It’s been an interesting week-and-a-half for Our Man From Bennington, the Hon. Dick Sears. (Seen at right, possibly preparing delivery of a Wet Willy to Phil Baruth.) Lately, it seems like every time I read a story about the Legislature, Dick Sears is doing something strange, devious, obnoxious, or a combination thereof.

Jack McCullough has previously identified the Senator as a BKS* sufferer. I concur with the diagnosis, but I’d go even farther: I believe Sears is suffering from a rare and very painful case of Multi-Twist BKS, which is awfully tough on the ol’ twig-and-berries, and is known to cause outbursts of extreme crankiness. Or maybe it’s just Dick being Dick; longtime observers of the Golden Dome may have more insight to offer on that point.  

*”Bunched Knicker Syndrome,” most commonly expressing itself as peevish behavior on the part of a powerful individual.

Let’s go through the diagnosis… after the jump.  

Single twist: Sticking his nose into the House’s redistricting plan because of how it divvied up the Bennington area. That kind of bigfooting is generally considered poor form, as I understand it.

Double twist: His decision to shackle a marijuana decriminalization measure to a bill that would open the state’s prescription database to law enforcement officers — a blatant attempt to snag a few liberal-progressive votes for a regressive measure. And as Sears well knows, even if the Senate passed the database/decrim mashup, decrim would fail in the House because of Speaker Shap Smith’s opposition.

Triple twist, as reported by Jack: Sears threw a hissy on the Senate floor over a comment posted by Sen. Phil Baruth on this very website, in which Baruth expressed his disinclination to fall for Sears’ little ploy. Sears moaned that Senate collegiality has “sunk to new lows.” And actually, I see his point — but it has more to do with Sears himself than with Phil Baruth.

Quadruple twist (oh dear, this case is even worse than I thought): Last week, Sen. Hinda Miller tried to bring the end-of-life bill to the Senate floor (even though the Sears-chaired Judiciary Committee hadn’t passed it) by attaching it to another bill. Sears’ ill-tempered reaction:

“To hijack a bill out of committee is breaking the rules, and if we want to continue to break the rules in this building, there will be consequences for all of us,” he warned.

Yea verily, society shall crumble, children will be slaughtered in the streets, and there will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Unfortunately for Sears, that pesky Phil Baruth was on hand to point out that Miller’s maneuver was permissible under the Senate’s own rules. Damn blogger!

Quintuple twist (this is one for the medical journals): During Monday’s Senate debate on a bill to establish a state health insurance exchange, Sears got all hot and bothered about a House provision calling for high-school sports coaches to remove any player who may have had a concussion. Sears, who may well have played without a helmet back in the day, wanted to change the standard to “actual knowledge that a concussion had occurred.” I assume he’d include funding for the installation of MRI machines at all high school sports facilities. Otherwise, how in hell is a coach supposed to diagnose a concussion?

(He was joined in this absurd argument by none other than Prog/Dem Senator Tim Ashe, who’s been spending a lot of his time cozying up to Senate conservatives lately. As reported by Dave Gram of the AP, Ashe argued that the House’s concussion rule would reduce tackle football to “two-hand touch”, and force ice hockey to be played on rubber mats. Now that’s an argument I never expected to hear from a Progressive. Yeah, Tim, let’s keep on letting our kids play contact sports when they’re concussed! Gotta stop the creeping wussification of our society, don’t we? Hock, spit.)

As an occasional sufferer of Single Twist BKS myself (mostly in traffic), I can only imagine Dick Sears’ discomfort at this critical time. Somebody get this man to a hospital — or at least to a clothing store for a nice roomy pair of undies.