One thing after another

Floridians can, for the moment at least, relax some vigilance over the safety of their lives, liberty and property as the Legislature has ended it's current session as of Friday last. As is often the case, the greatest relief may be felt at their failure to pass certain bills. Of course the results were mixed. The death of the bill requiring restaurants to provide ample toilet paper may rightly be mourned by civilized folk, while the failure to allow the police to issue tickets for having plastic bull testicles displayed on one's trailer hitch will result in red neck rejoicing. All in all, it does give one pause to wonder what more pressing matters were avoided by such trivial pursuits.

The religious insurgents won some battles this year, murdering a bill that would require the schools to teach a little more about sex than that it should conform to the ancient and rarely observed codes of abstinence. It should be another good year for gonorrhea and unwanted pregnancy. They crucified another that would have required health facilities to tell rape victims they can get emergency birth control pills. They did lose the battle for a license plate showing a cross and stating I Believe however, and they failed to get the law to protect teachers from any repercussions from teaching the Sunday School science instead of Paleontology. They even failed to mandate that causing the death of a fetus always be classified as murder. Even the American Jesus can't win them all.

Some failures do seem to defy reason. Providing that the State can deport illegal aliens incarcerated for crimes seems to beg the question: why not? Some measures are too obviously sleazy even for Florida, like the bill allowing a special tax break for a dog track's slot machine income.

But it's over and although I'm truly disgusted by the failure, once again to pass a bill forcing slow moving cars to relinquish the left lane, I have to be grateful it wasn't worse. We've survived another legislative session and can now devote our attention to surviving the next hurricane season, which while equally devastating and in need of constant monitoring, is quite a bit more unresponsive to special interests.