Jeff Woods covers the start of the new legislative session in his usual no-nonsense style:

Tennessee Senate Republicans kicked off the new session in a partisan way today, ramming through legislation to postpone an obvious good-government election reform that once enjoyed broad support from both political parties.

Republicans beat back a slew of Democratic amendments, and the Senate voted 22-10 to delay implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act until the 2012 elections…

The amount of misinformation being touted as fact on the floor of the Senate by proponents of the delay bill was mind boggling, like Senators had fingers in their ears going “la-la-la-i’m-not-listening” for the last 6 months.

Next week, state lawmakers will convene a special session of the General Assembly to fix a new law that nearly doubles workers compensation insurance premiums on small contracts across the state of Tennessee.

The new law (Public Chapter Np. 1041) was sponsored by Republicans in both the House and Senate last year on behalf of the state’s home builders and insurance lobbies.

…

The new law’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro), is himself an insurance salesman who benefits from raising premiums on small contractor businesses. During his current term, special interest PACs representing large home builders, developers and insurance industries gave more than $20,000 to Ketron’s campaign war chest.

The new law’s House sponsor, Rep. Jason Mumpower (R-Bristol), has received $18,000 from special interest PACs representing large home builders, developers and insurance industries during his current term.

…

Rep. Joe Pitts (D-Clarksville) will introduce HB 1899 during the special session seeking to delay implementation of the new law until July. Sen. Tim Barnes (D-Clarksville) will sponsor the Senate’s companion bill (SB 2055).

The special session convenes Monday January 11.

See, you can’t just say you champion the rights of the small business owner. Proof by assertion, although a favorite tactic of the TNGOP, doesn’t really work. You actually have to legislate accordingly.

Without such an injunction, it seems clear that Secretary of State Tre Hargett and state Election Coordinator Mark Goins will attempt to run the clock out until January when the legislature convenes again. And the Republican majorities in both houses, fully alert now to how the game is being played, will pick up where they left off in the 2009 legislative session. That was when, on the eve of the General Assembly’s adjournment, they tried to vote a postponement of the act’s provisions until after the 2010 election cycle but narrowly failed to do so, essentially because a handful of key GOP members happened to be elsewhere on the day of the vote.

That oversight will be corrected in January, when party discipline will rule the day. The reality is that Democrats want the TVCA in effect for the 2010 election cycle and the Republicans don’t. The GOP will have the votes, and all that remains to be seen is whether the act is merely postponed or amended or quashed altogether.

Tennesseans deserve to secure and accurate elections – the kind that we can’t get now because the voting machines we use simply do not work.

The TVCA will replace the broken system we have now – where a machine votes for us under cover of a secret black box – with one in which we have a piece of paper that actually records the intent of each voter correctly – and which we can rely on for recounts and audits.

Why are they still dragging their feet?

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”!

Before the story of Ms. Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy broke this morning, however, we received the following email from a listener:

Although it is somehow against liberal values to have a show on Labor Day, I want to provide some fodder. In every piece written and aired about Sarah Palin over the past few days it has been mentioned that she has shown her deep and abiding commitment to her pro-life values by carrying to term her son Trig (who has Down’s Syndrome). The implied conclusion is that she and her husband are morally superior superheroes, saints, and martyrs. However, the unwritten subtext of all these mentions is that having a child with a disability like Down’s Syndrome is a horrible burden and that such a child is completely and totally defined by their disability (for which their parents deserve our pity or admiration). Yet again the MSM is completely missing the mark. As a parent of a child with a disability I find this incredibly offensive to me and horrifically demeaning to my son. We don’t want or need pity/admiration, what we need are health care, educational, and employment systems that are in place so ALL people can grow and thrive. For example, IDEA (the act governing special education) is supposed to fund 40% of “excess cost” of Special Education, it currently funds only 17% and has never fully funded its obligations. Over 2/3s of working age people with disabilities are unemployed and the ADA and related acts need revamping. If better systems were in place and McCain/Palin had better priorities than a phony promise to slash unspecified “discretionary” programs (IDEA?) to balance the budget so millionaires can continue to disproportionately benefit, carrying a child with Down’s Syndrome to term would be unremarkable and people with disabilities would be treated with the dignity they deserve.

And herein lies the empty promise of Sarah Palin’s brand of social conservatism in public policy: We’ll force our beliefs on you and give you an unfunded mandate to deal with the consequences. Good luck!