Delaware

The General Assembly is in recess until April 16. But since our last Vote Tracker update on March 22, there has been some action on our bills of interest. Namely, the Hazel Plant Felon Vote Restoration Act has made it out of the Senate Executive Committee and will likely be voted on by the Senate after the recess. The three Revenue bills (HB 50, 51, and 52) that made permanent the tax raises from 2009 passed along party lines in the House and Senate and were signed by Governor Markell on March 28. SB 19, the Death Penalty Repeal, passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 11-10. Check out who voted yes and no on the chart below, it is quite surprising. On April 3, HB 58, the Large Magazine Ban component of the Gun Control package, was tabled in the House Administration Committee for further review. Meanwhile, Senator Marshall didn't do his homework and had a first draft of SB 37 filed without proofing it. It seems it had a provision in there that could be read to establish a gun registration by requiring owners of assault weapons purchased before the effective date of the legislation to provide proof of ownership to the Delaware State Police within 120 days of the effective date of the act. The bill was immediately stricken before the NRA outrage machine could be brought to bear. Here is the thing about banning assault weapons. When you ban them, you ban them. You don't let people keep them through a grandfather clause. So if you want to ban these assault weapons because no one should own them, then no one should own them. Make it a crime to possess them. If you do that, you don't get in trouble with clauses that might or might not establish a gun registration.

Flowers at the Winterthur museum near Montchanin.

... or evening, as the case may be. I agree with Nancy, I can't tell what the actual policy difference is between Frank Knotts and his new Delaware Right blog and David Anderson and Don Ayotte and their Delaware Politics blog, except that the latter calls the former a RINO just because the former found his inner libertarian and decided that maybe the Republican Party in Delaware should not follow the path of insane Sheriff Jeff Christopher. Here is the latest on the battle from Don Ayotte.....

Over on the right side of our blog, and down below the Recent Comments section, we have our Local Blogroll, divided into various categories: The Left (for liberal / progressive blogs) The Middle (for Delaware blogs that are either centrist / moderate or that are nonpartisan or even nonpolitical) The Right (for conservative blogs) Contributors (for links to the various and wonderful Delaware Liberal Contributors) The News I have removed old dead links to some of the news sites and blogs and updated them with the correct links. And I have also removed some old dead blogs and sites, and I also removed links to Daily Kos and the Onion, because they are not really local Delaware blogs or news sites, and that is what our blog roll is for. But, with the shocking and yet unwitting help of the reich wing king of Delaware, the one and only Hube, I have also added some long overlooked blogs and some new ones, so take a look. And if you know of a blog that we have missed, let me know. I also wanted to give a shout out to Steve Newton and The Delaware Libertarian for reaching the 300,000 visitor milestone recently. It is indeed an accomplishment you should proud of. Congrats! But to correct your guess at our traffic, we are at 5,224,112 views since late December 2007, when we moved over to Wordpress and started keeping track. I am sure the Jason and Dr. Nick show that was Delaware Liberal before garnered untold millions of more views, or at least that is what Jason tells me.

Hotels along the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach.

The Vice President, also known here are Papa Joe or Uncle Joe, with what I can only describe as a "I will destroy you" look at a Delaware Lady Blue Hens game recently. Normally we present pictures of Delaware places and landscapes here at Daily Delawhere and not of Delaware people, but I liked this picture.

Here is one of the sites that was recently declared as a National Monument by President Obama, the old New Castle County Courthouse and former state house in New Castle, along with the Woodlawn Preserve in Chateau Country and the Green in Dover.

Sunset over a barren hayfield in Corner Ketch.

The Kalmar Nyckel, a hat tip to our Swedish friends here at DL who want Delaware to secede to joint the Kingdom of Sweden.

The following is the reason Republican Senator Greg Lavelle gave for voting against the repeal of the death penalty:

"15 years from now, there will be a group, undoubtedly, that will come and say, 'Isn't it cruel and unusual, isn't it horrific, that as as society that we put somebody in jail that committed a murder when they're 21, 22-years-old, an adult, and they're in there for 30, 40, 50 years, isn't that cruel and unusual, and shouldn't we allow them out?'" asks Lavelle.

This is quite an assine statement, even from Lavelle. First, no one here in Delaware or anywhere as far as I can tell has ever said life sentences for adults who commit murder is cruel and unusual. So Lavelle is lying to create a straw man that he can fight against, which gives him a reason for his vote. So let's concede that point for the moment. Let's concede that Lavelle is really concerned that there is this movement out there that in 15 years will seek to repeal life sentences without the possibility of parole because somehow it is cruel and unusual. Ok. So Lavelle's answer to this concern is we must kill the convict? In order to prevent the the forces waving the cruel and unusual punishment banner from going down a slippery slope, we must keep a cruel and unusual punishment on the books? It seems to me that Lavelle, through his attempt at mockery, is conceding that the death penalty is cruel and unusual and we need to keep that cruel and unusual punishment on the books so that non-cruel and unusual punishments like life imprisonment are never challenged as cruel and unusual. Well, that makes sense!