One of the worst things about spending time at the Texas Legislature, apart from the fact that it makes you a little bit insane, is that it turns you into a pedant. There’s so much specialized knowledge to pick up that it’s easy to start looking askance at folks who have a slightly less developed sense of House procedure or don’t remember David Simpson, Republican from Longview. You start talking like Tom Hanks at the beginning of Cloud Atlas .

That is to say, I will admit to some initial confusion when the overnight stays of Democratic state Representative Nicole Collier at the Texas Capitol became first a national and then an international news story and journalists from around the country started to get in touch to ask: What the hell is going on in Texas ?

If you haven’t been

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