mark herring

Washingtonpost.com:

The Republicans who dominate the Virginia House of Delegates are gearing up for legal battle with state Attorney General Mark R. Herring, the first Democrat to hold the post in twenty years.

Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) has put forward a bill that would give General Assembly members legal standing to represent the commonwealth when the governor and attorney general choose not to defend a law.

If the bill succeeds, it could set up a situation like the one in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hired a private attorney to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court.

The attorney general’s office declined to comment directly on the legislation, but spokeswoman Ellen Qualls noted that “the constitution of Virginia provides for a duly elected attorney general to do this very job.”

Republicans said they are concerned about a few policies in particular: abortion clinic regulations, the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and redistricting. On the campaign trail, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, then the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, promised to use administrative powers to make newly enacted clinic regulations less onerous, and Herring said he wasn’t sure he would defend those regulations. The new attorney general also declined to say before taking office whether he would defend the marriage ban in court. Two challenges to the constitutionality of the marriage amendment are currently underway.

Cuccinelli was always ruling on this law or that law and changing and challenging whatever he wanted.  I supposed that was OK though.  This legislation sounds to me like an attempt to over-rule the newly elected attorney general.   If he doesn’t do to suit everyone, then there is a simple process.  At election time, vote him out of office.  No more Republican shenanigans!

It sounds like Del. Gilbert is up to his usual unconstitutional tricks, again.  Hopefully the rest of General Assembly will see the error of his ways.

Del. Todd Gilbert
Del. Todd Gilbert

49 Thoughts to “State Republicans attempt legislation to control Attorney General Herring”

  1. George S. Harris

    Here is Dilbert’s (ooppss Gilbert’s) bill:
    HOUSE BILL NO. 706
    Offered January 8, 2014
    Prefiled January 7, 2014
    A BILL to amend the Code of Virginia by adding a section numbered 30-9.1, relating to member of the General Assembly; standing to defend laws of the Commonwealth.
    ———-
    Patron– Gilbert
    ———-
    Referred to Committee on Rules
    ———-
    Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

    1. That the Code of Virginia is amended by adding a section numbered 30-9.1 as follows:

    § 30-9.1. Standing to defend laws of the Commonwealth.

    In a proceeding in which the constitutionality, legality, or application of a law established under legislative authority is at issue and the Governor and Attorney General choose not to defend the law in such proceeding, a current member of the General Assembly at the commencement of the proceeding shall have the right to intervene as a party and shall have standing to represent the interests of the Commonwealth.

    2. That an emergency exists and this act is in force from its passage.
    ———————————————————————————————
    In addition, he has proposed what might be called the “McDonnell Bill”. Here is the synopsis of the bill:

    State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act and General Assembly Conflicts of Interests Act; Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council. Establishes the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council composed of 14 members: four appointments each by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, Senate Committee on Rules, and Governor; one designee of the Attorney General and one representative of the Virginia Association of Counties and Virginia Municipal League. The Council will elect its chairman and vice-chairman and choose its executive director. The Council will review and post online the disclosure forms filed by lobbyists and persons subject to the conflict of interests acts and provide formal opinions and informal advice, education, and training. The bill requires the filing of the disclosure forms twice a year. It provides that the Division of Legislative Services will staff the Council, and the House and Senate Clerks will transmit complaints of conflict law violations to the ethics advisory panels of the House of Delegates and Senate. The bill prohibits tangible gifts with a value of more than $250 from lobbyists to certain executive officers and employees and to legislators. A number of disclosure provision thresholds are reduced from $10,000 to $5,000 and gifts to immediate family members are made subject to disclosure.

    1. If they can’t win an election, then they will legislate themselves power. I see now. NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. George S. Harris

    I also had an interesting but short exchange with Delegate Rich Anderson–one of our local delegates who voted for both the trans-vaginal and trans-abdominal sonograms before an abortion–noting that in his current submission of bills I didn’t see anything about continuing the war against women. He wrote back:

    “And I haven’t done so in any prior session…ONLY ENSURED THAT A LEGAL PROCEDURE IS DONE SAFELY.[EMPHASIS supplied by me]

    I know and respect that you differ on this…but the freedom for two people to differ is what makes America great…and is what you and I served to protect.

