Monday, September 22, 2008

Dave Albo vs. Thomas Jefferson

Is there a more embarrassing legislator anywhere in the Commonwealth than David Albo (R-Fairfax)?:

  • Introduced and got passed the notorious "Abusive Driver Fees," the $1000 speeding tickets that made us the laughing stock of the country
  • Eloquently explained that his own constituents were abandoning the Republican party because they're all on foodstamps.
  • Proudly boasted that he's been in Richmond working hard so that people will be afraid to live in Virginia
Now, from that same bumbling joke of a Delegate comes this gem:



Albo (R-Fairfax) agreed that legislators have, on occasion, pushed the bounds of constitutionality but that they are properly representing their constituents. "The problem is that our job is to promote policy, and the Supreme Court's job is to analyze," said Albo, one of a declining number of lawyers in the General Assembly. "I can't be hamstrung to write the wimpiest bill possible to make sure it passes a Supreme Court opinion."

As an example, Albo cited the Partial Birth Infanticide Act of 2003, which bans the controversial medical procedure "intact dilation and extraction," in which the fetus is partially delivered and the skull is crushed to make removal easier. A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit overturned the law for the second time in May, saying it was more restrictive than the federal ban on late-term abortion that the U.S. Supreme Court approved last year.

Albo said legislators knew that the law "was in danger of being held unconstitutional" but passed it anyway because "we did what we think is right." The full 4th Circuit, which rarely grants rehearings, will hear arguments Oct. 28. In a recent brief, state attorneys argued that Virginia's law "is substantively identical to the federal statute."


Poor Dave. He would be a far more effective legislator if he weren't so consistently "hamstrung" by Thomas Jefferson's Constitution of Virginia. I don't think there was any question that Dave is FAR out of touch with his own constituents, but did anyone realize that he'd swung so far right that even the CONSTITUTION can't contain this idiot anymore? What a joke.

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