Civil Rights Followup

Civil Rights Followup

Coverage all over this morning:

Register has the rollcall in a sidebar and a description of the rare "lock down the House" move. Three GOP absences: in addition to public supporter Gipp, Lance Horbach and Dave Heaton were gone. The only missing Dem was Ray Zirkelbach in Iraq.

An earlier article mentioned a four hour Democratic caucus yesterday morning, but not clear whether that was about this bill or all the other stuff on the finals week schedule.

The Underrated One has an overview. Rants is quoted saying "I don't break arms," but that leaves the door open for kneecaps.

Gazette discusses Pat Murphy's math...

``I thought it was conceivable that we would have 49 or 50 votes,'' Murphy said. ``I thought we might have as many as 52 or 53. I never expected to see 59 on the board. I just didn't.''

...and Chris Rants' grammar:

House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, R-Sioux City, was one of those who voted against the bill despite offering the amendment to redefine gender identity by replacing ``appearance, expression or behavior'' with ``gender-related identity of a person, regardless of the person's assigned sex at birth.''

``Those tend to be more verbs than adjectives,'' he said. The amendment was adopted on a voice vote.

Essential Estrogen looks at the aisle-crossing votes, particularly the female legislators.