Republican Sen. Charles Bishop has called a press conference for 1 pm today. A GOP insider says that we may expect Bishop to say that the Senate Ethics Committee has done nothing to address his punch of Democratic Sen. Lowell Barron because Senate Democrats prefer to deal with the issue in the session next month for more leverage.
Bishop’s hometown newspaper today said that Bishop should be punished and quickly:
[T]hird-degree assault anywhere is not right in any circumstance. There has to be some type of punishment from the Senate, no matter how much you may dislike Lowell Barron or like Charles Bishop. The Senate should take action in the quickest possible manner — on both men — to get this behind us. We have too many needs in the state, particularly with the budgets this year, to waste more time on this.
One other issue on this whole matter that I mentioned long ago and that I think is not insignificant… if you are in Bishop’s district and are counting on him to move some legislation that is important to you, do you really want your senator in an unresolved feud with the Senate Rules Chair, Lowell Barron? Jim Preuitt demonstrated last quadrennium what a one-man bottleneck the Rules Chair could be; his coat pocket was where some important bills went to die. If I am counting on Sen. Bishop to get my legislation through Barron’s Rules Committee, I would be hoping that he would be looking for ways to tear down some fences between the two.
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Danny, the GameBoy cover is classic – made my day . . .it would be a great game except no kids would ever want to play as “Barron” as he always just gets hit . . .
I wouldn’t purchase the game for my “kids”, to violent.
Of course Bishop could just choose to filibuster Barron’s — and everyone else’s — legislation too.