What WON'T Become Law in North Carolina This Year

John Wynne, the Civitas conservative who writes occasionally for Thomas Mills' PoliticsNC, was lecturing liberals yesterday morning that we should be thankful for literal small favors: now that "crossover" has been crossed over at the NC General Assembly, that means that several really awful pieces of legislation are now dead for 2015 because they failed to "cross over" -- that is, they weren't passed by at least one of the General Assembly's two celestial bodies.

In other words, we should thank Gawd, because things could be much worse.

Wynne's three examples of Republican political thuggery that won't become law this year:

SB 705: Ensure Fair Sale of Dorothea Dix Property – This bill, if passed, would have revoked the deal made by Governor Pat McCrory and the City of Raleigh for the Dorothea Dix property. Some senators felt Raleigh was getting the land for cheap and wanted to sell it for a higher price. In the end, the bill’s sponsors decided to drop the bill, saying essentially that while they’re not fans of the negotiated sales price, the deal has been done and the state should just live with it.

SB 593: Improve Professor Quality/UNC System – Would have required professors at the UNC system to teach 8 courses a year, focusing more on teaching and less on research. Bill sponsors argued that students deserve the attention of their professors and shouldn’t have graduate student TAs doing all the work. Opponents, including many in higher education, feared that it would wreak havoc at research institutions like UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State. This week, the bill was withdrawn and referred to a legislative study bill. Expect a lot more bills in the future aimed at higher education reform. This one was just a bridge too far, even for most Republican legislators.

HB 348/S550: Religious Freedom Restoration Act Because everyone already knows a little bit about RFRA, there’s no need to go over in detail what it would do. This, and similar legislation in other states, was basically a bone to throw to religious conservatives and was expected to pass easily. That is, until GOP legislators saw what happened in Indiana and got spooked. Social media activists and the high tech industry mobilized against the bill and tainted not only the State of Indiana, but also the words “religious freedom”, delivering another impressive victory for the LGBT movement.

Yes, you godless liberals, you should genuflect toward the Capitol and thank your Republican overlords that the water torture was suspended temporarily for the city of Raleigh, for college professors, and for gays.

We guess that any time the Republican Horde can curb its hatred of our capital city, higher education, and gay people is an almost, nearly good better day. Like ... we didn't get hit by a tornado, an earthquake, or the plague, so why the hell aren't we happily oblivious citizens?