If Idaho had been part of the Union in 1850, and Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney had occupied that office at the time, he would have dutifully arrested any black man or woman identified as an escaped slave. Oh, sure, Raney may have expressed agonized reluctance as he did so – but that reluctance would have been rhetorical window-dressing for his pious invocation of the sacred responsibility he had to submit to the “law of the land.” This is the inescapable logic of the position Raney has taken in an op-ed column published this morning in the Idaho Statesman. “I … Continue reading Gary Raney: The Slave-Catching Sheriff of Ada County, Idaho