The two-year-old Virginia Republican eavesdropping case just keeps getting better and better. As if the criminal conviction, the resignation of several prominent Republicans, and the new embroilment of the attorney general in all of this wasn’t good enough, the news just got better for Democrats. It turns out that at the meeting in question — the Republican strategy meeting where now-convicted and then-Virginia Republicans executive director Edmund Matricardi relayed confidential Democratic strategy information that he learned through eavesdropping — there were two attorneys from McGuireWoods present, and the attorney general’s office paid their $570 bill out of taxpayer money. They haven’t been able to come up with any spin for this yet, save for ex-Speaker of the House Vance Wilkins (who resigned in shame last year, after Mr. Family Values got caught paying $100k to hush up his proclivity for sexual harassment) weakly pointing out that “they were supposed to be experts on redistricting.” Over the past two years, the world has just crumbled around the Virginia Republicans, and there’s no sign that the damage is anywhere close to finished.
Veteran political analyst Bob Gibson had an interesting column in Charlottesville’s Daily Progress on Sunday regarding the Republicans’ plan for the upcoming General Assembly session. (Here in Virginia, the General Assembly is only in session for 6-8 weeks each year, in the winter.) Turns out that the Republicans are too scared to face up to the terrible fiscal crisis that they have created, a crisis that Governor Mark Warner is trying to fix with his tax restructuring proposal. Despite endorsements of Warner’s plan from a number of newspapers (the Post, notably), many Republicans are too scared to support it because it involves — horrors — some tax increases along with some tax cuts. Because these are Big Government Republicans, they can’t cut funding to anything, but they also won’t raise taxes. As a result, they have no — and I mean no — ideas of how to go about fixing the massive deficit. So rather than talk about the single biggest problem that Virginia has faced in years, they’re inventing new problems and passing laws to fix them.
It seems that some people in Our Fair Commonwealth are having — *shiver* — sex. And they’re bound and determined to do something about that. They intend to spend their time trying to pass laws — I swear I’m not making this up — making it illegal to pass on a sexually transmitted disease. Also, they’ll be picking up last year’s issue of attempting to ban birth control (starting on college campuses), look to ban recognition of same-sex civil unions, and attempting to retain the state sodomy law, despite the Supreme Court ruling that makes it unconstitutional. All of this will, by design, waste a whole lot of column inches in the newspaper and time in the General Assembly, avoiding getting any, y’know, work done.
It has never been more plain that Virginia Republicans offer nothing in the way of leadership for the commonwealth. They seem best skilled at breaking the law and lying about it (or paying to hush it up), while simultaneously making public proclamations of the need for “increased family values” and “a moral compass.” Pot. Kettle. Black.
I recently wrote a letter to Republican Delegate Bob McDonnell (who, by the way, has a “web-site” that you can visit to-day on your computing-machine via your voice telegraphy device), who headed up the committee that looked at eliminating, among other things, the sodomy law. I think my approach to discussing this law ought to be adopted by Democrats statewide. If you can’t beat ’em, shame ’em.
Delegate McDonnell,
I write to ask that you remove the sodomy statute from the books. There are two reasons that I ask that this be done.
Firstly, the Supreme Court has ruled that sodomy statutes are illegal. We cannot maintain laws that we know to be illegal.
Secondly, I favor less government, as I know that you do. The law ought not be concerned with what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home. Survey data show that the vast majority of American adults have engaged in sexual practices that are prohibited under this law. I venture to say that the vast majority of the General Assembly currently engages in these practices, as well they ought to be able to, and to maintain them would be deeply hypocritical. Incidentally, any member of the General Assembly who claims not to have ever engaged in sexual acts prohibited under this statute is either a liar or pitiable. In either case, that’s not somebody that I want to represent me.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Waldo Jaquith
I didn’t hear back from Bob. I’m guessing that he’s in the “pitiable” category, but you can be the judge of that.