The cake has been taken

I've come to accept that Steve Windom urinated in a jug on the Senate floor as lieutenant governor a few years back (and indeed, even to remember it with a tinge of whimsical nostalgia).

I wasn't at all surprised by the sneak-attack 62 percent pay raise the Alabama Legislature gave itself this year (without any corresponding limitation on other sources of income, of course) before accomplishing little else that it wasn't required to do.

Our lawmakers wasting virtually the entire session squabbling over organizing rules before hurrying to avoid a special session by passing the budgets at the eleventh-and-a-half hour? I'm shocked whenever that sort of thing isn't the case.

But through it all, deep down inside, part of me desperately wanted -- no, needed -- to believe that our elected officials ultimately would resolve any disputes through debate and negotiation, that Goat Hill would retain some minimal sense of decorum, and that I certainly never would live to see one grown man punch another grown man in the head in the Senate chamber.

That part of me died today. Thank you, Charles Bishop.