• This broke late Monday afternoon, and bears repostting. The new legislative map has cleared a huge potential roadblock.

Twin Falls County, which led a successful legal challenge to overturn a recent mapping plan, will not fight the plan approved Friday.

When the Idaho Supreme Court sided with Twin Falls County earlier this month, it urged the redistricting commission to split counties as little as possible. The current map splits seven counties, down from 12 counties; however, Twin Falls County will be split into three legislative districts.

Consequently, the plan received grudging approval from Twin Falls County officials.

"It's not a good plan, but it's an acceptable one," said Prosecutor Grant Loebs. "It's considerably better than the previous plan that extended Twin Falls districts all the way to Chubbuck."

Not a rave review, but I'm sure members of the bipartisan redistricting commission will gladly take it.

More details from The Times-News in Twin Falls.

• I've said this before, and it's worth saying again: a state treasurer ought to be a lot better at keeping records.

Yet, once again, Ron Crane is getting called out for lax accounting in his own office. Legislative auditors found fault with the way Crane tracked spending on his office's annual trips to New York City to meet with Wall Street analysts.

From John Miller of the Associated Press, who has been bird-dogging the issue for months: "Instead of reporting costs from the New York trips through Idaho's accounting system, Crane instead let them be deducted from hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of short-term debt securities that Idaho sells annually, without reviewing whether they were accurate.

"Additionally, some meals on hotel invoices appeared to be for guests, not participants in the trip, auditors wrote. And since just a single member of the New York-bound delegation turned in expenses from meals or travel for state review, auditors concluded 'this situation raises serious concerns that meals and other costs of official travel were paid for by others and that pecuniary benefits in excess of $50 were received' in violation of Idaho law."

Crane disputed the findings, but said he will use the state accounting system in the future.

• The idea of taxing Internet sales has gone nowhere in the conservative House, but it has an ally in Gov. Butch Otter.

Meeting with chamber of commerce leaders Monday, the governor said he favors the idea, as a way of leveling the playing field between online merchants and brick-and-mortar rtailers.

Otter has not actively pursued the idea in his five-plus years as governor.

More from the Associated Press.

• One fix in the Students Come First education overhaul received bipartisan backing Monday. The state Senate voted 33-0 to delete language that would require “asynchronous” online education – that is, online instruction with the teacher outside the school building. The bill now goes to the House.

More detail from the Associated Press.

• Normally, legislative joint memorials — nonbinding letters to Congress — are routine. Roll call votes aren’t even required. But on Monday, a memorial calling on Congress to add a third federal judge in Idaho drew some heat on the House floor. Some Republicans objected, since Democratic president Barack Obama might wind up picking the judge.

“I hardly think he would appoint a new federal judge who would reflect the values of the citizens of Idaho,” said Rep. Linden Bateman, R-Idaho Falls. “I’ll be glad to support this memorial if we get a new president.”

The memorial passed, 47-21. Here’s the story from Betsy Russell of the Spokane Spokesman-Review.