Cuccinelli Not Giving In On Gay Bias Policy
McDonnell Rejects Calls for More Anti-Bias Rules
Budget Stalls Lawmakers Face Overtime
Bolling Says Senate Anti-Gun Panel Creation Broke Senate Rules
McDonnell Visits Budget Negotiators on Their Own Turf
McDonnell Turns Down Clemency Bid
Assembly Goes Slow on Tough Ethics Reform
Ethics Reform Moves to McDonnell
Marsh Stood in Way of Pro-Gun Legislation
Armstrong Upbraids Lawmakers Over Electricity Rate Hikes
Virginia Beach’s Lobbyist Game Plan: Offense
Experts Urge Caution on Uranium Mine
Portsmouth Schools Avoid Layoffs But Hurt Elsewhere
Attorney Says City Withholding Evidence in Norfolk Cheating Scandal
York-Poquoson Commonwealth Attorney Addison Refutes Misconduct Allegations
Nye to Hold Foreclosure Workshop
Roanoke Area Officials Decry State Budget Cuts
Budget Cuts Also Impact Private Colleges
Two Amherst Supervisors Seek to Reinstate County Attorney
Applause Welcomes Shenandoah Budget
Cooch the Pooch breaks his silence on his ill-conceived letter to the universities…
“Universities, he said, “don’t have any more authority than the General Assembly gives them, which is a similar position as the localities. And until the General Assembly gives them more authority, they’re quarantined by what they’ve got.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031203968.html
Meanwhile, 5 Republican knuckleheads (out of 140 General Assembly “members”) have blocked a bill which, in my opinion, a large majority of Virginians endorse.
I believe that Bob McDonnell is doing a fairly good job as governor. However, he is doing a very poor job as the de-facto leader of Virginia’s Republican Party. He should have pushed for the re-introduction of legislation designed to make discrimination against people based on sexual orientation illegal in Virginia. Then, if the same 5 knuckleheads (or a different set of Republican knuckleheads) blocked his legislation he should have gone actively against them in this November’s election.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s quote (above) is legally accurate. Neither the universities nor the localities can do much of anything without asking, “Mother, May I?” from the clown show in Richmond. I am 100% sure that a referendum asking the residents of Fairfax County to forbid discrimination based on “sexual orientation” would pass. However, there is nothing the residents of Fairfax County can do to implement this small but important step forward. We are “quarantined” by 5 mostly rural Republican “members” of the House of Delegates who decided that our elected officials shouldn’t even vote on the matter.
Virginia’s governance process is badly broken. Hopefully, the ship will be righted before it sinks.
I won’t comment on the wisdom of repealing the one gun a month restriction presently a part of Virginia law.
I will however comment yet again on the bizarre antics of The Clown Show in Richmond. A law proposed by Scott Lingamfelter (R-Prince William) to repeal the one gun a month exemption was put forward in this session of teh General Assembly. As per Virginia Senate rules, the proposed bill was referred to the Courts of Justice Committee for review and commentary. Despite the fact that these committees are really meant to advise the full Senate on pending legislation they often simply kill a bill they don’t like. That’s an unfortunate bad habit of The Clown Show but also an historical reality.
Enter Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax) and Henry Marsh (D-Richmond). This dynamic duo of democracy was not staisfied to hope the bill would be killed in the full committee (thereby avoiding a minimally courageous vote of the full Senate). No siree. Instead, they formed a special sub-committee of hand picked Senators to “pre-review” the bill. Besides being even more cowardly than usual this also broke Senate rules. Two interesting outcomes arose from this “illegal” and anti-democratic stunt. First, the five hand picked Senators (4 Democrats and 1 moderate Republican) predictably killed the bill. Second, after Bill Bolling’s rejoinder that the sub-committe broke Senate rules, it became obvious that there was nothing anybody could do about this wanton disregard of both democracy and protocol.
How would your State Senator have voted on this important bill? Unless you live the the Senate district of one of the 5 Senators on the sub-committee (there are 40 State Senate districts) you’ll never know.
There is a mis-perception that the Virginia General Assembly represents some form of reasonable democracy. It is this mis-conception which lets some people think that centralizing all power in The Clown Show in Richmond is OK. It is not. In this case, Senators Saslaw and Marsh effectively coronated themselves co-Kings of Virginia.
If either Saslaw or Marsh were elected to office in a statewide election then the people could vote them out of office in the next election. However, unlike US Senators, State Senators are elected by district within the state. Therefore, only the voters in those two Senate districts can vote the two out of office. Therefore, roughly 5% of Virginia’s electorate effectively controls the entire state on the extremely important topic of gun rights / regulation.
Virginia is not a democracy. The excessive vesting of power in the central government of the state only serves to exacerbate the tyranny of The Clown Show in Richmond.