the other day, republicans in the indiana house, upset that their amendment banning gay marriage was not getting anywhere, tried a trick. they attached the gay marriage amendment to another amendment, the governor's amendment that would write property tax caps into the constitution. as a result, speaker bauer pulled consideration of the bill, effectively killing it. i'm not upset about the loss of the daniels amendment, as i wasn't so sure it was a good idea anyway. but nonbigoted republicans like gary are hopping mad and the "fair tax" folks are discovering that their best bud eric miller wasn't such a good ally after all, inspiring them to step up their quasi-eliminationist rhetoric.

in the indiana senate, they do things a bit differently. the most divisive, wedgiest bills pass easily over there. so they didn't need to sneaky about banning gay marriage: they passed the bill outright. and for good measure, they passed bills on a bunch of other wedge issues as well:

they passed a bill that would allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense medicines they are morally opposed to—read: contraceptives.

they passed a bill that would require abortion providers to "inform" women that life begins at conception and that fetuses just might be capable of experiencing something resembling pain.

they approved an immigration bill that would punish businesses for employing undocumented workers.

and pundits predicted this session would be about nothing but property taxes. ¶