotic attempt to wrestle control of federal land for the state of Idaho is philosophically unqualified to hold his/her position. What say you?