Something is ripe, overripe actually, in the House, but it’s not legislation. It is the attitude by Denney and his fellow House leaders that they are the ringmasters of the circus into which they have turned the legislative branch. They decide which issues are decided in the House, to the point that committee chairmen have to ask Majority Leader Mike Moyle whether to hold hearings on certain bills. And they decide there will be no compromise with the governor of their own party or with the Senate dominated by members of their own party/Jim Fisher, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

• Thursday 5.7/Unequivocal Notion
• One gay rights status report/Randy Stapilus
• 2 unknowns in Transportation deal/Kevin Richert
• Misinformed hate/Political Game
• Could they make the commercials any louder?/2C Etc.

Question: When all is said and done at the 2009 Idaho Legislature, will Gov. Butch Otter be stronger politically? Weaker? The same?

As long as most members of the House State Affairs Committee agree to indulge St. Maries Republican Dick Harwood in mulish braying at Uncle Sam, why be so timid? Instead of sending meaningless junk mail to Congress asserting Idaho’s purported “sovereignty,” why not tell the federal government to keep its money and leave the state the hell alone? If legislators are going to embrace a crackpot nostrum, let them really get their arms around it. Then let the committee turn to Harwood for another bright idea: how to replace the nearly $2 billion in cash the government sends Idaho’s way each year to help it provide services from education to health care/Jim Fisher, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

• Harwood leads odd dance ritual/Kevin Richert
• 2 good pro-life bills clear first hurdle/Idaho Values Alliance
• Stimulus to give Idaho timber towns big boost/Rocky Barker
• Editorial hate/Political Game
• Thursday Morning Coffee/Unequivocal Notion

Question: Is there a toothless type of resolution that you’d like your representative to present to fellow legislators, just for the heck of it?

What has Butch Otter been up to in the nation’s capital? Within days of appointing a bipartisan panel to review plans for spending money from federal stimulus legislation, Idaho’s chief executive is listed among those Republican governors now in Washington, D.C., telling Uncle Sam to take his cash and shove it. Saturday, the New York Times reported that “the governors of Alaska, Idaho, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas have said their states may not want to meet the conditions that accompany the money or expand programs that will have to be paid for by the state once the stimulus money runs out.” And Monday, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal praised Otter and four other governors for “saying thanks but no thanks to some of the $150 billion of ‘free’ money doled out to states”/Jim Fisher, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: Even thought Gov. Butch Otter doesn’t agree with the massive bailout in principle, should he go so far as to refuse the money that Idaho would get?

But now comes Schroeder with another exhibit in the case against trusting Idaho to manage wolves responsibly. He admits the bill his Resources and Environment Committee introduced Monday is not seriously intended to export wolves to other states. But he says the absence of takers will be “the answer why we need to kill some.” The day he said this, Otter and the members of Idaho’s congressional delegation sent President Obama a letter asking him to remove the hold he put on a second delisting attempt and other last-minute moves by the Bush administration. The letter calls the president’s attention to what its authors call “the consensus-based example Idaho will set in executing its management plan.” Thanks to Schroeder’s stunt, Obama couldn’t be blamed if he concluded what the letter pointed to was a consensus of crazies/Jim Fisher, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: Which aspect of the wolf situation is goofier — the federal government forcing Idaho to take the wolves in the first place? Or Schroeder’s tongue-in-cheek plan to ask other states to take our excess?

If legislators go along with Otter’s recommendations, he will earn a place near the top of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s list of what Krugman recently called 50 Herbert Hoovers in governors’ offices. Krugman’s charge was based on the refusal by most state governments to continue investing in their futures during tough economic times/Jim Fisher, Lewiston Tribune. Full editorial below.

Question: Should education be spared from Idaho budget cuts?