Keystone Legislators

One of the inevitable problems of a democracy in which the populace becomes deeply jaded about the government's efficacy and decency is that, eventually, very few people are interested in doing the job. And many of the ones who are interested are complete numpties:

Gov. Mitch Daniels has signed an order restoring Indiana's largest state agency after it was accidentally eliminated due to a mistake in a new state law.

Daniels signed an executive order late Thursday to maintain the Family and Social Services Administration, which manages Medicaid and other major programs for Indiana's poor, elderly and disabled, according to The Journal-Gazette of Fort Wayne.

Daniels' spokeswoman, Jane Jankowski, said an apparent clerical drafting error in the preparation of the law resulted in the agency being repealed as of June 30.

...The FSSA elimination may be an extreme example, but it's not the first time this year that flaws were found in legislation from the 2011 session.

"We have had some clerical errors that seem to be more than I can recall in the past," conceded House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis.

...Bosma said leadership in the House and Senate is "addressing the issue" of the recent mistakes with the Legislative Services Agency, the nonpartisan state agency that reviews legal and fiscal legislation.

Yeesh.

Of course, for Republicans, who want to decrease the size of government to virtually nothing but defense, incompetency is a handy way of further diminishing the People's trust in their government, creating a more welcoming environment for anti-government rhetoric. So, this shit isn't so much a bug as a feature.