Their interest in legislating has won the admiration of senior senators.
And if the Democrats do defy history and gain more seats this year, their ideologically diverse majority will be both unwieldy in legislating and difficult to defend.
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They've had the toughest possible lesson in what legislating way out of the Assembly's comfort zone feels like, and if there was a vote tomorrow on whether to make it law, I wouldn't be in the least confident that it would pass.
Legislating in our diverse, contentious country, with our system of separation of powers, has never been, and will never be, easy.
But a group of Conservative backbenchers have been campaigning for him to firm up this commitment by legislating in the current Parliament for a referendum.
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The prime minister has said while he supports the smoking ban in pubs and clubs, he is "more nervous" about legislating what happens in cars.
Elaine Edwards, the General Secretary of UCAC, said that they believed in an independent education system for Wales, and therefore believed that only the assembly should be legislating on education in Wales.
This might be because politicians really are more interested in finger-pointing than legislating.
In the very act of legislating, Congress makes calls regarding where legislative benefits lie and raises taxes and appropriates funds accordingly.
Stephen Dorrell's Health Committee was, as he put it, engaged in "real-time legislating" as the coalition ran into trouble over the Health and Social Care Bill - with the Conservative former health secretary emerging as something of an arbiter of the government's proposals.
It is no small irony that, at the same moment these Horatii are being castigated for opposing haste-makes-waste legislating, Capitol Hill is in tumult over language contained in another bill - the omnibus appropriations act - that could only have been adopted under similar circumstances.
The Welsh government said in a statement that a wide-ranging reform programme is set out in a White Paper and it will be legislating to implement the changes next year while local authorities are responding with an action plan.
Labour seeks to outdo the Tories' Public Finance Initiative, by putting a minister in charge of driving the process forward, and by legislating to give public bodies the necessary powers to enter into contracts.
Some European countries, by legislating for equal legal rights for gay partnerships, have moved in the same direction (Britain is contemplating just such a move, and even the opposition Conservative leader, Michael Howard, says he would support it).
David Cameron, one of the leadership candidates, recently suggested legislating to equalise the size of all constituencies, even if that resulted in some odd geographical entities.
In the Lords (from 2.30pm) it's quite a heavy legislating day - but first, there's an eclectic selection of questions to ministers, with peers asking about cultural diversity in the media and creative industries, progress in discontinuing funding for the Republic of Ireland's aids to navigation, discussions with energy providers about recent price increases and the shortage of midwives.
"With little chance of cross-party agreement, legislating became guerrilla warfare, marked by cloture motions and filibusters, legitimate devices in the senatorial arsenal but hardly the path to well-crafted legislation to attract bipartisan support, " she wrote.
In his view, since the early 1950s the court has regularly overstepped the boundary between adjudicating and legislating.
The coalition government is committed to legislating on gay marriage by the 2015 general election and a Bill is expected to be tabled in January.
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