Foolishness too often dominates Legislature

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A proposal to make abortion a capital crime in Texas — allowing the state to administer a potential death sentence for a woman who terminates a pregnancy — brings to mind some of the idiocy that too often permeates the state’s legislative process.

State Rep. Bryan Slaton, a Royse City Republican, has pitched the legislative “remedy” to abortion. It shouldn’t, if reason holds up, have a chance in hell of being enacted and then signed into law.

Abortion happens to be legal in this country and for the Legislature to waste a moment of valuable time on this bill is, well, a disgrace.

So is this horrendous talk of secession, which once again has entered the public debate. Texas cannot legally secede from the Union. Period. End of discussion. Yet some Texas Republicans — starting with the party chairman, Allen West — think it’s OK to give Texans a vote on that matter.

Ridiculous.

Texas needs to devote its energy to issues that matter. We need to maintain our roads and highways. And, oh yes, we also have that energy issue to discuss and repair.

Texans went without power in February during that ice and snow storm. Some of us are still without potable water. The state has to fix the way it manages its electrical grid to avoid a repeat of what transpired during the Storm of 2021.

Still, the Legislature every other year spends too much valuable time dawdling and discussing matters that have no prayer of becoming law. I get that we don’t pay our legislators much money when they meet in Austin every odd-numbered year, but for crying out loud, I just wish they would take all the time they have available working for the general public good.