Special session? More like special circus

Expect only one good thing to happen during this week’s mini-circus at the state capital.

Rep. Priscilla Giddings will get spanked.

Other than that, the Idaho Legislature is likely to continue its preening and posturing and protesting. The fact that legislators are all up for election in a few short months certainly couldn’t have anything to do with the timing of this bizarre mid-November huddle in Boise, could it?

When the House officially convenes tomorrow morning at 9, Giddings is expected to get her comeuppance for outing the alleged victim of rape at the hands of a fellow Republican legislator.

But even this course of justice is bound to pack some backfire. Idahoans inculcated in right-wing ideology will certainly see Giddings as the victim of leftist, elitist, woke hordes who fear her ascent to power. Giddings isn’t carrying the extremist banner alone, either. In her quest for the lieutenant governor’s office, she’s tagging along with current Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who wants to shed the “Lt.” part of her title.

The bet here is that they will be two players on a ticket that includes Coeur d’Alene lawyer Art Macomber (running for attorney general), lawyer Bryan Smith (aiming to take down U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson) and perhaps others. Fascinating inside baseball, but we digress.

The other order of legislative business this week is political hypocrisy at its blatant best.

On one hand, legislators are expected to tell President Joe Biden where to stick his federal vaccination mandate. Overreach! they’ll screech. Never mind that the presidential mandate is in court and that’s where it ultimately will be resolved, not at 700 W. Jefferson St. in downtown Boise, Idaho.

The other side of the hypocritical coin is that in the next breath, some lawmakers want to tell Idaho business owners what they can and can’t do regarding vaccines for their employees. In other words, while flipping off the federal vaccine mandate, they want to mandate that Idaho employers can’t require employees to get vaccinated.

Breathtaking, isn’t it? And to top it off, legislators who can’t seem to get their fill of power are trying to tack on all sorts of bills to this weird session, yet another half-baked grab from a body bent on building a mountain of self-aggrandizing regulations.

Yep. This November, the turkeys are in the oven a little early.