Advice to New Legislators: Bring Wooden Stakes

Some bad legislation is just hard to kill. The Senate Health and Human Services Committee killed the sonogram bill last Wednesday, only to have it dragged back to life by Senator Duenwald and friends. In sillier news, the State Senate Transportation Committee killed SB 20, which would have eliminated vanity license plates just to make DMV director Deb Hillmer's job easier. But now Senator Napoli is leading another vanity license plate bill into the fray -- and, perhaps for lack of anything better to do, District 8's own Senator Dan Sutton is backing him.

Compared to SB 20, this new measure, SB 185, is at least funny. It lists specific messages to be banned from South Dakota license plates, including...

1. the number 69, "unless used in combination with the vehicle make" (sorry, Bryan Adams fans -- and you know who you are -- "SUMR 69" is right out);
2. any reference to illegal drugs or paraphrenalia (alas, no "BIGBONG" for bell makers);
3. any reference to folks who use illegal drugs (if we're counting past use, looks like "MPEACHW" might be outlawed after all, not to mention "CLINTON");
4. any reference to race, color ("BLACK"?!), ethnic heritage, sexual orientation (forget about "STR8"), disability status, or political statement, with exceptions for "generally accepted" racial or ethnic terms, like "IRISH" or "VIKINGS" (though I'm betting other sections mean "PACKERS" is out);
   
5. any reference to a government agency (perhaps my conservative friends would agree that government agencies are inherently obscene).
   

One glaring oversight: this bill takes no steps to eliminate the inevitable serendipitous occurrences of "69" in standard license plates. "43A D69" -- yikes! The state itself is issuing hundreds of such filthy license plates. Deb Hillmer and the county treasurers should be rounded up and sternly chastised, perhaps even subjected to a week-long sensitivity seminar.

This is the silliest legislation I've read yet this session. What does it take to kill a bad idea once and for all in Pierre?

Update 2008.01.30: This bill was so bad, the DMV itself didn't want it. Napoli himself asked the Senate Transportation committee to kill the bill, and they did so yesterday, without comment.