lights-on bill
n.— «If they can’t overturn Pawlenty’s decision, two key lawmakers said the Legislature simply will return what is known as a “lights-on bill,” which would fund the Transportation Department at its most basic levels. “The only alternative we have is sending a lights-on bill,” Rep. Bernie Lieder, DFL-Thief River Falls, said on Tuesday. “And we’re ready to do that.”» —“Is it now ’lights out’ for the transportation funding plan?” by Mike Longaecker in St. Paul West Central Tribune (Willmar, Minnesota) May 16, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...