Ramsey calls for session on ethics

From the Tennessean:

A special legislative session on ethics may be scheduled for January, after the Senate's top Republican came out in support of the idea yesterday.

With Ramsey's statement, it appears a special session to deal with ethics is all but inevitable. In the wake of the undercover bribery sting called "Operation Tennessee Waltz" that led to the arrests of Ford and six others, Bredesen said he was mulling a plan to bring lawmakers back in the fall to see whether ethics laws could be tightened.

This strikes me as the way to go about ethics legislation. First, special sessions are a tremendous waste of money. More importantly, special sessions take Tennessee farther and farther away from the idea of a citizen-legislature. Who in Memphis or Kingsport can afford to be in Nashville 6-7 months a year. You are seriously shrinking the spectrum of people who can run for office. Every time we have one, it adds to the argument for a full-time legislature - and that is not a good thing.