Stupid Is as Stupid Does….

Ah, the Indiana legislature! An inexhaustible source of blog fodder.

Yesterday, it was Brian Bosma twisting the rules in order to deny GLBT people equal rights. Today….well, remember that old adage to the effect that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt?

There’s a legislative equivalent–an ironic twist on our usual understanding of “do nothing” legislators. Usually, we think of a “do-nothing” Congress or General Assembly as one that quite literally does nothing–doesn’t pass legislation or attend to business. (That’s not always a bad thing, either; these days, when a legislature is active, it’s as likely to be creating problems as solving them. HJR3, anyone?)

But there is another way to do nothing, and State Senator James Smith has produced a perfect example. Here is the entire text of a bill he has introduced:

Celebration of winter holidays in schools. Provides that a school corporation may: (1) instruct students about the history of traditional winter celebrations; (2) allow the use of traditional greetings concerning the celebrations; and (3) display on school property scenes or symbols associated with traditional winter celebrations if certain conditions are met and the scenes or symbols do not include a message that encourages a particular religious belief. Requires the department of education to develop guidelines to assist school corporations in developing appropriate instruction and displays.

In other words, this bill would allow schools to celebrate winter holidays in any fashion consistent with the First Amendment.

Perhaps Senator Smith’s next bill will allow us to kiss our mothers, ride a bike, or write a letter without fear of state interference?

I assume Smith’s intent is to reassure the good folks back in Mayberry or wherever that passage of this (absolutely meaningless) measure will make life harder for the atheists and non-Christians who are waging that War on Christmas that only the wingers can detect. And he’s counting on those constituents to be totally unaware of how the Constitution and legal system actually work.

Not an unreasonable assessment. Just depressing.

Of course, there’s another possibility. Perhaps the Senator actually thinks he’s legislating. In which case, he really ought to take that old adage about remaining silent to heart.
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How a Bill Shouldn’t Become a Law

Remember the old cartoon developed to teach students “how a bill becomes a law”?

A proposal is introduced. It is assigned to a committee that reviews it, hears testimony about it, and deliberates its merits. The committee then votes whether to advance the measure. If the vote is affirmative, the entire chamber votes on it.

In bicameral legislatures (those with both a House and Senate), a positive vote sends the bill to the other house, where the process is repeated.

Speaker of the House Brian Bosma is teaching young people–who are disproportionately interested in the fate of HJR 3–a different lesson.

What if a bill the Speaker really wants passed is assigned to a committee that actually does its job–a committee that deliberates based on the evidence before it and the testimony it has heard? What if that committee then concludes that the bill should be defeated?

Why, you just change the rules.

You don’t abide by the decision of the lawmakers you assigned to make that decision.  You cheat.

Speaker Brian Bosma insists that there is nothing unusual in his decision to take HJR 3 away from the committee to which it was originally assigned. And it’s true that some bills are reassigned, mostly in order to expedite the process, or because on closer examination the bill really belonged elsewhere.

In this case, the change was made for one reason only: to get the result Bosma wants. The decision he couldn’t get playing by the rules.

Even more incredibly, the Speaker has scheduled the new committee’s vote for tomorrow. The vote will be taken without the benefit of evidence or testimony–but then, as we’ve seen, the Speaker considers evidence and testimony irrelevant. The only thing committee members need to to know is what the Speaker wants them to do.

Usually, the power plays and the wheeling/dealing is done behind the scenes. This time, that wasn’t possible. This time, everyone got to see what is seldom on public display: the House leadership’s absolute contempt for democracy and the rules of fair play.

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Why the Absence of Journalism Matters

In a recent column for the Washington Post, Rachel Maddow highlighted why the presence–or increasingly, the absence–of local journalism is so critical. And by “journalism,” I don’t mean puff pieces about local celebrities, or articles about the best way to take care of your ingrown toenail, or “reporting” on new shopping or dining venues.I mean reporting. Journalism. As Rachel wrote:

If it weren’t for the dogged local press corps, Christie would still be ridiculing this story,attacking the legislators investigating it and persuading most of the national press to dismiss it.

…..

The bridge story is still unfolding. But the pattern of how the scandal came to national attention is familiar.

When Connecticut Gov. John Rowland was still denying the allegations of corruption that would ultimately force him out of office, his wife read a poem (to the meter of “The Night Before Christmas”) mocking Hartford Courant reporter Jon Lender at a local Chamber of Commerce meeting:

“When out on the yard there rose such a hub-bub,

I thought maybe Jon Lender had jumped in the hot tub.

Now surely that man needs to go soak his head,

but there on the lawn stood Santa instead.”

Lender didn’t jump into anything, but he did stay on the story, and the aforementioned hot tub turned out to be one of the illegal gifts that would send the governor to prison.

When then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was not hiking the Appalachian Trail but visiting his mistress in 2009, reporter Gina Smith from the State newspaper drove 200 miles to be in the Atlanta airport at 6 a.m. as Sanford got off his overseas flight. His ruse thus unraveled.

When Mayflower, Ark., learned the hard way last March that an aging ExxonMobil pipeline ran under it, the Arkansas Times’s dogged reporting included a crowd-funding effort to pay for its reporters to team with journalists experienced in covering pipelines to get to the bottom of what ExxonMobil did and whether other communities with buried pipelines should feel protected by existing regulations.

Most of the time, national news happens out loud: at news conferences, on the floor of Congress, in splashy indictments or court rulings. But sometimes, the most important news starts somewhere more interesting, and it has to be dug up. Our democracy depends on local journalism, whether it’s a beat reporter slogging through yet another underattended local commission meeting, or a state political reporter with enough of an ear to the ground to know where the governor might be when he isn’t where he says he is, or a traffic columnist who’s nobody’s fool.

Here in Indianapolis, since Gannett acquired our one remaining newspaper, coverage of the statehouse has dramatically diminished, and coverage of city hall has pretty much gone missing.  About the only way citizens can gauge how well–or how poorly–Mayor Ballard is doing is by how long the snow remains on the ground and how many more people got shot overnight. (Local media does report on the kinds of overt criminal activity that don’t require investigation.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m curious about all the stuff we don’t know.

I miss having real news.

 

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Who’s Talking?

As long as we’re on the subject of First Amendment Free Speech rights, a federal judge has just handed down a decision that illuminates another aspect of those rights.

As I explained yesterday, our right to free expression is protected against government interference. Usually we think of that interference in terms of censorship, of government shutting us down. But this judge’s decision–which rests on decades of settled law–reminds us of another thing government cannot constitutionally do: it cannot compel our speech, either.

(Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday struck down a 2011 North Carolina law requiring abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and explain it to a woman before having an abortion, arguing it violated the constitutional right to free speech of doctors.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles found that a state does not have “the power to compel a health care provider to speak, in his or her own voice, the state’s ideological message in favor of carrying a pregnancy to term.”

If the right to free speech means anything, it means that we have a right to form our own opinions, based on the widest possible access to information, and to share those opinions with others, or not, as we see fit.

Being forced to recite a script and pretend it represents our own views, like being forced to affirm allegiance to a deity or a nation (see Barnett v. West Virginia Board of Education), isn’t just intellectually dishonest; it violates our most fundamental liberties.

Compelled speech is especially pernicious when it intrudes upon the doctor/patient relationship, which depends to a great extent upon the patient’s ability to rely upon the candor of her provider–to trust that her doctor is acting in her best interests.

The principle extends well beyond medical advice, however. If the government could tell professionals of any sort what to say, if lawmakers could impose “correct” communication on scientists, police officers, media figures… how would Americans ever be able to trust anyone?

How would we know who is really talking?

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