Betsy Says Unrelated Riders No Good

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 Betsy Says Unrelated Riders No Good I am picking on Betsy again here. Thank god for all the smart bloggers out there, 'cause I ain't got a damn original thought in my head. I just vulture off them and pretend I am some fountain of great ideas. Har har. She complains about all sorts of miscellaneous riders that are attached to important bills, that would not otherwise pass because they are too unpopular. There is a solution, my friends. It is called a 'single-subject' rule, and it means that a bill can only be passed with multiple measures if they are all related to one subject. The subject cannot be so broad that it encompasses everything (no bills about 'public safety', for example. That covers damn near everything). We have it in Illinois as part of our Constitution, and it works great. Well, except a few years ago some convictions were overturned (for marijuana possession, if memory serves) because the new provisions were mixed in with other provisions that were not even criminal matters. Anyway, once the legislators got the idea that, yes, the courts were actually going to apply this rule against them, they buckled down and have been compliant ever since. 2:47 PM | | |