Mass. Legislature passes bill for interim replacement of Ted Kennedy --to please national Democratic Party
New depths of hypocrisy, arrogance, and corruption. Republicans bringing legal challenge
Sept. 24, 2009
They did it. On Wednesday the Massachusetts Senate followed the House. The Legislature completely reversed its action in 2004 and 2006 and changed the laws to allow the Governor to appoint an interim US Senator until the January special election. The Senate voted 24-16 and the House voted 97-58.
See the Senate and House roll-call votes HERE.
The move is seen as an outrageous act of hypocrisy, arrogance and political corruption. All of the leadership has admitted that this is strictly a partisan political move, as it was in the previous years. Although it's typical of what the citizens have seen for a long time from elected officials in Massachusetts, in many people's eyes this reaches an all-time low. Our laws have been changed yet again for raw political expediency. This time, it was to please the White House and national Democratic Party establishment and major special interest groups, all of whom have been lobbying the Legislature over the past several weeks.
In an extra spit in the citizen's eye, House Democrats bypassed a procedural motion which legally should require a day's wait, by adjourning and then creating a phony "new legislative day" so they wouldn't have to wait, then continuing.
Phony mantra: We need two votes in Washington!
They continued repeating the mantra: We need two votes in the US Senate. But as we've pointed out, during the past year Ted Kennedy missed over 95% of the US Senate votes due to his illness. Strangely, nobody complained then, or demanded he step down.
It's really about passing Obama's national health care bill
Up until 2004, if there was a US Senate vacancy, the Governor simply appointed someone to serve until the next general election. But in 2004 Democrat Sen. John Kerry was running for President and if he won, Republican Gov. Mitt Romney would be able to appoint somebody to replace him in the Senate. So the Democrat-dominated Legislature changed the law to having a special election within 5 months.
In 2006, the Republicans tried to amend that law to allow the governor to appoint someone until the special election. The Democrats killed that, too.
But now, since Democrat Sen. Ted Kennedy passed away and the Democrats in the US Senate want to have a filibuster-proof 60-vote margin to immediately pass Obama's health care and other liberal bills. So they're doing "whatever it takes" even if it means changing our laws yet again for their political purposes.
Getting around the 90-day delay before bill goes into effect
It even gets even more sleazy.
Constitutionally, a bill can't take effect until 90 days after it's passed. The Legislature can make it take effect immediately by giving it an "emergency preamble, which requires a separate vote two-thirds vote of the House and Senate after the bill is passed. On Wednesday afternoon the House took a vote on an emergency preamble. The vote was 95-57 -- it didn't make the two-thirds threshold.
However, the Constitution has a little-used provision which allows the governor to bypass that, in certain circumstances, by delivering a letter to the secretary of state declaring the law to be an emergency measure to protect "public peace, health, safety or convenience." The Governor's office said yesterday that he expects to submit that letter over the next few days, and then go ahead and make his appointment.
Republicans bringing legal challenge to "emergency" provision of bill
It may not be over yet. Yesterday afternoon Rep. Jeffrey Perry (R-Sandwich) was on the Howie Carr show discussing how he and three other reps, Rep. Karyn Polito (R-Shrewsbury), Daniel Webster of Pembroke, and Lewis Evangelidis of Holden, all of whom are lawyers, are mounting a legal challenge to the Governor's action, citing (1) that the wording of the Constitution may not allow it in this situation and (2) that the bill was improperly drafted to it cannot be made into an emergency law. They said they are taking legal action on that immediately.
This morning the State Republican Party sent a letter to Secretary of State William Galvin, asking him to reject the Governor's expected attempt to declare it an "emergency law." The letter describes the constitutional problems with the Governor's action.
Read the letter from the Republican Party HERE
(Interestingly, this was NOT reported in the Boston media this morning, and the Governor is apparently making his plans to appoint an interim US Senator.)
The corruption never seems to cease
This is the same legislature and Governor that continues to allow homosexual programs to take place in the schools, and allow the Massachusetts Commission on Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Youth go into public schools and force their programs on kids - even after we've demonstrated to them the dangerous nature of those programs.
And as we know, this also comes at the heels of the Legislature and Governor raising the sales tax and other taxes to pay for budget programs and the Big Dig waste. And the Legislature told cities and towns that if they wanted their promised level of local funding they'd have to raise their local hotel and restaurant taxes! At the same time, the Legislature has kept a range of multi-million dollar special-interest programs in the budget, including lavish Planned Parenthood programs.
And they are poised to pass the Transgender Rights and Hate Crimes Bill and other anti-family legislation. This Legislature is clearly out of control.
