KyKurmudgeon

Today’s column:

FRANKFORT — You know it’s coming, just as surely as you know where to look for sunrise in the morning and sunset in the evening.

If you’ve spent much time around General Assembly sessions in recent years, you feel a sense of inevitability as the days dwindle down toward that precious moment of adjournment sine die.

At times, when the Babel-esque cacophony of a session’s final days fades to a level no greater than the roar of a jet engine five feet from your ear, you may even hear a warning sound.

Ticking. The clatter of two sets of wheels approaching each other on one set of tracks. Whatever atmospheric disturbance a giant meteor might make just before colliding with our world.

Yes, you know the bomb will go off, the trains will wreck and the worlds of the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House will collide in a way that produces a hostage-taking, bill-killing standoff. You just don’t know when or over what.

The preliminaries have begun. Tuesday, for instance, House Speaker Pro Tem Larry Clark threatened to kill his one of his own bill if a Senate committee voted to approve a substitute version that he found objectionable.

That incident came just moments after Rep. Reginald Meeks said in a House committee meeting that one of his bills was being held hostage in an attempt to influence his vote on an “informed consent” abortion measure. Meeks’ vote against the bill produced an 8-8 tie that kept the measure from getting out of committee.

“I was told action in one committee would depend on action in the other committee,” Meeks said later. “And I am not going to have my vote held hostage.”

Asked how he would have voted if he had not felt pressured, Meeks replied, “We will not know, will we?”

But those minor eruptions barely charted on the legislative seismograph, which has grown accustomed to having its needle pegged almost annually by end-of-session explosions.

And truth be told, even those of us who would love to see a harmonious, We Are the World session that produces real tax reform, a serious commitment to education from pre-school to post-secondary, an economic development policy that creates jobs rather than renting them on a temporary basis, an end to the scourge of mountaintop removal mining, an energy policy that reduces the state’s carbon footprint instead of increasing it and, oh yeah, at least three foolproof cures for the common cold will be at least slightly disappointed if the tradition doesn’t continue this year.

After all, these stare-downs do have a certain entertainment value for observers.

To be sure, it may be sick entertainment. But then, sick entertainment seems appropriate because, over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the adage comparing lawmaking to sausage-making gives sausage an exceptionally bum rap.

For all its unhealthful effects on our bodies, the end result of the sausage-making process taste goods. Too often, the end result of the lawmaking process leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

So far, this session has been long on bipartisan cooperation and short on confrontation. And it could end that way.

But with time running out and significant issues still unresolved, you won’t find many who would bet the sweetness continues.

One potentially explosive issue is education assessment. The fact that it was designated Senate Bill 1 reflects its importance to Republican leaders of that chamber.

But Senate efforts to change the assessment process have been resisted by House Democrats in past years. While the House seems more receptive to the idea this year, the two chambers could still clash over the details.

Whatever the cause, though, you know it’s coming. It almost always does.

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On Monday, President Barack Obama ended limits on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research and welcomed science back to the White House after an eight-year forced exile.

While stem-cell research has the potential for producing cures for a multitude of diseases and injuries, my personal hope is that it one day may find a way to keep our senior moments from becoming the Alzheimer’s that stripped my mother of her dignity in her final years.