Cannibalism bill again shows Republican Idaho legislators can’t be taken seriously | Opinion

As if we needed another example that so many of Idaho’s Republican lawmakers can’t be taken seriously.

Comes now perennial offender Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, with a bill to expand the state’s ban of cannibalism.

She wants to expand the ban on cannibalism because she saw a video of people being fed sausages who were later told the sausages were made with human flesh.

“I didn’t want to see that in my Home Depot stores,” Scott told the House State Affairs Committee (where all crazy bills are born).

Turns out, of course, the video was a prank. No one was fed human flesh unawares.

Scott’s bill is based entirely on a video-recorded prank that Scott couldn’t even have been bothered to research.

In other words, this isn’t even happening. It’s not a problem. It’s not real.

But that’s where we are in Idaho: Unhinged, unreal legislators can bring forth just about any crazy idea and get a bill printed.

“This is going to be normalized at some point, the way our society’s going and the direction we’re going,” said Scott, who introduced her bill by quoting a Bible passage.

That’s a perfect example of how completely delusional some of these people have become.

It’s the same kind of delusion that’s led to the belief that Democrats are running child sex trafficking rings out of the back of pizza parlors, that Democrats are farming little children so they can eat them or that librarians and teachers are using books in the library to groom them for sex.

But this bill got printed.

Even after hearing Scott’s nonsense, legislators actually seriously debated it and voted to print it.

They wasted time on this nonissue and then voted to waste more time on it.

So for anyone who considers for one moment taking seriously any legislation proposed by people like Reps. Julianne Young and Bruce Skaug, who are on the State Affairs Committee and voted to print the cannibalism bill, let this be a lesson. These same people who want to redefine embryo and gender also want to hear a bill based on a prank video that Heather Scott saw on a plane and wasn’t smart enough to realize it was a prank.

Further, their decision to print the bill was based, at least in part, on Scott’s argument that this is “the way our society’s going.” Yes, among Americans’ biggest concerns, you often hear that we are just a few years away from being cannibalistic communists.

These people cannot be taken seriously.

But really, there’s a bigger problem here.

Heather Scott is going to Heather Scott. The Idaho Legislature has always had its share of loony tunes.

But the absolute inability and impotence of Republican legislators on that committee — Jaron Crane, chairman Brent Crane, Kevin Andrus, Joe Palmer, Chris Allgood — to put a halt to such nonsense is telling.

No one on that committee had the fortitude to look around and say: “Hold on a minute. This is crazy talk. Let’s move on to talking about actual problems.”

If these Republican legislators had any shred of credibility left, voting to print this bill destroyed it.

This was not worth the time or consideration of lawmakers who are supposed to be doing the people’s work.

It’s an embarrassment to the House State Affairs Committee.

But worse than that, it’s an embarrassment to Idaho.

This story was originally published February 8, 2024 at 1:30 PM.