In a recent Washington Post story, University of Virginia Law Professor A.E. Dick Howard ruled it is not unconstitutional to ask your lawyer a question. This is a load off my mind, because when it comes to constitutional questions one never knows where a law professor is likely to alight.
The lawyer in question, or being questioned, is Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. From what I gather in reading the Washington Post’s coverage of the issue, it’s not the fact that he’s being quizzed, it’s the identity of the quizzer and the resulting answers that are riling up liberals and the media. But I repeat myself.
Republican Del. Bob Marshall — denigrated in the Post story as a “low–level delegate,” no doubt perfect for those rubes in Prince William County — is accused of conspiring with the AG to bypass the General Assembly to, well that’s where my confusion starts. Exactly what nefarious scheme are the two conspirators attempting to spring on an unsuspecting populace?
Cuccinelli isn’t passing new laws by fiat. On the contrary, he is giving his legal opinion regarding how existing laws may be applied in the Commonwealth. It’s not like he’s ordering citizens to buy health insurance or install a twisty light bulb. It appears the real problem for the Post is Marshall “shares Cuccinelli’s far–right views.”
Doubtless there would not have been a problem if the answers to Marshall’s interrogatories were coming from say, Eric Holder or Elena Kagan, just to name two popular legal fantasists.
In our case Marshall has asked Cuccinelli a total of seven questions since the AG took office in January, which comes out to 0.8 questions per month. That’s fewer than the number of free calls to a lawyer allowed under my old pre–paid legal policy from Monkey Wards ([url=http://www.cheaplawyer.com]http://www.cheaplawyer.com[/url]). So Marshall can hardly be accused of abusing the system.
And even under the terms of my admittedly discount plan I was entitled to one free lawyer letter per legal issue, so Marshall appears to be on track there, too.
The Post ominously points out that seven questions is “generally unmatched by any legislator during the course of an attorney general’s entire four–year term.” However, there is an entirely innocent explanation for this difference: the other delegates simply may not have Marshall’s inquisitive mind.
The three opinions that bother leftists the most conclude police may check the immigration status of people they have probable cause to stop; the state may require abortion clinics to meet that same hygiene and professional standards imposed on animal hospitals; and local governments may allow religious displays on public property.
The latter should actually make the Posties happy since it means bureaucrats won’t be forced to take down all those spinning symbols of recycling redemption currently festooning government buildings.
And leftists had no problem with Cuccinelli’s opinion that observed state budget bills can contain both taxes and fees, since for Democrats this is the equivalent of ordering all restaurants to allow free seconds on non trans–fat soy lattes.
The fact is our betters in the Liberal–Media complex approve of creative interpretations of the law on the part of federal judges and the Supreme Court — penumbra, anyone? — but strongly disapprove of the obvious reading of existing statutes.
Choose Death supporters conveniently forget to mention that abortion “clinics” were regulated from 1981 until 1984. Regulation came to a screeching halt when Gov. Chuck Robb (D–Back Rub) was elected. Then a genuinely “low–level” minion — in more than one sense of the term — in the attorney general’s office declared in an UNPUBLISHED opinion that the state could no longer regulate abortion mills. State oversight stopped, even though not a single word in existing law had changed.
At least Cuccinelli has enough integrity to publish his opinions, rather than surreptitiously circulating his work within the bureaucracy, in an attempt to conceal it from the public and prying media eyes.
The really humorous element in this controversy is that Democrats of all people are accusing Republicans of “legal activism.”
I believe it was the esteemed political philosopher Barack Hussein Obama who said, “Elections have consequences.” And in this particular instance the consequences are excellent, a view no doubt supported by the 58 percent of the Virginia electorate who approved of the AG’s “far–right” views and awarded him more total votes than the Lt. Governor candidate received.
That’s my kind of fringe candidate.
Marshall has three opinions pending in the AG’s office, including one that asks if Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) as the authority to seek additional stimulus funds from the benevolent Obama Administration.
Approve or not, I can hardly wait for the answers.
