Day: August 17, 2015

From the bill in question's sponsor, Representative Kim Williams:

I found out today that Governor Markell is vetoing a bill that I sponsored, House Bill 130, Unlawful Sexual Contact. It passed the House and Senate unanimously. The Criminal Justice Council voted in support of this bill and whose members are Delaware judges, AG Denn, and other respected folks. I never heard a word from the Governor's office until the day he decides to veto the bill that his office had an issue with it. I filed this bill early May. The only group that I heard a peep from was the Medical Society and that was after it was released from the House Judiciary Committee. I spoke to them briefly and never heard another word from them. Currently, if a healthcare worker (person of trust) has sex with a patient it is a misdemeanor, this bill would make it a felony. If a prison guard has consensual sex with an imate it is a felony but a healthcare worker who is treating a patient who has been sexually abused and the healthcare worker gains the individual's trust and has sexual relations it is not a felony. This is unbelievable to me.

I look forward to Governor Markell's explanation, and I do not envy his spin doctors. For the General Assembly, override.

Donors are not especially anxious about Joe Biden getting into the race. If he did declare this late in the game, he would be in at least a $45 million dollar fundraising deficit against Clinton, with no real hope to catch up since virtually every major fundraiser in the party — including many who were once Biden people — are now on Clinton’s team. For this reason, as I have said many times here, I am not a fan of Joe Biden getting into the presidential race, for I believe it will tarnish his legacy. Instead, I viewed him as a Plan B that could step in should Clinton die or drop out. But it seems that Joe Biden, while on vacation down in South Carolina, was actively considering a campaign, if not planning for it. And one of the trial balloons that was floated as a result, through the fingers of one Carl Bernstein, was this notion of a one term Presidency that would finally bring this country together.

“[O]ne thing that I keep hearing about Biden is that if he were to declare and say, because age is such a problem for him if he does, I want to be a one-term president. I want to serve for four years, unite Washington. I’ve dealt with the Republicans in Congress all my public life,” Bernstein told CNN’s “New Day.” “I think there’s a conversation going on to that effect among his aides and friends,” he said. “It could light fire to the current political environment.

Fuck. No.

Molly Ball asks “What on earth do Republican voters want?"

"The candidates, at this stage, are as clueless as the pundits, and the pundits have no idea. They certainly never foresaw Donald Trump, this election season’s flesh-colored gap in the space-time continuum. Trump has inspired horrified bouts of introspection within the GOP, as shocked party stalwarts try to figure out where the tycoon’s momentum is coming from—and how it can be stopped.”

I think they just want to scream.