legislatures

Chris Sanders argues that exposing politician’s hypocrisy on matters of sex and marriage isn’t necessarily the best course to achieve certain policy goals:

"Europe's stronger social safety net, including cheaper health care and higher education, is paid for partly through gas taxes."

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By a vote of 6 to 3, the US Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Indiana's Voter ID law on Monday.

In one sense the court left open challenges to Voter ID cases, but also placed emphasis on states to resolve election issues.

Two good case assessments from the SCOTUS blog note:

A few years ago, during the great Tennessee Income Tax War, the pro-income tax experts often asserted that an income tax would protect the state against revenue shortfalls during an economic slump.

ACK at Volunteer Voters has a tongue-in-cheek post up about legislative hope of curing the epidemic of on- and off-ramp parking ("Finally, An End To The Highway Off-Ramp Parking Epidemic").

I get ACK's point, and I'm kind of a fan of Sen. Henry, and I'm a fan of part-time legislatures. But I'm not sure this is a good example of legislative busy-bodyness.

I don't know about you, but I find it somewhat ironic that a person who ran as a liberal independent in the 2006 Congressional election, Ginny Welsh, is in favor of super-delegates deciding the Democratic nomination:

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) withdrew from campaigning for president a couple of weeks ago and announced that he was "transitioning" his efforts to focus on winning re-election to represent his Cuyahoga County district.

The Politico explains how the first “Super Tuesday” primary twenty years ago was originally set up for the benefit of Al Gore:

“Democrats controlled legislatures throughout the South. So they used their leverage to set up an early, multistate primary. Ironically, the ‘moderate’ that wound up in the White House turned out to be [Republican] George H.W. Bush.”

The "Pass the trash bill" that I proposed last year (that was killed in the Democrat controlled education committee) is now getting national attention. A national AP story on the size of the problem brought the issue to many legislatures forefront. From today's Tennessean article.