Lamar Smith (R-TX), the mastermind behind last winter's widely-disliked Stop Online Piracy Act, is back at it. His latest bill may not be the SOPA redux that some observers fear, but his legislative tactics are every bit as problematic.

Fifty days. That's the median time it took for eight legislative bills - on economic espionage, identity theft, abortion in the District of Columbia - to circulate in the House of Representatives before they were put on the agenda for Tuesday's markup session by the House Judiciary Committee.

Zero days. That's how long the ninth bill on the agenda, a measure submitted by Judiciary chair Lamar Smith, existed before it was submitted for Tuesday's markup. Unlike the other eight, Smith's Intellectual Property Attache Act didn't even have a number. It had yet to be introduced into the House legislative system.

That's legislating the future of copyright, the Internet and creative content, Lamar Smith-style.

Smith's IPAA maneuver is how he has run his tech and copyright agenda since taking the gavel of the powerful Judiciary Committee in January, when Republicans gained control of the House. After 13 terms in the House, the 64-year-old Texas Republican is a copyright near-absolutist of the 'theft is theft' variety, a school of thought where, by all appearances, "fair use" receives less consideration than even MPAA and RIAA demand. Why Smith is so committed to that path is an open question. The TV, movie, and music industries have long been among his top funders, but whether that's cause or effect isn't much worth debating.

It's the way that Smith goes about making legislation that makes one wonder if Smith learned anything meaningful at all from the recent fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that he authored and championed, and its cousin in the Senate, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). There was an enormous swell of public interest in Internet policy back then, as well as the copyright policy to which it is inextricably linked.

The line from Smith's office this week on the rush to get IPAA through: Oh, this bill? This one's really no big deal.

In the end, SOPA got tripped up by process as much as anything. Smith, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, called a single hearing on a bill that would have had a sweeping effect on the functioning of the Internet. The panel was stacked with the bill's advocates. One witness, an attorney for Google, raised an objection. But as that bill steamed along to markup, members of Congress got the feeling that they been sold a bill of goods.

"This bill is not ready for prime time," concluded Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, himself a former Judiciary Committee chair. One of the most pivotal moments in the SOPA debate, in retrospect, might have been when Ohio's ultra-conservative Jim Jordan jumped off the legislative train, suggesting that the House "take a little extra time," not rubberstamp Smith's SOPA without knowing what it really would do. Certainly, the website blackouts, news reports, and email and tweet deluges drew Congress' attention to the major Internet bill barrelling through its halls. That was something new. "Here you have a picture," Wyden said in January, "of millions of Americans saying that this process has been flawed, [that] it only listened to one side." The Oregonian's takeaway? "In terms of communicating with government, America is never going to be the same."

Tell that to Lamar Smith.