Right, I'm a little concerned that I'm giving the impression that I think ALEC itself is a good thing, which I do not. Yes, of course, we should be suspicious of bills with ALEC origins! But at the same time, progressive (or centrist or reasonable conservatives or libertarians or bicyclists or home distillers or what-have-you) should be drafting their own model bills, not alarming themselves that other model bills exist.

I'm not really criticizing the story here, and if you look downthread you'll see a participant in it talking up some really interesting work they're doing to surface and trace model bills, which is great and valuable.