It was inevitable that, in the quest to fix the horrors of the Texas Youth Commission, the Legislature wasn't going to have time to take up every bill that it had on the books. It seems that two bills intended to give other victims of sexual abuse a certain degree of redress have fallen through the cracks.

Senate Bill 97 in the Senate and its House partner bill House Bill 204 remove the statute on limitations on felony sexual assault, felony aggravated sexual assault, and felony indecency with a child. At the moment, no charges relating to abuse of a child can be brought more than 10 years after their 18th birthday, while the other two charges expire after five years.

Nothing substantive has happened with SB 97 since it got referred to the Senate on Jan. 23, while the House bill has languished since getting to Criminal Jurisprudence seven days later.

This week could see the end of the plan to privatize much of the future of Texas transport. Massive road omnibus bill Senate Bill 1929 faces a make-or-break vote by the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security on Wednesday. The committee's chair, Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, hopes his bill will plug the funding gaps in planned road developments by letting municipal-planning organizations hand huge contracts over to toll-road operators. But the signs are really not good.

First of all, the vote was supposed to take place Monday, not Wednesday. Last Wednesday, Carona said that he realized there was opposition to the bill as it stood and hoped that a series of meetings may have solved everything. Or at least that each senator could find enough in the bill to vote for – enough to outweigh the stuff they hated. And they hated a lot. There is a bipartisan lack of support, with prominent anti-toll-roader Sen. Robert Nichols, D-Jacksonville, and his fellow committee Dems, El Paso's Eliot Shapleigh and Houston's Rodney Ellis, joining two GOPers on the committee, Plano's Florence Shapiro and Fort Worth's Kim Brimer, in voicing serious doubts about multiple passages. Ellis has already said that he could not vote for the bill as it stands.

Even if it gets through the committee, it may face a tough time on the Senate floor. Last Thursday, Nichols got SB 1267, a two-year moratorium on awarding new toll-road contracts, passed. Even though it came with some big waivers for projects near the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and El Paso, it still proved that there's a lack of legislative will to sign over huge chunks of the Texas road system to profit-making corporations for 50 years.

There are many bumps on the road to passing a bill, and puns may be the least of them, but Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, had to endure a few of them yesterday when his cactus rustling bill passed through the Senate Natural Resources Committee (yes, the committee's chair, Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, did refer to it as a sticky issue and said they should get to the point. D'oh.)

Senate Bill 689 sounds like a spoof, but the move toward urban xeriscaping - using natural solutions to landscape in arid zones - has lead to a lucrative market in cacti. So lucrative, in fact, that thieves have been hauling entire truckloads of stolen cacti out of state and national parks. The World Wide Fund for Nature estimates that 200 species of cactus in the Southwest are in danger of extinction from this trade, which could destabilize the desert ecology. Shapleigh's bill says that cactus vendors and exporters must be able to prove where they came from and that all desert plants for sale must be marked with a Texas Department of Agriculture stamp.

As you may have read, Sen. Dan Patrick didn't take too kindly to our reporting his xenophobic departure from the Senate floor earlier this month, rather than listen to a Muslim imam lead the group in a historic prayer. So much so, apparently, that the chipmunk-faced Silvio Berlusconi of suburbia let loose his radio listeners on the Chronicle, with dozens e-mailing our Lege correspondent, Amy Smith. We printed some of their thoughtful, well-reasoned responses, but due to space, too many pearls of wisdom didn't make the final story. Here are more highlights, in their unedited, uncorrected form.

Ms Smith,
Being a Christian is like being pregnant, either you are or you are not. "Extremes" do not apply.
Amen. – Woody Follis

Shame! Really, you should be ashamed. It is indicative of the mental disease that causes Liberalism in journalists such as yourself. – Bernard Gordon

I find it interesting that the Texas senate can have a prayer to open there session buy my grand childreen can not pray in school. Don't you find that a little hipacritical!!!.
Our country was founded on the christin doctorin and not on the islamic teachings. I am very offended that you allowed this prayer to happen in my house, yes I am a taxpayer and it is my house. Why do you people continue to grovel at the feet of these islamic radicales. All they really want to do is to distroy our way of life and bring us down to there level (13th century) and they make no bones about how they want to do it, they want to kill each and every one of us.
I listen to Dan Patrick and I agree with his thought process, I am not a right wing christin radical, I am a consertive American and I want to see our values and our country move back to the left and I want the PC movement to be distroyed before it distroys our country. – Larry Kestler

"I realized that Senator Whitmire has not appeared once before this committee on one of his bills, but I suppose that's all right. I only realized last week that I'm on his Senate Criminal Justice Committee" – Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, explaining to this morning's meeting of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee why a bill sponsor wasn't there to guard his legislative baby.

