Overreaching
There’s no way around it: Delegate Don Dwyer is getting a raw deal from Legislative Leadership and the media on his threat to impeach Attorney General Doug Gansler.
What is getting lost in the hub-hub about the gay marriage issue is that Dwyer’s call to impeach has nothing to do with the gay marriage issue. Nothing at all. Yes, Dwyer is one of the most vocal opponents of gay marriage in the entire state of Maryland. But even above all of that, Don values the Constitution and the Legal Process just as much. Gansler has, in fact, tried to obfuscate the roles of government by trying to circumvent the lawmaking process by trying to influence the courts and influencing changes in state law without the will of the General Assembly. In Dwyer’s words, Gansler’s actions “show a clear disregard for Maryland and the legislative process by which it is enacted.”
Face it; Gansler’s opinion on the matter is substantially overreaching of the authority of his office.
Gansler’s reaction to Dwyer’s attempts at impeachment were also curious in and of itself. The fact that Gansler’s office put out an opinion saying Gansler cannot be impeached seems to be a bit of political jujitsu to defend the flank, a political maneuver whose technical term is “CYA.” The fact that Gansler’s office felt it necessary to put out an opinion you can deduce on your own, but when you consider the shaky precedent that Gansler’s built his case upon (on top of all of the other constitutional issues) and the fact that Gansler is running his office based on the judicial activist tradition without actually being a judge and you realize that there is some there there where Gansler could legitimately face the music.
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Doug Gansler is clearly in the wrong here. I may be a minority in supporting the idea of gay marriage, but Delegate Dwyer is right to pursue this as he sees fit. I certainly don’t think that Gansler will be impeached or removed from office, but sometimes the point of accountability has to be made…..
….but it’s a point that doesn’t have to be made. If Legislative Leadership would just let the issue of gay marriage come to a vote once and for all, this issue would disappear. The General Assembly cannot duck this issue forever. We all know why Maryland’s Democrats don’t want this to come to a vote; because it is political inexpedient for them to do so. The basically have the Hobson’s Choice of ticking off half of their base, no matter how the vote turns out. The moral we should really take away from the Gansler’s marriage opinion is the fact tat Legislative Leadership needs to show the moral turpitude to bring the issue to a vote once and for all….