    Rich”

    It is interesting how quickly conservatives have found a way to justify denying or obfuscating the provision of abortion services to women.

    1. No kidding. I can’t help but think how close that trasnvaginal bill was to the legal definition of rape in Virginia.

      If Anderson believes that legally mandating trans-vaginal and trans-abdominal sonograms makes women safer, he has drunk the Kool Aid or is just a jackass. The medical community will decide when such procedures are medically necessary.

  3. Scout

    Good luck to these guys if they think there is any way to defend successfully the constitutional amendment banning civil unions and same-sex marriage. I guess their position is that if the AG isn’t going to waste public monies and resources defending that bit of graffiti, the General Assembly will bloody well see that the waste goes forward.

    1. LOL…absolutely, Scout!!!! And at our expense. GRRRRRRRR!

      Those clinic TRAP laws are on very shakey constitutional grounds also. I wonder how the Rosemary Codding case is coming along right about now?

      Cuccinelli plays fairly loose with laws there also. He told the state medical board to do things his way or he wouldn’t defend them in court if they got sued, knowing well that there were some of his “people” waiting in the wings to sue. They tried to grandfather in the existing clinics. Trying to ruin someone’s business is bound to attract lawsuits. Why should Herring waste time or money defending on any grounds.

  4. George S. Harris

    @Scout
    Why I believe you have discovered their secret! 😉

  5. Scout

    Cuccinelli had a rather high profile track record of suing when he should not have and not getting active in court when he should have. It was virtually all political, all a taxpayor-financed arm of his campaign for the next office. I think he lost all his high profile cases, but it tickled the base, so it was well worth it.

    1. I am just glad he didn’t have a bigger base or we would all be saluting Governor Cuccinelli.

      I would have probably moved out of the state for a while.

  6. Pat.Herve

    and Cuccinelli’s office worked against the people of VA in support of two coal and gas companies. His office was supplying information to those companies against the people of VA – http://wvtf.org/post/cuccinelli-vs-southwest-va-landowners The companies happened to be donor’s to his campaign. Where was the outrage when it was revealed that Cuccinelli himself took similar money as did McDonnell from Star Scientific? Cuccinelli was investigating wrong doing that he himself had done and not reported.

  7. Wolverine

    AG Herring’s decisions are based on not wanting to waste funds defending Virginia laws? Oh, puleeeze. Spare me. It was a political decision. No less than the House of Delegates determination to counter his move. My ex-State Senator is no less a political animal than any of the rest of them.

    1. What decisions? Don’t you think that remark is a bit premature?

      I suppose since Cuccinelli wasted tax payer money left and right you are suggesting it’s OK? How much did that climate change challenge cost Virginians?

      Let’s discuss the fact that Herring won and his challenger lost. Now it seems that the GOP wants to overturn that decision. Didn’t the voters make that decision?

  8. Wolverine

    But they DID win elections, including all of the House elections on Herring’s own home turf. They are still in huge control of the House. You maybe expect them to give up the political ghost and not fight back?

    1. I expect them to do their job, not the job of the attorney general. What an unabashed attempt at a power grab. Yes, I do expect political integrity. Obviously some of them have none.

      After the gerrymandering job in the state, of course they are going to win. Have you checked out how many delegates represent Prince William County? How many state senators? It is almost criminal.

  9. Wolverine

    Premature? Not when Dems are concerned it isn’t.

    “…Herring won and his challenger lost….Didn’t the voters make that decision?” Hmmm. Time before that Cuccinelli won and his challenger lost. The voters made that decision too. But I didn’t see much of that latter sentiment here over the past few years.

