Spanking legislators till they can't sit down

I didn't expect Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd to cancel the road bill because it was passed using the legislature's "stop the clock" trick, but that is what he did.

The trick involves pretending that the last day of the General Assembly session doesn't end at midnight, but instead that it goes on until lawmakers feel like stopping.

Now might be a good time to remind them that if will only move the filing deadine to after the end of the session, this last-minute game playing probably be an issue.

Each election year, lawmakers sit around the first month doing practically nothing while they wait for the election filing deadline to pass. That is clearly a luxury we can no longer afford to allow them.