The guilds were thus able to pass legislative measures regulating all economic activity in many towns.
Though none of these measures have become law, some, like Proposition 26 in Mississippi, have made it to a ballot referendum, and other measures have passed legislative chambers in North Dakota, Montana and Oklahoma.
In 1990, California voters passed legislative term limits: six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate.
While the bill passed legislative muster purportedly to ensure businesses the "religious freedom" to deny service to LGBT people, where will this alleged "freedom" end?
President Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino supports the bill, but it has to pass legislative muster before he can sign it into law.
Hobbled by new spending restrictions passed by the opposition-controlled Legislative Assembly, and her administration's corruption scandals, she had difficulty passing her legislative initiatives.
"They have been enormously successful in one sense in passing their legislative agenda," Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said of Democrats.
With the White House and the Senate still under Democratic control, the new Republican House has little hope of passing its legislative agenda.
There is little hope of passing urgent legislative business, such as a long-stalled deal on sharing proceeds from deep-sea oil drilling between states, while politicians gossip, plot and counter-plot.
He said he had told the vice president that, despite the caviling of many Republican members of Congress, there was no point in passing a legislative plan unless it was better for the party than the court's proposed boundaries.
