Are state Republicans about to take plunge into the absurd?
I swear, Georgia Republicans have mashed their “stupid pedal” to the floorboard and it’s gotten stuck there.
First they tried to pass a constitutional amendment in the state Senate to declare that no Georgian could be mandated by government to buy health insurance, as if Georgia law could somehow supercede federal law. The amendment failed.
(The amendment was sponsored by state Sen. Judson Hill, who three years earlier had introduced legislation that would have — wait for it — forced Georgians to buy health insurance, even giving state officials the power to garnish wages of those who refused. At the time, Hill attributed the legislation to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is now one of the sternest critics of “Obamacare”. In other words, mandated health insurance was a good idea until it became part of the Democratic health-reform bill, at which point it became unconstitutional and the most dire threat to American liberty since General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.)
Frustrated in the Senate, Republicans then tried to pass a similar constitutional amendment in the House.
They failed. Again.
Meanwhile, Gov. Sonny Perdue has been stamping his feet like a petulant three-year-old, insisting that Attorney General Thurbert Baker enlist Georgia in a lawsuit filed by 14 other states challenging the constitutionality of the health-reform bill. Baker refused, citing its cost and the exceedingly small chance of success.
“While I understand that the new law is the subject of ongoing debate here in Georgia and around the nation, I do not believe that Georgia has a viable legal claim against the United States,” Baker wrote Perdue. “Considering our state’s current severe budgetary crisis, with vital services like education and law enforcement being cut deeply, I cannot justify a decision to initiate expensive and time-consuming litigation that I believe has
no legal merit.”
Baker’s right. I’m no lawyer, but I’ve read my share of lawsuits. This one (available here) reads like a poorly drafted oped piece, not a legal argument. It cites no case law, no precedent. It is a multi-page whine. Most lawyers, conservative or liberal, agree that the argument behind it is absurd.
“The states cannot just say ‘not for us;’ that’s the theory that was around before the Civil War,” Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, the solicitor general under Ronald Reagan, has been quoted as saying. “It’s truly silly.”
Furthermore, adding Georgia to the list of states challenging the law would change absolutely nothing. The suit will succeed or fail — almost certainly the latter — on its merits. To hear House Majority Leader Jerry Keen wail that Baker’s decision is “pure politics,” as if the lawsuit itself was not motivated solely by politics, is to witness hypocrisy flowing pure and sweet from its source.
But all that may have been mere prelude. Still ahead may be the point that, stupid pedal to the metal, the GOP does its “Thelma and Louise” act, driving off the cliff and plunging into the abyss.
The latest rumor is, House members are circulating a resolution to impeach Baker. Seriously. And Perdue and Gingrich have called a press conference this morning, which I will be hastening to attend. The circus is in town and I’m gonna get a ticket.
However, I must say I’m encouraged by at least one thing. Here I was worried that our state leaders had an awful lot on their plate, what with trying to balance a devastated state budget and fix transportation and deal with the ongoing water crisis, etc. But apparently I was wrong. Apparently, our legislators and governor have so little to worry about here in the little state of Georgia, the piece of real estate over which they have real influence, that they feel free to divert a lot of their time, energy and intellect telling Washington what it ought to do.
Well, their time and energy anyway.
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509 comments Add your comment
AmVet
March 26th, 2010
8:56 am
jt, what can I say?
A lot of American sheep think the war machine has something to do with “national security”.
Hey I’ve got an idea!
Even though we already spend as much as the rest of the planet combined, lets spend even MORE on the military!
That ought to show them terrrerists…
Outhouse GoKart
March 26th, 2010
8:58 am
War Pigs…
Ozzys live version!
jt
March 26th, 2010
9:00 am
USnUK-
you do realize that defense contractors have been administering things like child support recovery, don’t you (they’ve been doing that since the mid-90s)
Yes. And this is a good thing?
The money they make off of this can be put into more R & D I guess.
2008 turned many people into corporate shills.
What’s that gas price up to now?
Two Cents
March 26th, 2010
9:37 am
What a relief! The state’s budget crisis is over; that means I’ll get to keep my university staff job.
I mean, I didn’t hear how they fixed it, but it must be fixed if they’ve moved on to silly lawsuits, right?
Brett
March 26th, 2010
2:22 pm
Such woodchuck Repug goons. Let us prey!
Charles Davis
March 26th, 2010
4:14 pm
In reference to the “as if Georgia law could somehow supercede federal law.” comment I suggest you read the Constitution. I wish you a speedy recovery from your attack of foot in mouth disease.
Former Republican
March 26th, 2010
4:43 pm
Georgia Republicans are already absurd and unfotunately I live in Senator Judson’s district. It is so easy to say no! and much harder to evaluate issues and support them.
Interestly enough Senator Judson’s website supports the “GO FISH GEORGIA Movement” as economic development for Georgia. Meanwhile Alabama continues to add car and steel manufacturing facilities and Judson’s/ Purdues claim to fame – KIA is on the Alabama state line and probably provided as many jobs to Alabama as Georgia.
It used to be, a long time ago, when I was young, my father’s Republican party used to think in terms of fiscal responsibility, economic growth, and strategic investments in the community – transportation, power, water. Today it’s God, Israel, and fishponds. No wonder we don’t speak the same language on capital hill now a days.
The Governor is unwise to protest, the Attorney General has it right. This is one for us the voters not the Governor, who most recently cut funding for healthcare in the state – doubt he cut fish pond investments.
theyeshaveit
March 27th, 2010
8:35 pm
I interrupt my viewing of March Madness to make these announcements. It was said…
by The Seeker
“Gee Jay, I didn’t know you had any judicial experience or had ever sat on the bench. The Supreme Court will decide this matter, not you and your liberal buddies. Rest assured it will be Civil War should they rule the federal government has the right to force citizens to buy something from a private corporation. You think bricks and name calling are bad, just wait!”
by The Seeker
“My fully auto AK-47 begs to differ JAY!”
by The Thin Guy
“I couldn’t care less about hypocrisy or legal merits of lawsuits. ”
I am a little late on reacting to these comments, but it seems to me that these two crazies are at once perpetuating both the newly coined image of the angry, Tea Party whacko and the good old red-neck gun toting imbecile.
by jewcowboy
“Perhaps Sonny can pray for the money for his lawsuit…or pray that GOD will intervene against Socialism…”
One wonders…Is God a socialist? Somehow, I cannot imagine that God would be a conservative pissed off about health care for the masses.
by Outhouse GoKart
“’Are you admitting W lied about WMD’s?’”
“W didnt lie…Saddam Hussein lied.”
Well, Saddam was a chronic liar. Insane lied to HIS people. But no one believed him in the West. Remember his Minister of Misinformation? He was a lot of fun. On the otherhand, W sought to deceive AMERICAN people so he could indulge in his war. And it was American men and women who actually fought and pay the price with their lives.
Now, back to basketball
Geoff
March 29th, 2010
8:34 am
Frank Rich has it right: “But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.”