Danno TV

Sen. Patrick has a film crew following him around, Kinky Friedman-style. This has not endeared him to his colleagues.

"Do you have a live microphone on you?" Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, asked the freshman lawmaker.

Patrick assured Carona and other colleagues that he was not wearing any microphone -- "live, dead or otherwise."

What about the Senate lounge? Carona wondered. Might the film crew follow Patrick into the off-limits lounge?

Absolutely not, Patrick answered: "We don't even allow our relatives into the Senate lounge."

I suggest regular friskings, just to be on the safe side. And I'll buy a round of drinks for the first person to send me a photo of someone patting Danno down to check for a wire.

Who else wants to see this footage?

[W]ith the cameras rolling, Patrick surprised his colleagues by trying to insert the heart of a bill he submitted and is pending in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee in a bill by fellow freshman, Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy. Hegar's bill confines itself to allowing nurse practitioners and physicians' assistants in rural areas to issue parking permits in the absence of a doctor for the disabled.

Patrick's amendment, which would have expanded the medical authority for assistants and practioners, brought Sen. Jane Nelson, the chairman of Health and Human Services, to her feet.

After a flurry of points of order and senatorial huddling, Patrick withdrew his amendment. Nelson, R-Lewisville and Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, took turns speaking privately with Patrick after the Senate passed Hegar's bill. It remains to be seen whether or not the film crew recognized this as the Senate particularly mannered version of woodshedding the outspoken freshman Senator from Houston.

Oh, I figure someone explained it to them. Whether or not that person then asks for a consultant credit is the real question.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on March 27, 2007 to That's our Lege