Funny thing happened on the way to the legislative dumpster

Irony reigned supreme in the Senate yesterday, involving my new best friend Dan Patrick.

Senator Patrick's SB 357, which is a bill I'm not so sure I'm in favor of dying because it has such a catchy bill number, went down in flames in a vote in the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee yesterday morning. The vote was a tie, 4-4, and a tie is a fail, since it doesn't have a simple majority of those voting. Since there is no way to revive a bill once it goes down unless one of the Senators voting "no" quickly changes his or her mind and moves to reconsider, SB 357 is deader than my granddaddy's dog.

But wait, not so fast. Later in the day yesterday, 47 days after the Constitutional deadline for filing new legislation, Senator Patrick filed a shiny new bill, SB 2568, a duplicate of the bill which already failed. On one single day, the bill was filed (requiring suspension of the state constitution), referred to committee (in record time), announced for consideration by the committee (requiring Senate rule suspensions), and considered in committee, again.

Oh yeah, by the way, Patrick, who is bypassing all kinds of Constitutional and Senate rules because he didn't muster up a simple majority vote on his bill, is the Senator who fought to raise the bar for debating legislation up to a 3/5's super-majority.

And incidentally, the bill is anti-immigrant, and anti-small business.

Unsportsman-like?