Legislative Workshop

Well, I promised to issue my opinion on the two remaining classes in my 6-class schedule this semester. I’m not in the mood to talk about immigration, but I’ll issue my preliminary opinion on the Legislative Workshop.

Every Friday, I get to go to the Capitol building and have a class with the Revisor of Statutes for Kansas. Originally, I had understood the class to be a sort of seminar where there would be speakers coming in to tell us about various legislative issues... how to track bills, how the committee structure worked, how various statutes came to be and how they went through the overall process.

It seems now that the class is going to be something more in the nature of an editing class. Mr. Revisor of Statutes is going to have us editing proposed statutes, and I have a sneaking suspicion that he is short-handed in his office and simply holds the class each Spring in order to get the office work done on time (his office drafts and revises statutes, after all).

Mr. Revisor is an adorable old man. He tries to make jokes to the class, but predictably his jokes all fall flat, and he’s somehow more endearing because of it.

The really crazy part is that I think I’ve found the only person in the world who is more dull than I am. Here are some of the things we talked about today in class... (actual quotes)

"I staff the Legislative Coordination Committee which meets during the interim period. The committee is made up of the legislature’s leadership. The committee’s job is to choose the delegates to the Interstates Uniform Law Commission, but we only do that when one of the current delegates dies or retires. We don’t meet often, so it’s a plum staffing assignment."

"The Kansas legislature passes between 800 and 1000 bills each year... It’s been closer to 800 per year for the past few years, though. I’ve got a chart of the numbers back in my office. I’ll have to remember to bring it next time."

Wow. I mean, this is one hardcore dude. He’s jammin’ and slammin’ with the Legislative Coordination Committee? Damn! He’s Xtreme with a capitol X (ha ha ha... political puns are almost on the level of science jokes!).

Even though he is clearly trying to teach us something important, his methods leave a bit to be desired sometimes. He hands out a packet of photocopied materials to each student at the start of class and the package is what we talk about during class that day. After handing out our packets, Mr. Revisor of Statutes went back to his office to get a pen. While he was gone, I opened my packet and found on the second page the following diagram:


I was laughing so hard that I had to excuse myself from the room for a moment so that I could compose myself.






I know I can make some really unintelligible charts and models sometimes, but I'm impressed. I'm now in awe of the master. I'm half convinced that he let his grandchildren loose with a marker and then put a title on it. I'm not sure what he was trying to say here, but I think it has something to do with a box of water inside the sun being blasted by fire from above and about to be hit by a boulder or something. I can't rule out the possibility that it also might be some sort of glyph for summoning the foul demons of the House leadership.

Whatever it was, we passed over the picture without much comment. I just hope it isn't on the test, or I'm going to have to add a few creative additions like maybe a frog, some big polka-dots, a hotdog with mustard, and I should probably give the sun some alien antennae just for good measure.

If his mind works anything like mine does, I bet that'd get me the 'A'.