Abortion. Gun control. Same-sex marriage. Appointing Cohen the Columnist as Poet Lauriat of Massachusetts.

There are some issues, some legislation, which rebound through Congress and state legislatures, prompting fiery press conferences and dramatic public hearings and marching in the streets.

And then … and then … there are low-key, puzzling, below-the-radar issues that encourage legislators to fall asleep during public hearings, or dive under their desks when the issue rises up like the Monster from the Black Lagoon.

These tiny matters don’t often attract much public attention, which gives puzzled legislators little guidance on how to vote if they have no particular background or experience in the matter, or if their favorite lobbyists aren’t around to help them decide.

Turf warfare is often at the heart of these miniature nightmares. The nurse anesthetists will be quarreling with the anesthesiologists; the dental hygienists will be squabbling with the dentists; the optometrists and ophthalmologists will be bickering; the lawyers will be drawing a line in the sand with the mysterious legal websites that promise to close on your house, write your will and set up an irrevocable trust – all for $5.

In Massachusetts, the car dealers and the auto manufacturers and the independent repair shops have littered the legislature (for about the 16,000th time) with the pressing matter of whether the independent guys should have access to computer codes and other electronic mysteries that would allow them to do repairs now theoretically limited to dealerships.

As of this writing, the Massachusetts Senate passed the thing, with a giant, confused sigh of relief, and sent the mess to the House, where the future is unclear (it might well be buried in the back yard, in a secret funeral late at night, when no one is around). When asked, Gov. Patrick yawns and mumbles something about how he’ll read the mess very carefully, if the legislature is stupid enough to send it to him.

Who are the good guys and bad guys in such a thing? Is the Massachusetts Right to Repair Coalition on the side of the angels? Should the manufacturers, operating through the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (“Big Auto” is sort of like “Big Pharma” – sinister and secretive) have the right to decide who gets to play with their computer codes?

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The issue was made more interesting (just barely) in Massachusetts, when civil war erupted between the “big” independent car repair guys and their smaller brothers. The small-fry claimed the “right to repair” thing was phony-baloney that was harming their reputation; that they were perfectly capable of fixing your car, computer code be damned – and that the whole thing was a conspiracy on the part of “big” chain auto parts stores.

Even Congress dabbled in this a bit, with a Motor Vehicle Owners Right to Repair Act a few years back, which fell victim to trivial distractions such as the war in Afghanistan and other less compelling matters.

Across the country, such car-repair angst goes on in one form or another. Should insurers be able to require – or “recommend,” or demand upon penalty of death – that you use certain body shops to have your car repaired when you drive into an oak tree? Massachusetts and Connecticut, among other jurisdictions, have been quarreling over that one for years.

A profound side issue developed in Connecticut a few years ago, when the state Attorney General slapped GEICO insurance on the nose with a wet injunction threat for daring to advertise on television that after a car accident damaged a car, “GEICO repaired it within a few days, like new.”

GEICO isn’t in the car repair business, the state’s top lawyer argued, despite its “preferred” body shops. GEICO apologized and promised to stop assuming that Connecticut consumers weren’t morons.

It is seldom explained in ways that favor a Libertarian revolution, but most bored, frustrated state legislators eventually conclude that the marketplace is a messy, disorganized rambunctious place. But they also tend to conclude it does its best work in sorting out which goods and services appeal to which consumers – and whether idiosyncratic barriers and restrictions and preferences on the part of buyers and sellers should be resolved – without the blessing of a political or regulatory “solution.”