“He’s honest but you gotta watch him.”

Chico Marx says that about Harpo in “A Day at the Races.”

If I had followed a lobbyist’s advice today, people would have said of me, “He’s for the bill but you gotta watch him.”

The lobbyist, whom I respect, asked me about a bill I have co-sponsored.

“Are you going to vote for it?” this person asked.

“Of course, it’s important to many of my constituents,” I replied.

“Can you ask members of the committee that has the bill not to vote for it?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not going to work both ends against the middle.”

Harpo once burned a candle at both ends. But he’s not an elected official.

If you’re for a bill, you want it to pass. If you act otherwise, people are watching.

“Being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition.”

If you were glued to the floor debate on CSPAN like I was, you heard that talking point from Speaker Pelosi and other Democratic women.

Far too many Americans – both male and female, have decided not to change jobs because a pre-existing condition would leave them uninsurable by their new employer. This roadblock to individual advancement is now a thing of the past.

But this reform also reminded me of language in an abortion case decided by the Supreme Court.

“The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives,” wrote Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Family planning and, to a lesser degree, abortion have enabled countless women to pursue their chosen role in both the workplace and the home. That opportunity will be expanded by health care reform.

Rosenberg is “probably to the left of Bernie Sanders,” writes a blogger on mdshooters.com.

Mr. Sanders is a Democratic Socialist and a member of the United States Senate.

I meet one of the criteria in Alvy Singer’s cultural stereotype of a Jewish left-wing liberal in “Annie Hall.” I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan during law school.

But my father doesn’t have Ben Shahn drawings, and I didn’t go to socialist summer camps. It was Reform Judaism summer camp instead.

As to the blogger’s political stereotype, I succeed in Annapolis when I seek common ground.

I raise issues that others may not – gun control and civil rights, among them, but I’m not a majority of one.

Incremental progress is better than press releases bemoaning unfavorable reports.

By the way, The Almanac of American Politics has called Senator Sanders a “practical” and “successful legislator.”

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Clarification: I wrote last week that “the alleged SLAPP [Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation] is the suit filed by the Cordish Cos., asserting fraudulent acts in the referendum petition drive opposing a slots facility at Arundel Mills.”

The only defendant in that suit is the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections. Maryland law defines a SLAPP suit as an action “brought against a party who has communicated with a federal, State, or local government body or the public at large.”

However, Stop Slots at the Mall, the coalition that led the referendum effort, has filed a motion to intervene in that lawsuit.

“Did you have to ask me that?”

I had asked my Democratic colleague, “Will you vote against the two death penalty bills in our committee?”

“I’m not taking anybody’s vote for granted,” I replied.

We will send a strong message if every committee member who opposes capital punishment votes against legislation that would expand the death penalty.

Shortly before this conversation took place on the House floor, I had a chance conversation with a lobbyist who asked me about my bill dealing with education requirements for funeral directors.

The bill had sailed through the House, without any opposition. It will have a public hearing in the Senate next week.

“I’ll check with someone who alerted me to a problem on a similar bill several years ago,” I replied. “I won’t take it for granted that the bill will pass.”

“That’s my bill!” I said to myself early this morning.

An article in the Sun referred to a state statute that “prohibits meritless suits brought by large private interests, often real estate developers, to deter ordinary citizens from exercising their political or legal rights.”

That quote is from Alan Rifkin, the lawyer for opponents of a casino at Arundel Mills.

He’s referring to my legislation designed to short circuit SLAPP suits – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

Typically, SLAPPs are frivolous lawsuits brought by a well-heeled business to intimidate an individual or community association that’s fighting a proposed development but lacks the money to defend itself in court.

Goliath vs. David.

In this instance, the alleged SLAPP is the suit filed by the Cordish Cos., asserting fraudulent acts in the referendum petition drive opposing a slots facility at Arundel Mills.

Just as the 1st Amendment equally protects Glenn Beck and George Soros, the SLAPP law protects a tiny neighborhood group and Magna Entertainment Corp.

By nature, I think the glass is half full.

But in Annapolis, I don’t take that for granted.

Ten years ago, I sponsored the bill creating a special fund for the money Maryland received from its legal settlement with the tobacco industry.

We targeted this money to address the health problems caused by tobacco use: preventing kids from starting to smoke, helping adults to break their addiction, and research and treatment for the diseases attributable to tobacco.

For example, a $250,000 grant to a young researcher at Johns Hopkins in 2004 was the starting point for a blood test that now monitors tumors in cancer patients.

However, the fiscal crisis has resulted in the cigarette money being siphoned off to other uses.

So I introduced a bill to redirect that money to my original priorities.

At the end of today’s hearing on my bill, the committee chairman said that since there were a lot of unmet health needs, it was time to take a look at how we spend this money in the future. He told the committee there would be a summer study.

I’m already following up to make sure that the glass is flowing over at the conclusion of that study.

“I don’t have a vote – for now.”

That’s what I told a lobbyist who came to see me about my one of my bills.

After you introduce legislation, it’s assigned to a committee. Your bill is now in the possession of that committee – literally and legislatively.

If an amendment to your bill is being considered, you can express your opinion, but the committee decides.

When the proposed change is controversial, not having a vote can be a blessing in disguise.

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The Sun article about my bagel brain has been posted on the website of the Maryland Nazi Party.

It’s springtime for gun control, as Mel Brooks would say.

“Bagel Brain Jews Want Your Bullets and Your Guns”

This anti-Semitic attack on myself and Senator Brian Frosh is the handiwork of the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

I ignored this foul slur when I first learned of it from a Google News Alert.

After it was mailed to residents in Senator Frosh’s neighborhood, a Sun reporter asked me about it.

He accurately quoted me as saying: “I’m not going to allow them to deter me from what I believe we should be doing, nor is it going to prompt me to fall into the gutter with them.”

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bal-md.flier13mar13,0,3259898.story

It was front page news that my committee and my chairman were criticized for “rude behavior and ravaging witnesses” by the president of the Women Legislators of Maryland.

As I’ve written in this diary, witnesses need to be asked more tough questions, not fewer.

One constituent wrote me: “80 million of law abiding gun owners knows this [my bill is “just a political agenda rather than what’s best for the citizenry.”] and they sure remember it at re-election time.”

My 28 years in Annapolis have taught me otherwise. If the voters know that you make your decisions on controversial bills after serious thought, they won’t throw you out of office because of one vote.

Advocates on the right and the left may wish that were so, but it rarely is.

I don’t think I’ve quoted Justice Scalia before.

But today I did.

Testifying on my gun control legislation, I read from his decision striking down a law prohibiting a citizen from keeping a gun in the home for self defense.

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

I cited the Justice because witnesses had wrongly claimed that provisions in bills heard before mine violated the 2nd Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms.

The fate of my bill won’t be decided by a judge but by the answer to a familiar question: Why do we need this bill?

In this instance, my chairman phrased it this way: Does our existing licensing system adequately prevent the sale of firearms to criminals?

What do George Soros and Glenn Beck have in common?

Soros, a survivor of Nazi and Communist oppression in his native Hungary, has funded various liberal advocacy and research organizations.

Beck was a Top 40 DJ before he became a leading voice of the conservative movement as a host on Fox News.

Yesterday, discussion of my libel tourism bill on the House floor was delayed 24 hours.

This legislation would protect Marylanders from libel judgments in a foreign court if that country does not provide at least as much protection for freedom of speech and press as our federal and state constitutions.

“Will this bill help George Soros?” another delegate asked me this morning.

“The First Amendment equally protects George Soros and Glenn Beck,” I replied.