Well, now.
The Legislature last week gave 30-13 first-stage approval to Sen. Ernie Chambers' bill to abolish the death penalty in Nebraska after opponents abandoned what everyone thought would be a first-round filibuster.
A cloture motion to end a filibuster would have required 33 votes.
Ah, the plot thickens.
A filibuster still is possible when the bill, LB268, reaches the second round of floor consideration. Or at the third and final stage.
Four senators declined to cast votes on the motion to advance the measure. Two senators were absent, including Patty Pansing Brooks, a co-sponsor and a certain 31st vote.
Here's the numbers game:Â 33 to break a filibuster, 25 to pass a bill, 30 to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' promised veto.
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The quartet of senators who chose not to vote last week -- Dave Bloomfield, John Stinner, Jim Smith and Tyson Larson -- have a lot of room to maneuver on an issue that raises emotions on both sides.
A vote could be provided to end a filibuster, if one occurs, without locking in that vote to pass the bill. A vote could be provided to pass the bill without locking in that vote to override a veto.
Political considerations always are in play, but three of the four -- all but Stinner -- are in the final term of their term-limited legislative service with no re-election challenges ahead.
So are collegial considerations in play when there are personal relationships and so much room to maneuver.
Although that foursome attracted some attention by withholding their votes for now, the fact is that every one of the 49 senators has the same flexibility to vote yes to end a filibuster and no to pass the bill and either yes or no to override a veto no matter how they voted before.
There's lots of drama here as Chambers walks down the road on a journey he began more than four decades ago.
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Although Gov. Pete Ricketts declined to say last week whether he would veto a bill to allow the children of immigrants who settled illegally in the United States to acquire Nebraska drivers licenses if the proposal reaches his desk, he certainly sounds like he would.
"I am sympathetic to folks who are in a situation not of their own making," the governor said during an interview on the road.
However, President Barack Obama's executive order granting legal status for those who were brought to the country by their parents when they were children to remain here "damaged the opportunity for real immigration reform," Ricketts said.
That executive order prompted parents in some Central American countries to send an estimated 60,000 unaccompanied children to the border in the misinformed expectation that they could settle legally in the United States without their parents, the governor said.
"We in Nebraska should not be a part of that," he said. "A majority of Nebraskans who talk to me don't want to be associated with that in any way."
Ricketts declined to say whether he would veto several specific bills because he does not yet know what form they will be in if they reach his desk. And this clearly is one of them.
Sen. John Murante of Gretna has proposed a couple of amendments to the driver's license bill, including a provision clearly stating that those granted licenses under its terms would need to surrender those licenses if the next president revokes Obama's executive order and removes their deferred-action status.
When the bill -- which now has 28 legislative sponsors, more than enough senators to pass the proposal -- was sent to the floor for consideration, Ricketts issued a statement declaring he is "strongly opposed" to the measure.
Nebraska is the only state in the nation that does not grant driver's licenses to those immigrant children.
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Finishing up:
* Asked about the challenge of inheriting a range of unresolved issues at the Department of Correctional Services and the Department of Health and Human Services, Ricketts said: "I'm not worrying about what happened in the past; the challenge is one of continuous improvement."
* The corrections reform and sentencing reform debates in the Legislature have shown state senators at their best: attentive, in their seats, eyes on whoever is speaking, listening, learning.
* Oh, no, the 2016 presidential race has begun and it is going to be ugly, negative and dispiriting for the next year and a half.
* Perhaps Joe Biden could best describe the significance of the clean energy and entrepreneurial project near Hallam announced last week by the Nebraska Public Power District and Monolith Materials.
* As Mike Riley looks for, or grooms, a precision passer for his offense, we shall turn our eyes to the summer game.
* "So familiar and so startling, so spacious and so exacting, and so easy looking and so heartbreakingly difficult that it filled my notebooks in a rush," baseball's poet Roger Angell writes.Â