[tptacek]

I guess I'm just not seeing how it was ever realistic to think that legislators and their staffs were going to be the best authors of bills (rather than the best arbiters of what bills to pass, where I think there's a clearer case that they're the best option out of a whole untidy mess of worse options), or why competition from outside sources of drafting legislation would be a bad thing.

[9000]

I don't think there is any reason to believe that legislators are the individuals with the most talent at drafting law. It's probably some academic or lawyer somewhere. But, I do believe that the process that gets legislators into that position is designed to provide oversight over them, and allow for a metric that can prevent the worst people being chosen. Just because someone better at writing laws exists, does not mean that we have a better metric of choosing them than the democratic vote. And for them to then shirk not just their duty to write the laws, but also their duty to provide meaningful oversight over the bills that do get proposed and passed, implies to me that there are real problems.

I have no problem with interested organizations writing draft bills and publicizing those. What I do have a problem with is politicians taking those whole-cloth and implementing them in law without consulting other stakeholders, especially when money or influence changes hands.