State Senator Brian Lenney’s recent essay, “Idaho Built an Ag Empire on Modern Day Slavery,” was an act of moral clarity that deserves not just notice, but public thanks. In an era when too many officeholders treat human beings as abstractions in a talking‑points war, Lenney had the courage to name what is happening in […]
Most readers of the Gem State Patriot aren’t avid sports fans, and few will lose sleep over the fact that multimillion-dollar athletes owe income taxes in every state and city where they play. But here’s the hidden story: professional sports teams spend staggering sums on accountants and compliance staff just to navigate the tangle of […]
My father often told me, “Tend to business and keep your eye on the ball.” I heard those words as a child and again as a young man, and I’ve come to understand how much wisdom they still carry. We live in a time when noise has replaced focus, and political theater has replaced governing. […]
When Governor Butch Otter asked me to serve on the Idaho Health Insurance Exchange board, I agreed on one non‑negotiable condition: that an independent outside auditor be hired and funded to document, in detail, how taxpayer dollars flowed through that new organization. That requirement was adopted, written into the exchange’s governance, and ultimately led to […]
Title: Sixteen Years After Obamacare: How Command‑and‑Control Medicine Failed—and How Free Markets Can Still Save American Health Care On March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act—better known as Obamacare—became law. Its architects promised a new era of accessible, affordable, and high-quality health care for every American. Sixteen years later, the verdict is in: those promises were […]
As I sit in my “home away from home” on Whidbey Island, I’ve been following the legislative sessions in both Idaho and Washington State. The contrast between the two has been striking. I find myself impressed by how consistently conservative the few Republicans in the Washington Legislature remain, while so many Republicans in the Idaho […]
Minnesota has become a case study in how a virtuous society can lose its bearings without quite noticing when the slide began. The state’s recent convulsions—a sprawling fraud scandal and mounting street-level confrontation around immigration enforcement—prompted Catholic Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester to issue a stark warning: the situation is “untenable,” and unless all sides […]
When Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard in 1957 to block nine Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School, he was not “standing up to Washington”; he was openly defying federal law and a binding Supreme Court ruling. President Eisenhower responded by federalizing the Guard and sending in the 101st Airborne […]
Matthew 7:3–5 asks why we notice the speck in a brother’s eye while ignoring the log in our own. It is a question about hypocrisy, but also about responsibility. Before we condemn others for tragic outcomes, we must ask how our own failures—political, institutional, cultural—helped lay the tracks that led to those moments of crisis. […]
We often say America is a “nation of immigrants,” but we rarely ask what made our earlier waves of immigration work—and why our current system is failing so many newcomers and citizens alike. The answer, I believe, lies in an old-fashioned word that has nearly vanished from our policy debates: sponsorship. Ellis Island in 1904 […]
When serving as a junior officer aboard the USS Virginia (CGN-38), it was possible to watch two very different leadership styles under two commanding officers with equally impressive résumés. One captain went on to become a vice admiral: the other retired into mediocrity. The contrast between them offers a useful lens for looking at how Idaho’s government […]
For several years, there has been growing concern about the tenor and aggressiveness of a particular class of activists who relentlessly assert their own moral authority through public denunciations and emotional theatrics—what are now commonly labeled “virtue signals.” Their rhetoric often feels less like moral insight and more like a performance of superiority, backed by […]