A few days before legislators convened in a special session to address controversial COVID vaccination requirements and mask mandates in Tennessee, state Sen. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, previewed his intentions :
“There is an evil government in Washington, D.C., that is overstepping its bounds and is trying to replace God with it. They’re trying to tell each and everyone of us what we can and cannot do.”
(And you thought God had always made clear what everyone, not just Tennesseans, can and cannot do. But I digress.)
Republicans constitute a super-majority in the General Assembly. If nothing else, that advantage imposes upon them a responsibility to avoid producing legislation so infected with social media stupidity that Gov. Bill Lee would be obliged to veto it. Whether the legislators would override his veto is, of course, anybody’s guess.
Before they get to the point of embarrassing themselves, the super-majoritarians should consider how their predecessors dealt with essentially the same issue 54 years ago.