Governor Markell’s Inexplicable Veto [Updated with the Governor’s Explanation]

Governor Markell’s Inexplicable Veto [Updated with the Governor’s Explanation]

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.
No Joe.  Not That.

No Joe. Not That.

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.
Monday Open Thread [8.17.15]

Monday Open Thread [8.17.15]

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.

Monday Daily Delawhere [8.17.15]

The Governor Ross Mansion, on the Pine Street Extension in Seaford. Governor William Henry Harrison Ross served as governor from 1851-1955, and began construction of this house in 1856. Ross was a slaveowner and Confederate sympathizer, and smuggled arms to the Confederacy before fleeing for Europe and coming back to grow fruit after the war. So, he was a traitor and deserved to die.
Saturday Open Thread [8.15.15]

Saturday Open Thread [8.15.15]

Juan Cole:
Jeb Bush very unwisely went after Hillary Clinton last night on the grounds that her Iraq policies gave us Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). Bush may think he is cleverly pulling a Karl Rove, attacking his opponent on her strong point (foreign policy), as Rove swiftboated John Kerry in 2004. But this isn’t 2004, and virtually no one is excited about having more Bushes in the White House (apparently a third of Republicans want Trump and like 12 percent want Bush, despite his advantage in name recognition). The fact is, every time Jeb Bush says “Iraq,” he loses more votes. One of the arguments Mr. Bush made was that while his brother, George W. Bush, didn’t get everything right, he did have a brilliant moment with the 2007 troop escalation or “surge,” which put the world right. Then that horrible Obama crew, including Mrs. Cinton, came along and screwed things up by withdrawing from Iraq in 2011. First of all, saying that W. didn’t get everything right in Iraq is like saying that Custer didn’t get everything right at the Little Bighorn. Bush’s Iraq misadventure was the biggest foreign policy screw-up in American history. Didn’t get everything right, indeed. Second, Jeb Bush’s narrative about the “surge” is mythical history unconnected to reality. See my Engaging the Muslim World for the real story. In brief, here is what happened.
I tell them, Juan. It was both the Iraqi government and the Bush Administration that set the 2011 withdrawal deadline. The Iraqis wanted us gone. We had fucked up their country enough.

The Weekly Addresses

In this week's address, the President spoke about the work the Administration is doing to enhance trust between communities and law enforcement in the year since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. In his weekly message, Governor Markell highlights efforts across Delaware to strengthen the state’s transportation system.
Friday Open Thread [8.14.15]

Friday Open Thread [8.14.15]

At Politico, Sen. Claire McCaskill explains "How I Helped Todd Akin Win -- So I Could Beat Him Later." It is an enjoyable read, including the ancedote that she shotgunned a beer after Akin won the GOP primary. I wish there was video of that. However, I have to criticize her this morning because she has recently said that Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Trump. That is not even remotely true, on every possible level, and it is an insult to Bernie Sanders.
On Bernie Sanders and being a realist Progressive

On Bernie Sanders and being a realist Progressive

It is 2007. Our wonderful Pandora says to family and friends that the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate is a shoe-in to win the Presidency, unless of course that candidate is a black man or a woman. She of course thinks there is a lot of racism and sexism left in the world, and that would prevent either from winning a general election. And of course she was and is right. Where I disagreed with her was that the racists and sexists wouldn’t be voting for the Democrat in the general election anyway, for, after realignment over the last forty years, they were diehard Republicans. Thus, for me, thinking that race and gender were no longer barriers to winning the Presidency, I firmly believed a Democrat, any Democrat (well except maybe John Edwards) would win the general election. So, I abandoned my traditional pragmatism when it comes to voting. You see, I usually want to vote for the most progressive candidate that can win. Because winning is important to me. You don’t get to enact progressive policies to affect progressive change unless you first win an election. So in evaluating candidates, I follow my heart and mind. But in 2008, I could more follow my heart, because my mind told me any Democrat then running (save John Edwards with Gingrich-style cheating on his cancer stricken wife) could win. And so I went with Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. But now it is 2015.
Thursday Open Thread [8.13.15]

Thursday Open Thread [8.13.15]

Van Jones:
Over the years, many black leaders have asked the populists to include specific remedies for our specific ills. We have done this politely and behind closed doors. Often we would hear that their "progressive economic policies" would disproportionately help black folks, so we should be fine with our community's needs never being addressed by name. It was infuriating. Sometimes, it seemed some Democratic politicians were happy to publicly name and embrace every part of the Democratic coalition -- immigrants rights defenders, womens' rights advocates, environmentalists and champions of LBGT equality. But not black people. At least, not explicitly -- and certainly not comfortably. We were just supposed to sit there and hope that race-neutral rhetoric and race-neutral proposals might somehow fix our race-specific problems. I starting calling this dubious strategy "trickle-down justice." Today's young activists simply are not having any of it. In case anyone missed the memo after Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston, here it is: the Obama era of black silence on issues that matter to us is over. And the entire Democratic Party needs to sit up and take notice.
It's the holdover of the Democratic Party's fear of being the Democratic Party that took hold in the 70's after southern racists, who were once Democrats, became Republicans after we passed the Civil Rights Act. We couldn't publicly acknowledge that African Americans are a constituent of our party and their concerns are our concerns, and thus we have specific policies to address African American problems, because that might piss off Southern or Midwestern whites who once were Democrats. And then when Obama became our party leader and later President, the CW was that it would be unseemly if an African American explicitly used his power and bully pulpit to help his own people. Demographics are such now that the Democratic Party can win national elections easily without even being on the ballot in the South now. So Fuck the South. Fuck racist whites. As for ending the Obama Era of Silence, I think that is over. In fact, I am not precisely Obama ever himself adhered to the Obama Era of Silence. Hell, remember the beer summit early in his Presidency? That was the result of Obama speaking up on racial injustice where he saw it.