George,

The legislative process in the GA defies description. It's insane. The GA accepts mountains of bills at the beginning of a session, knowing full-well from experience most of them will never be considered or have a chance for passage. Why not winnow bills in the beginning with the intention of considering all or most of the important ones? It's almost time to adjourn the GA for this session, and there are still 1,700 remaining to be dealt with. Most are small and innocuous or worse. I don't doubt that if someone wanted to introduce a bill on the correct way to trim toenails it would be accepted.

Also, the Jim Dandy innovation in this session of allowing subcommittees to jettison bills before they reach a committee is unconstitutional in spirit if not literally.

But unconstitutionality seems to be the new style in government these days.

- Catherine Peaslee (electronic mail, February 19, 2006)