Smart Bombs: Legislators made own beds

The “meltdown” melodrama of the third special legislative session could’ve been avoided if lawmakers finished on time and the process was easier for the public to follow.

Nobody thinks it’s a good idea to take government to the brink of shutdown, with legislators making rapid-fire decisions after pulling all-nighters. So this is a case of lawmakers making their own bed, being unable to sleep in it, and coming away cranky.

When a legislative session is taken to its ultimate deadline, the final sticking point is portrayed as the most important. In reality, there were many roadblocks along the way, such as a call to raise taxes and the rock-ribbed refusal to do so.

Were deals cut and then broken? Depends on who you talk to. Many legislators support transparency in labor negotiations, but not for themselves. If they were to barter in public – and not at 3 a.m. – we wouldn’t have to guess who is telling the truth.

Jiggery Pokery. Some politicians are arguing the U.S. Supreme Court rewrote the Affordable Care Act in ruling that the subsidies were designed to flow to all 50 states, not just those that established an exchange.

That can’t be right, they say, because the law says “an exchange established by a state.” But the only people saying this are people who didn’t like the law to begin with. This animus motivates them to toss aside the “jiggery pokery,” to use Justice Antonin Scalia’s phrase, about congressional intent and the law’s context.

So let’s change the subject to a ruling they embrace.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, found for the first time that the Second Amendment protected an individual’s right to bear arms. Before that, the court held that this was a collective right that could be broadly regulated. The majority couldn’t arrive at this new interpretation with a simple reading of the text, because the founders added that pesky preface: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state …”

No, they got there by describing the history and tradition of gun ownership and circumstances surrounding the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Scalia endorsed this holistic approach over his usual demand for a strict reading.

Whether the 2008 ruling was a thoughtful interpretation or “jiggery pokery” is subjective, and where you stand probably aligns with your politics.

Bonds of Matrimony. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that led to the desegregation of schools, some places in the South turned public schools into private ones. Prince Edward County in Virginia closed its entire public school system for a year, according to the Atlantic.

Now that gay marriage has been ruled legal in all 50 states, some people are asking why government even issues a license. To be fair, libertarians have wondered this all along. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, called for the privatization of marriage in a recent Time magazine op-ed.

The original purpose of the marriage license is an interesting question, but I have to wonder why it wasn’t raised more vigorously before the gay marriage ruling. As a practical matter, marriage licenses have become critical to settling insurance claims, estate matters, child custody issues and government benefits. Moving to other forms of proof would be messy, and guess who would shoulder the blame for that bureaucratic nightmare?

Those darn gay people, who refused to accept something less than a marriage license and all that it confers.

Keep talking. Upon announcing his run for president, Donald Trump said he would be the greatest jobs-producing president in history. Since then, his mouth has gotten him fired by NBC, Univision and Macy’s.

So, there’s three openings right there.