How much time will the Lege waste this week on a stunt?

House Speaker Joe Straus got a little frustrated on Friday.

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus unleashed a rare verbal assault Friday on an effort to criminalize invasive searches at airports, assailing legislation supported by Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and most of the House.

“The bill — without some serious revisions — appears to me to be nothing more than an ill-advised publicity stunt,” said Straus, R-San Antonio. “Unenforceable. Ill-advised. Misdirected to uniform security personnel. And not where it appropriately should be aimed, which is in Washington, to the bosses of these people. I have some other thoughts on how to send a message without actually harming commercial aviation in Texas and without making the Texas Legislature a laughingstock.”

As Speaker, of course, he’s in a rare position to do something about this beyond having a tantrum. The special session expires at midnight tomorrow, and there’s still a lot of bills that need to be passed in order to stave off the need for yet another special session. Perhaps if he and Lt. Gov. Dewhurst would agree to lock all of the legislators involved in negotiating a windstorm insurance bill in an un-air conditioned room, safely away from the influence of those dreaded “special interests”, and not let them out till they agreed on something. The more time spent on the “anti-groping” bill and its close relative the “sanctuary cities” bill, the more likely that we’ll be going into double overtime on Wednesday.

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