Steven Greenhut Sr. editorial writer and columnist The Orange County Register sgreenhut@ocregister.com

SACRAMENTO – There's a reason for the old cliche that if you like to eat sausages or have any respect for a nation's laws, you ought not see either one being made. I've never toured a slaughterhouse, but I have watched a few legislative sessions, most recently last week in Sacramento. It was an ugly sight, watching legislators ram through hundreds of bills in the final four days before recess.

But the ugliness goes deeper than the messiness of sausage-making: Those who control the legislative process (i.e., Sacramento Democrats) seem to have no concept of the nation's founding principles, such as limited government, personal responsibility, the rule of law, free enterprise. Even when they quote the founding fathers, they know only the words and not the meanings.

Making legislative sausage - the arm-twisting, compromising, backroom-deal-making, back-stabbing - is not for the faint of heart. A particularly nasty incident has been reported in the Sacramento Bee. Earlier this month the state Senate's dictatorial Appropriations Committee chairwoman, Democrat Carole Migden of San Francisco, marched over to the Assembly floor to watch a vote on her bill to add new regulatory requirements for cosmetic manufacturers.

With the bill one vote shy of passage, she went to Republican Guy Houston's desk and pushed the "yes" button so that a vote would be electronically recorded. The normally mild-mannered Assemblyman Bob Huff, the Diamond Bar Republican who sits next to Houston, saw this and had to push Migden's arm away, then undo the vote. Huff told me that Migden's excuse - that she thought the desk was a Democrat's - is bogus. She has a reputation for doing this, he said, and even if it had been a Democrat's desk, a senator has no right to cast a vote in the Assembly chambers. Assemblyman Todd Spitzer said Migden might have committed a felony, although he argued for a reprimand rather than prosecution. Even that's unlikely, since Midgen is chairwoman of the committee that dispenses the cash.

Even that ugly incident is nothing compared with this reality: Many Californians surely believe that their Legislature is busy with the important work of governing this state of 35 million people and dealing with the serious economic and management issues facing it. Instead, the lawmaking process actually is consumed with the current enthusiasms and whims of the Democratic psyche.

Approximately 400 bills reached the floor of the Assembly in the final four-day frenzy, with only about 45 of them authored by Republicans. One bill after another ... tax, spend, regulate and impose the liberal Democratic social vision on the state.

There's the plan to raise the state's minimum wage, with the sponsors oblivious to how such increases actually reduce the number of lower-paying jobs. There's a proposal mandating gender-equity in the workplace, which would allow anyone with a grievance, real or perceived, to sue his or her employer. Enabling more lawsuits, actually, seems to be a big Democratic priority. There are the bills to let workers sue their employers over labor concerns or over environmental concerns. There are the bills that let consumers sue businesses.

There are the curriculum mandates - e.g., requiring students to be taught in their native language, in apparent violation of Proposition 227, or mandating the teaching of tolerance. There's a bill that would trigger a tax audit of companies that have labor violations. There are bans on junk faxes and on certain kinds of car loans. There is a bill that creates a reparations fund for Mexican-Americans unfairly repatriated to Mexico decades ago. And don't forget the attempt to provide driver's licenses to those in the state illegally, and the endless proposals to add more regulations on every known activity.

The situation reminds me of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The legislators look normal, and most are personable, but they have been taken over by space aliens who believe the most otherworldly things.

Then there are the many innocuous technical bills that simply are hard to understand. Almost everyone supports these, although Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, occasionally opposes them. DeVore cites historical concerns about creating a government so big that it saps people's energy and spirit. That's what's happening in Sacramento. All the technical changes are needed because this gargantuan government is so big that it requires endless tinkering.

Much attention has been focused on the gay-marriage bill, which took ages to debate on the Assembly floor, with nearly every Democratic supporter, including Santa Ana's Tom Umberg, giving faux Lincoln speeches filled with self-congratulations on the historic nature of what they were doing. But most of the hundreds of bills moved forward without much debate. Republicans knew there was no point in spending too much time opposing things that would certainly pass. "It's different from the days of Gray Davis, because we have a backstop in the governor," said Spitzer. Republicans, he told me, are trying to put up as few votes as possible on the bad legislation as a sign that a bill might be veto bait.

As one crazy Democratic proposal passed the Assembly floor, some one in the back of the room said out loud: "What's another veto between friends?" I can only hope the governor wields that veto pen often.

"It's a waste legislatively," said Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Garden Grove. "We're not taking up reform issues. ... Ninety percent of the legislation will be Democratic-inspired. It's more laws, more regulation, more fees and taxes. ... What's there to debate?" He points to examples: a bill dealing with transporting puppies across state lines, an attempt to put stampings on bullets, a bill limiting the number of pages in school textbooks.

"Anything you do in the last days of the session is not good," said Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman, R-Irvine. But he jokingly reminds me that what's going on "is a time-honored tradition!" DeVore calls it "folly on top of inanity on top of outrage."

And the nightmare I've just described occurred this year during a relatively calm end of session, since on many issues legislators and lobbyists were biding their time and marshalling resources for the special election in November, and Democrats were holding back on the really crazy stuff lest voters notice and get angry.

In all this, American constitutional ideals of limited government, due process, private property and other individual rights, and economic freedom are abandoned by Democratic state legislators, who seem rather to have substituted a set of their own guiding principles:

There is no aspect of your life, no matter how petty or personal, that should be off-limits from the meddling of government, outside of sexual matters.

Government holds the solution to nearly every problem; those problems that cannot be solved by government can be solved by trial lawyers.

Businesses are evil and out to do harm, and therefore need more regulation to force them to behave properly.

Individuals cannot be trusted to make wise choices, which is why the Legislature and the state's bureaucracies need more money and more power.

Those are ugly truths, but it's better to know the reality that Californians face in the halls of their government than to continue holding on to civics-textbook illusion.