Is that the Dallas GOPer admitting to incompetence? Nope, just giving a bit of insight into how rushed the Legislature is at the moment. With committees starting as early as 7am, and others running well into the wee hours of the morning, long sessions, lots of meetings, and the countdown clock to the end of the session tick-tick-ticking ever louder, legislators are frantically trying to get as much essential business as possible done before all the paperwork must be signed (a common sight is clerks, runners, and even legislators running through the halls of the state House in desperate search of committee members, so they can be quorate.)

Guess that's what happens when you only meet for five months every two years. Now, who's laying odds on a special session next year?

Where do failed gubernatorial candidates go?

Well, in Kinky Friedman's case, the state House. Kinda. The Kinkster will be down at the Capitol south steps today at noon, fighting the reopening of horse slaughter houses. The committed animal-welfare activist and founder of Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch is will be there taking part in a rally against House Bill 2476, organized by Texas Humane Legislation Network, Society for Animal Protective Legislation, the Humane Society of the United States and Habitat for Horses.

Heavy pol watchers may recall that, during his campaign, two of the world's most famous Jewish cowboy's TV ads - "The Good Shepard" and "The Cowboy Way" - showed him surrounded by animals. One campaign professional (not involved in a Texas race) saw the slot, especially the shot of Kinky surrounded by his equine buddies, and asked out loud, "Is it really a good idea for a politician to have people associate his name with 'horses ass'?"

On this occasion, that's probably exactly what the Kinkster is hoping for.

Film buffs will be keeping a close eye on the Senate this week as Senate Bill 782, the Moving Image Industry Incentive Program bill, works its way through the finance committee. Everyone from the Motion Picture Association of America to the Austin Film Society to the Omni Hotel agrees that it's a good thing (only rabid free-marketers Americans for Prosperity and anti-business-tax advocates Texans for Fiscal Responsibility thought it was a bad idea), but its cash-bonus for out-of-state productions isn't for everyone.

The bill excludes subsidies for porn (no surprise there) but the more forward-thinking will notice that, somewhere between the original introduced bill and the committee substitute, digital interactive media productions were dropped from the program - bad news for the technologically minded creatives out there.

Even more worrying may be Chair Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, idly wondered whether the money should go for films that might portray Texas in a bad light. (Does he mean everyone-is-a-homicidal-nutter, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style bad light or flat-out-unfunny, Man of the House-style bad light?) Then Ogden raised the controversy around Andres Serrano's famous Piss Christ (but seemed leery of naming it out loud) and the National Endowment for the Arts' right to not fund what it doesn't like.

Just to show how in-touch the committee may be culturally: Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, getting Michael Moore confused with Mike Myers. At least he knew he wasn't thinking about "the Austin Powers guy." Of course, he may have meant the Halloween maniac.

For those wondering about those five nay votes against Senate Bill 1, the Senate finance bill, last week, they've now all put out policy statements. Here's the quick skinny on who said what and why:

- Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said the bill underfunded the Texas Grants tuition and fee assistance program and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

- Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, said the bill underfunded UT-Arlington, the only four-year college in Tarrant County.

- Sen. Mike Jackson, R-League City, said that, while the bill spent too much money in some areas, it underfunded certain (but he didn't name them) higher-education institutions in his district.

- Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, just thought it was too big and said he could save $3 billion, mainly by slashing dedicated educational programs like Student Success Initiatives, state watchdogs like the Travis County Public Integrity Unit, and programs for illegal migrants like the Colonias Initiative.

- Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, opposed the bill because it prioritized the 2011 tax cut over desperately needed CHIP and education funding.

Texas school kids will soon be getting lessons on why file-sharing sites are a bad thing, if the Senate has its say.

On Thursday, Senate Bill 1420, an Internet safety bill, passed out of the Senate Education Committee: In an age of online stalkers, it seems sensible that the Texas Education Agency should teach children about "the potential dangers of allowing personal information to appear on an Internet Web site."

But it's not just about foiling any future stars of To Catch a Predator. There are two other clauses to this bill: Apparently, the TEA is supposed to teach "2) the significance of copyright laws [and] 3) the consequences of cyber-plagiarism and theft of audiovisual works, including motion pictures, software, and recordings, through uploading and downloading files on the Internet."

Of course, there was no way that a bill that turns Texas educators into enforcers for the recording and movie industries was going to escape committee unaltered. Yes, the committee decided that the TEA shouldn't have to come up with a full curriculum. Instead, they should just use existing Web sites and information sources. According to the fiscal note attached to the bill, that should save the state around $40,000. So that's fine, then.