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Stalled Senate compares to 'Groundhog Day' Have you noticed that some of our state senators resemble the comedian actor Bill Murray? Murray played a TV weatherman in the 1993 comedy movie "Groundhog Day." He woke up every day on Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pa. and saw the same day's activities repeated over and over. Some folks are starting to call the Alabama Senate, "Groundhog Day." Senators have wasted away almost two-thirds of the regular session, talking about the same mundane bills day after day. The problem is a bitter divide between the Democrat majority and the Republican minority over control of the chamber. The GOP minority and a few renegade Democrats attempted a coup at the beginning of the session. It failed when some of the wayward Democrats didn't hold fast. The takeover attempt made the controlling Democrats more vindictive than ever and the minority more determined to throw as many obstacles into the session as possible until they got a little more authority. Both sides, all 35 senators, are at fault, as we see it. It is a shame that petty partisan politics and special interests are getting in the way of tending to the people's business. Adding insult to injury is the whopping 62 percent pay raise that legislators gave themselves the first day of the session. The Alabama Senate isn't worth the old pay, let alone the new. The senators' one shining moment was putting aside their differences late one night long enough to approve incentives for the new ThyssenKrupp steel mill. And that required a bit of arm-twisting by Gov. Bob Riley and Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom. The difference between the Bill Murray movie and the Alabama Senate is that the movie was funny and Bill Murray finally figured out that he had to reorganize his priorities and become a better person to stop repeating the same-day nightmare.
The Alabama Senate's performance isn't funny and we wonder whether the senators have the good sense that Bill Murray did to figure out how to end the nightmare.
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