Just what Maryland needs.

This arti­cle in the Washig­ton Post (h/t @marylandmoment) describes how the Mary­land House of Del­e­gates have passed a bill to allow Mary­lan­ders to cre­ate trusts for their pets.

This is truly a ground­break­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion; pre­cisely what Mary­land needs. Crime? Hous­ing slump? Unem­ploy­ment? Reces­sion? Death penalty? No, let’s focus our efforts on an impor­tant topic — pet trusts. I had dogs grow­ing up, and they were part of the fam­ily; I shed tears when they died. There was no bur­ial or memo­r­ial ser­vice for them.

Do peo­ple need trust accounts for their pets? Maybe — accord­ing to the arti­cle, 39 other states already allow their cit­i­zens to cre­ate trusts for their pets. How­ever, when our state Sen­ate decides to put the issue of repeal­ing the death penalty to rest for this ses­sion by not repeal­ing the death penalty, why is our leg­is­la­tion spend­ing the time on pet trust funds?

Published on 03/04/2009 10:47 am.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , , , ,

A thoroughly useless bill.

The Mary­land State Sen­ate has voted to amend the death penalty bill. I guess at the last minute they decided that the bill, instead of repeal­ing the death penalty, should not repeal the death penalty.

I think Sen. Raskin said it best:

Amend­ments say­ing that the death penalty can be imposed only with DNA evi­dence and with more than just eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony do not change cur­rent law but are merely “cam­ou­flage for the sta­tus quo.”

Why is our state leg­is­la­ture wast­ing everyone’s time mak­ing bills that serve absolutely no pur­pose whatsoever?

Published on 03/04/2009 10:26 am.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , ,