Two political parties dominate the American political landscape. One is committed to the rule of law. The other is called the Democratic Party.
In late February, Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” after Republicans voted to pass a law that severely curtailed the collective-bargaining rights of public unions.
Not all of those Democratic legislators were present: 14 state senators fled across the border to Illinois. With only 19 Republican senators left and 20 needed for a quorum, the hope was that there would be no vote on a bill to curtail those collective-bargaining rights of public unions.
Imagine what the reaction would be from Democrats and others on the left if, say, here in Maryland Republican senators had bolted to prevent a vote on the recently passed bill legalizing gay marriage.
Legislators are elected to do one thing and one thing only: legislate. When they leave the state to avoid doing precisely that, they, by definition, are refusing to do their jobs.
Those chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” should have been directed at those gutless Democratic senators who refused to show up for work.
And about those chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!”: kind of grade school-ish, don’t you think? This was the Wisconsin Assembly, for heaven’s sake, not Sesame Street.
In Maryland, the party of shame is the Democratic Party, so much so that its leader — Gov. Martin O’Malley — has been renamed by some “Martin O’Shameless.” An example of Gov. O’Shameless’ ultimate act of shamelessness: As mayor of Baltimore he praised the city’s public schools, while sending his own kids to a private school.
In the county.
When it comes to defying the rule of law, Maryland Democrats top even those in Wisconsin.
A few years ago the Maryland legislature tried to pass a bill that would bring the state into compliance with the federal Real ID Act. The federal act is clear: States can only issue driver’s licenses and other forms of identification to those who can provide documentation that they are in the country legally.
To Maryland Democrats, this clear-cut dictum meant one thing: compromise. They came up with a law that allowed the state’s illegal immigrants to renew their driver’s licenses, a clear violation of the Real ID Act.
Maryland Democrats’ flagrant defiance of federal law didn’t catch the attention of another Democrat, Attorney General Eric Holder. Rather than haul the state into federal court and make it comply, Holder came up with what he and Democrats across the country thought was a better plan: haul the state of Arizona into court for its SB 1070 statute, which doesn’t violate the Real ID Act. In fact, SB 1070 is in complete accord with federal law.
That, of course, is precisely Holder’s problem with it, and the rule of law in general. The same is true of his boss, President Obama, who made his contribution to his party’s scoffing at the rule of law last week.
His administration, our president piously intoned (and no one piously intones quite like our president), would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts. The reason? The law is “unconstitutional.”
Why, thank you, Justice Obama. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to pack the Supreme Court with justices who thought like he did.
Obama has gone FDR one better: he wants to join the Supreme Court. Those of you who thought it was the justices of the high court, not presidents, who determined what is and isn’t constitutional or unconstitutional now stand corrected.
When did the phrases “rule of law” and “Democratic Party” become antithetical?
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