    Now conservatives will have to counter the years of “Kookinelli” et al with something. Pickled Herring? Cream Sauce Herring? We’ll think of something appropriate. Have to keep up with the libs.

    Hardball politics on both sides. All of it. Better get used to it. As for unabashed power grabs and lack of political integrity, look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…and the EPA, DOJ, HHS, and IRS offices.

    1. Basically, that is a really crappy thing to say. You have pretty much turned off all your filters, haven’t you?

      As to your question about Cuccinelli, you are overlooking the fact that I didn’t say the Republican delegates couldn’t bitch, [pretty much like many of us did over some of Cuccinelli’s hair-brained ideas. I don’t think that Democrats attempted to change the law so that they could pretend they won if Cuccinelli did something they didn’t like. Please provide me with bill numbers if I am wrong. I will gladly have some crow.

      I certainly objected to certain positions taken by the former attorney general. I did not advocate laws that stripped him of his duties at AG. That is the difference. I also objected by policy, not because he was a Republican.

      I have supported and defended many Republicans on this blog.

      Herring is a moderate democrat. He isn’t out in far left field. The fact that he doesn’t want to single out one type of medical care for building restrictions and not others doesn’t make him a ‘lib.’

    2. The comments and the thread were about state politics that are just getting started. It has nothing to do with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (regardless of who is living there at the time.)

      Let’s let Mark Herring get in office and actually do something before the attack begins.

      Maybe you haven’t noticed that he is hardly a firebrand. Cuccinelli was a firebrand and prided himself on such. He simply ran out of fire this time. I don’t think for one moment that he is going to retire from being a firebrand.

  10. Scout

    Wolve – can you perceive of any possible legal defense to Virginia’s constitutional amendment prohibiting civil unions/same sex marriages? If there is no possible defense, should the Commonwealth’s Attorney General deploy his (and our) resources in some sort of kamikaze exercise? I always assume that one of the best, most valuable services a lawyer can perform is to be steely-eyed in assessing the strength of his own client’s position and letting a client know when he had best cut his losses.

    1. Virginia’s law is even more strident than most because it includes unmarried hetero couples in its decree. At some point, I believe that the amendment has done a bit of over-reaching.

      I sure wouldn’t want the state attempting to defend such a stupid law.

  11. What a bunch of cry babies. Can you imagine the outcry if the Dems had tried this?

  12. Wolverine

    Moon — What was “crappy?” The funny names for Mark Herring? Oh, come now. After all the disrespectful variations on the Cuccinelli name which have appeared here? Turned off filters? Cry babies? Make me chuckle some more.

    Herring is a Democrat from an increasingly liberal party with fewer and fewer “moderates.” He will do what the contemporary Democrats do on the contested social issues. He will be strongly opposed by the other side. As I said, hardball politics. Tough.

    You say “unabashed powergrab” or “lack of political integrity,” and I will respond back with the biggest contemporary examples of both in our lives. And far more dangerous to this country than any dustup in Richmond.

    Scout — If you have ideals and principles, you advocate and fight for them. Otherwise, what’s the use of having any ideals or principles at all? And, in my opinion, the last thing a person of integrity does is to sell those ideals and principles for a mess of political pottage…. or give up on them because a non-believer thinks the defense of them is a fiscal waste. The AG of the Commonwealth of Virginia is charged with defending the laws of the Commonwealth. Period. I, like a lot of others, do not cotton to giving him the unilateral power to decide which of our laws is worth defending in a sort of backdoor negation. We have had quite enough recent backstabbing on the issue of defending duly passed and signed laws in the White House and DOJ in Washington.

    1. Wolverine said:

      Premature? Not when Dems are concerned it isn’t.

      That’s what I said was crappy.

      I don’t care if you make fun of Herring’s name.

      I thought the Clinton years were the worst. Damn.

      Also, I don’t think there has been a move to the left. I pretty much have my same beliefs. The move has been to the right. I used to be to the right of center…back in the old days.

