On Tuesday, a Scott County deputy pulled up behind me as I stopped at a local restaurant. He gave me a written warning for not wearing my seatbelt after checking my license and proof of insurance.

After I signed the written warning, I asked the deputy if he thought this was a good law. His response: "Yes, because it saves lives."

I told him: "If we could put a cop in everyone's car, that would also save lives." Or, we could outlaw cars; that would save lives.

The emergence of a number of socially divisive issues has quickly set up a battle between Democrats and Republicans, and between the Iowa House and Senate, just two weeks into the 2011 legislative session.

"Our fear is ... we're going to be moving from one socially divisive issue to another," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-Des Moines) said Thursday.

Fresh off the debate to end a state-funded preschool program created by Democrats, House Republicans this week either introduced or began moving forward on legislation that would ban late-term abortions; call for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships; and define a right to life from the beginning of biological development.

McCarthy said Democrats have been told to prepare for committee work next week and House floor debate the following week on some of these issues. He said a return to the ban on stem-cell research will also be revisited.

"I understand that the new majority needs to do some things for their base, but the concern globally is if we spend the next several weeks, we are ... already 10 percent done with the session," McCarthy said. "We'll have spent the bulk of the session doing socially divisive issues that just tear our society apart, and I think away from what most voters want us to focus on, and that's basic bread-and-butter issues: education and health care and environmental issues."

Whether they admitted it or not, a large majority of Statehouse denizens was relieved last week when the General Assembly approved the income-tax hike.

Ironically enough, Republicans might have been the happiest. The state's horrific structural deficit was finally addressed, which is good news all around. And since they didn't put any votes on the tax-hike bill, the Republicans now get to use it as a wicked political hammer against the Democrats.

The official U.S. Census numbers were released not long ago. The statistics revealed that Illinois will lose one U.S. congressional seat when the new district maps are drawn.

It's impossible to know exactly what will happen with the new maps since block-level Census numbers aren't yet available. That very specific, hyper-local data is plugged into computer programs so mapmakers can draw the new congressional and legislative boundaries. The data should arrive in late March or early April.

Once that happens, the Democrats will go to work.

Ten years ago, when the governor's office and the Illinois Senate were controlled by Republicans and the House was run by the Democrats, the powers that be compromised by allowing incumbent congressmen to draw their own district maps.

That was a huge mistake. The incumbents did what incumbents do: They protected themselves to the point where the districts were gerrymandered worse than they've been in a century. The zig-zagging district running from Rock Island to Decatur made Illinois a laughingstock - as if we needed any more of that.