On Saturday, I was passing bills in the Senate...

I am currently taking part in a program called Youth and Government, which
is a nationwide program whose goal is to teach teenagers about the
government. We write bills, propone them, debate them, and pass or fail
them, using parliamentary procedure. And in May, the Washington legislature
will adjourn, and for three days, teenagers in this program will run the
state government (we even elect officials). Scary? Well, thankfully this
program's goal is to be as authentic as possible, and definitely not be
flippant. In fact, the seriousness is such, that any bills that are passed
in both the (Youth) House and the (Youth) Senate during those three days,
will be presented to the real legislature when they return, and there has
actually been a bill by a teenager that passed out of committee and was
debated by the real government.

On Saturday, our district had a Training Legislation. Our delegation
(carpooled in our family's nifty fifteen-passenger van), met with others for
the first time, and had a practice legislation. After a few workshops on
debating skills and parliamentary procedure, we debated some bills using the
skills we had just learned. After being in a delegation with only 20 people,
the 130 of T-leg was an interesting experience. There was some good debate,
and a couple interesting bills.

One was to allow judges to give warrants to search the crime records of a
person from when they were 15-17 (right now, those records are forgotten as
soon as you turn 18). I agree with the bill's proponent, but unfortunately,
the example she used gave the wrong idea, and the bill failed. One of the
arguments against was that 15-17 year olds do not necessarily know what is
right and wrong, and therefore shouldn't be held accountable for the things
they do before turning 18. I found it strongly ironic that all the people in
that room, who had been so passionately debating the rights and wrongs of
bills, were 15-17 years of age. Would it hurt them to use logic? What do
they teach them in these schools!