  13. Wolverine

    Premature. Nah. Not with the look of our national politics over the past decade. I would be mighty surprised if Herring is able to restrain himself in this regard under pressure from within his own party. And I suspect that AG is not the end of the line for Herring’s political ambitions. If so, he has to walk a careful line. I think Virginia may well be in for some loud and sharp jousting. Not many people around on either side, in my opinion, who are prone to start waving white flags when the going gets nasty.

    1. Let’s wait until Herring does something you don’t like before you start making snide remarks. Right now, all you have are your own partisan prejudices to criticize him for.

      By this time in Cuccinelli’s reign, he had already stripped the protective right from gays and lesbians who attend or work at state colleges and universities. That, by the way, wasn’t Virginia law. Just an invention of Mr. Cuccinelli.

      Please don’t think for one minute that I dislike Cuccinelli because he is a republican. I dislike him because of his policies.

  14. Scout

    The reason that a defense is a fiscal waste, Wolve, is because the Virginia measure cannot be reconciled with requirements of the federal constitution. We conservative constitutionalists pay attention to these things.

  15. George S. Harris

    Another log on the fire. How do you feel about Governor McAuliffe keeping William A. Hazel Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Resources? Dr. Hazel was appointed by former governor McDonnell and served during the controversial battle over trans-vaginal sonograms and the new regulations for clinics providing more than five first-trimester abortions per month. Apparently Dr. Hazel bowed to former AG Cuccinelli’s bullying that forced the Board of Health to rescind their proposal to grandfather clinics not meeting the new standards.

    1. They all bowed. I think he deserves a chance. I feel fairly certain T-Mac had a long talk with him. I don’t think the reproductive issues are a big deal to him and he knows the Medicaid end of this up one side and down another.

      I would keep him and if he did what he wanted his boss wants him to do, fine. If he doesn’t, then he gets fired.

      The pro-choice community is having a cow over this. I think they are over reacting. Hazel isn’t in the real driver’ seat so I think it is ok.

  16. Wolverine

    Herring has already done things I don’t like. He was my Democratic State Senator until this month. Tomorrow we all go to the polls to replace him.

  17. Wolverine

    Scout, what I think you “conservative constitutionalists” seem to forget is that the playing field in this country has changed. “Social conservatives” are becoming more and more engaged based on their own consciences and/or some of the strongest tenets of their religious faith. They are becoming less suckered by the old game that, if you will only stay silent about your social beliefs, we can perhaps put together a winning electoral coalition. So they did and they watched as their social beliefs were kept on the sidelines. They were told they had “won” but they didn’t much feel like the winners. So, I would opine that many of them have decided to fight an all-out battle, even in a situation where the odds may be great against them. They are not going to buy a white flag with the words “It will cost too much” emblazoned on it. I think they look at the war as potentially a long one where they may lose a lot of skirmishes but will not quit. And, in the end, those who fight for religious reasons believe that the real rewards are not of this earth. You have got a legal constitutional argument in your hands and they have, figuratively speaking, a dead fetus and sincere religious faith in theirs. Good luck trying to argue that one.

    1. Let’s see, back in my day, the social conservatives opposed integration, women having rights, and wanted prayer in public schools. Some of them also opposed birth control. They didn’t want evolution taught in schools. Basically I saw it as a lot of control.

      Do you see these things as good? I can assure you those were the issues of my day. Perhaps I am older than you are.

  18. Wolverine

    I did a genealogy run. I am older than you are. You’re still comparatively a spring chicken.

    I am talking now, not yesterday. However, I can say that I am a Yankee. I went to school and played sports with Blacks and Hispanics from middle school on. It would have been elementary school also, but the Democratic Party-connected politicians and union leaders of our blue collar town connived with financial institutions to use mortgage approvals as a means to keep neighborhoods segregated. My father, a Republican and strong Protestant social conservative, was the one who purposely began the dismantling of that housing color line. When I asked him years later why he had taken that initiative, he said that his religious faith told him that segregation was wrong and that, when the power to begin the end of it fell into his hands, he had to respond. BTW, Dad met Mom when both worked in the same factory. And, once the youngest of us entered school, she was always working at some job or another. I don’t recall prayer in our public schools, not even before the high school football games. We kids were in church so much we didn’t need it at school.

  19. Scout

    @ Moon – of course, in “your day” (which also happens to be mine), the “social conservatives” were largely Democrats, at least in these parts. There has been some fairly substantial morphing in political alignments around our region.

    Wolve – “Social Conservatives” make their statement by how they live their personal lives. Nothing in our constitutional system requires them to act contrary to their principles. What we’re talking about here is the imposition of those views on others who do not subscribe to them.

    There are always groups and individuals who think they can chuck the Constitution out the window because they have the Revealed Truth on their side. If they can translate their convictions into enough political power to amend the document, then they system works as intended. The religious elements that fought for civil rights in the 50s and 60s are an example of that, your father included. They overcame the religious elements (among others) fighting to oppress a significant portion of our population.

    But I don’t have a lot of time for people who tell me that the Constitution is a living document that should be ignored to accommodate some group’s or some individual’s “better” idea. That’s a radical left-wing notion and I and others of my bent are quite wary of you and others who adhere to that kind of thinking. If we feel that a same sex, state-acknowledged marriage or civil union is morally or theologically objectionable, by all means we shouldn’t enter into one. I’ll join you on the barricade if the Government of Virginia starts forcing people into same sex unions, but I don’t anticipate that happening and think I can provide you assurance that it won’t happen to you either. My church and yours will continue to offer religious rites only to two-gender marriages.

    I don’t consider it bad service at all for an AG to tell us that a state measure is indefensible. A previous AG could have told the GA and the voters that before this amendment got on the ballot. It would have been a valuable legal service. I don’t recall that happening.

    1. So how does that work? Civil marriage and then a same-sex blessing rite? re: ‘our church’

      (This is a dead giveaway that I haven’t been in a pretty long time.)

  20. Wolverine

    Scout — Don’t underestimate the determination and bitterness of the battle to come. Andrew Cuomo in New York just gave us all another example of the kind of thing which is driving the other side to fight back rather than just take the nastiness….and fight back hard. Even the Little Sisters of the Poor are fighting back.

    1. Let’s stick to Virginia. Andrew Cuomo has nothing to do with Virginia.

      The Little Sisters of the Poor at totally misusing the conscience clause. Church doctrine teaches that the individual is not to use contraception to prevent pregnancy. (rightly or wrongly). It does not say others cannot use contraception. In fact, the righteous may even take contraception pills for acne and other maladies.

      They need to stop with the false protests. If they hire outside the church, and they do, then they need to act like any other business.

      Some poor woman with 8 kids should be able to have her tubal ligation covered if she works as a nurse’s aid for the Little Sisters.

  21. Wolverine

    Scout — My father did not fight back against other “religious elements.” Those whom he tripped up and who consequently turned him into a pariah for a long time were the leaders and members of a major union with great power in the state and county Democratic Party. They talked a civil rights political game but they really didn’t want the “colored” to live in their neighborhoods or go to their elementary schools. The sub rosa tools of enforcement were the union-controlled credit unions in a town full of large factories. I lived a block from the line with Black neighborhoods and never had a Black classmate in elementary school.

    1. Most people your age didn’t. It isn’t an unusual phenomena.

  22. Wolverine

    Oh, come on, Moon. You know full well what the Sisters and others like them are arguing before the courts. They don’t want to banish your birth control. They just don’t want to pay for it in some way and violate the tenets of their faith and their vows to follow that faith.

    I suppose a most kids in the North, as well as the South, did live like that. I just like to put the kibosh on comments like that made by Scout in which my thoroughly Yankee father was thought to be up against other “religious elements” seeking to keep segregation going. What he was up against were Yankee union Democrats who just loved themselves some Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy except when it came to actually doing something for the “coloreds” among them. For a long time, those Dems wouldn’t even speak to Dad, who was also union. He was shunned for doing the right thing.

    1. I never said that the sisters wanted to banish MY birth control. They are a few decades too late if that is their intention. They should have saved Mr. Howler’s soul in 1977. Well, perhaps ‘soul’ is a little off base. Aim lower.

      They are paying for birth control and have been for years. They are paying for Medicaid? They are paying for someone’s birth control. If the local jurisdiction has health care for state and local workers, they are paying for birth control with their taxes. That is so freaking bogus. There are no church rules about paying for birth control. The rules deal with the person, as an individual. Furthermore, it isn’t up to the Little Sisters to prevent the Baptists and the Methodists from using birth control. They have no Christian mandates on them.

      As for the howling about Democrats and union…Here is the news flash…that kind of segregation didn’t just happen in the south. It wasn’t even necessarily by party. I don’t know where you lived but what you are describing pretty much defines America up through the 1950’s, regardless of political party.

      All those people I knew who thought like that had joined the Republican party by the time I came of voting age.

  23. Wolverine

    “Let’s stick to Virginia.” Ha! You can’t get away from good old Andy and his loose lips. Even if he isn’t a Virginian, he is yours.

  24. Scout

    Wolve: I think I give your father more credit than you do. Obviously, there was a local focus to his actions. But, to the extent his discernment of Christian principles led him to take a stand against injustice towards fellow citizens, he was also putting a sharp stick in the eye of people who were invoking Christian principles (falsely or mistakenly in my view, but perhaps not theirs) to justify similar injustices in other parts of the country, including this Commonwealth. Hats off to him.

  25. @Wolverine

    I am glad someone thinks I am a spring chicken. bok bok bok. Talkin’ spring over here.

    I think that prayer in schools was probably more of an east coast thing. My husband experienced it in Maryland, and I recall it in New Jersey. I remember religious lessons in elementary school. Some church ladies came in and did it. Most of us kids did it to get out of class. My husband resented it because he was Catholic and had to say the protestant Lord’s Prayer. He still won’t say the protestant ending, just out of protest, even though his Catholic days are way behind him.

    Good for your father. That took a lot of courage actually. It probably could have gotten you kids beaten up also. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason when it comes to race.

    My father was horrified that .American Indians couldn’t go into bars and get a drink in Washington State (during the war). I asked my mother how he felt about the same restrictions on blacks. She said she didn’t know. Now why would one horrify him and not the other? My father was a jersey boy.

  26. @Wolverine

    It looks like you replaced him in kind, as the expression goes.

  27. Pat.Herve

    I think the Republicans are on to something. They should have passed this legislation with the previous AG who refused to defend one of their own laws – http://thebullelephant.com/ag-cuccinelli-will-not-defend-mcdonnells-law-to-take-over-failing-schools/

    Why was it OK with the last AG but not this one? No, no prize for guessing the correct answer.

  28. Wolverine

    Told you what Herring would do. Today. No prematurity there.

    1. Do you have a problem with what he is doing? No, you didn’t tell me he would decide that Virginia law was unconstitutional. I am glad he did.

      I believe the marriage act is unconstitutional and I voted against it at the time because of that feeling.

  29. Wolverine

    Yes, I have a problem with the AG assuming the power to decide whether or not any of our laws are constitutional and worthy of defending — defense of our laws being one of his primary tasks. You do not want to start that kind of assumed power pattern regardless of party or ideology. It will come back to bite you.

    1. Funny, it doesn’t seem to bother you that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land and you pretty much applauded Cuccinelli’s efforts to weaken it.

      Actually, it is the job of the attorney general to protect the constitution of both Virginia and the United States. Guess which one rules?

  30. Scout

    As I mentioned in another, more recent thread, he also has an obligation, taken under oath, to defend the Constitution of the United States. That presents a bit of a puzzler on this issue, I would think.

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