With our state budget projection swinging wildly back to nominal and hemp and pay raises mostly hammered out, and with the deadline past for final second-chamber votes on all bills, many thumbs will twiddle in Pierre today.
The Senate has just one bill on its Tuesday calendar, Senate Bill 186, the revision of leave policies for state employees (long since amended to get rid of all those naughty rule revisions). Otherwise the Senate is waiting for conference committees and fiddling with resolutions and commemorations.
The House may be a little less sleepy, tackling Senate tinkerings with bills on service of judgments involving taking of property, enhanced penalties for second-offense stalking, and reduced penalties for pregnant drug offenders.
The Legislature is actually wasting time with a conference committee on House Concurrent Resolution 6012, the only item of eight that Representative Tony Randolph sponsored that survived the House and made it through the Senate. Senate State Affairs rejiggered Randolph’s Whereases and reduced the title from “Supporting the right to pray in public schools” to “Supporting the right to pray,” but it’s still essentially a risible celebration of the Un-Christian Trump Administration’s bureaucratic overreach in service of theocrats. But hey, since nothing else big is happening, go ahead, get yourselves into heaven by speechifying about prayer.
Since when was the right to pray in danger?
I don’t know, Nick. Once again, Republicans seem to be looking for bogeymen. I’ve never stopped anyone from praying. I’ve never seen any South Dakotans stopped from praying.
Mr. H, the games are but just now at our feet, however you are righter than right that all at the legislatures have too much time. They should hold the sessions for 12 days, go 12 hours a day, and make them stop wasting time. The more the legislatures meet, the more damage they do. And there should be mandatory attendance at “shouting day”, a day when each person in the legislatures and the council of research has to sit, alone, in a box, and groups get to come in and just really tell them all a whatfer. Perhaps shouting day should be held after day 5 of the new 12 day sessions. The crowds going to the Capitol for shouting day would make up for any loss of business the bars and restaurants get.
Mr. H, you may have more information than grudznick, but it does seem from many lobbists’ points of view that the Overgodders are getting a little smacking of the down. The sides are chosen, the overgodders and those who do not want Mr. Howie’s god jammed down their maws.
This Sunday, at the Conservatives with Common Sense breakfast, a presentation about how the overgodders got themselves in such a conundrum and how those who were saner than most smacked down the insanest is planned. Hopefully Mr. Napoli still lets us use his museum. Stay tuned and watch your email.