UPDATE: The Smoking Ban has passed both the House and the Senate. The final tally in the House: 60-39. Since two Dems and two Indies voted against the bill, that means that the final tally for the “Liberty Caucus” of the House GOP is 35. Looks like they picked up three members from the first vote. 

UPDATE 2: Looks like I was wrong. From the comments bellow:

It looks to me as if actually 6 Democrats in the House voted against the conference report: Hall, Shuler, Nichols, Pollard, O. Ware, and Lewis. Along with the 2 Independents, this means that 31 Republicans in the House voted against the conference report.
Voting in favor of the conference report were 21 Republicans and 39 Democrats.

One Republican (Crockett-Stark) was absent today.

Thanks David. I’ll try to put up a more full bodied analysis of the vote later. 

Roughly a week after I first blogged about how the numbers on the smoking ban didn’t shake out to put Speaker Howell’s leadership in a favorable light, the Washington Post has picked up on the same rumblings:

House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith’s dissent provided a glimpse of what some Republicans describe as a long-simmering divide within their caucus. The tensions have worsened as Republicans have debated how to maintain their majority in a state that has been trending from red to blue.

Many delegates say they are frustrated that Howell negotiated a deal for a ban they oppose philosophically and handed a victory to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who had made a smoking ban a priority for years.

“I’m disappointed in him,” Del. Thomas D. Gear (R-Hampton) said.

Some are privately questioning Howell’s leadership but said they might wait until after November, when all 100 House seats are up for election, before deciding whether to start searching for a new speaker.

Howell shows the typical squeamishness of someone worried about his own election prospects while foolishly abandoning principle to find a winning issue for his “team:”

“I don’t worry about it one bit, not one bit,” Howell said in an interview. “I’ve had this job for seven years, and I’ve been through some pretty difficult times.”

Howell said that if delegates want to vote for a new speaker next year, they should feel free to do so. But he defends his decision to deal with Kaine and the Democratic-controlled Senate, saying that it was right for the state and that two-thirds of his leadership team agreed.

That’s all very well and good, to do the “right thing,” but here’s the problem. Number one, the numbers don’t hold up. If you look at the House GOP leadership as the Committee chairs, the people who owe their power to the Speaker, plus the leadership team, only 9 of them sided with the Speaker, versus 8 who bolted. Number two, your caucus feels betrayed on a fundamental issue underlying the core principles of the party: property and individual rights. And this isn’t the first time, either:

Some conservative Republican activists from around the state say they have harbored concerns about Howell since 2004, when he did not stop then-Gov. Mark R. Warner’s $1.4 billion tax increase. Three years later, he supported a controversial transportation package that some opposed because it led to another tax increase. And they blame him and other elected officials for contributing to a rise in state spending.

Even more laughable is this quote from the speaker:

“Anytime you have a diverse group, people are going to question your leadership,” Howell said. “You’re going to have different opinions.”

It’s ok for Delegates to deviate on issues from time to time as long as the make their reasoning clear to the people who elected them and realize that the activists who granted them their label reserve the right to revoke it during any nominating period. However, when you fundamentally backtrack on an issue such as this, you’re ruining the point of the label. Why award that when, in the middle of the game, when we have the opposition up against the wall, when we’ve made significant changes on transparency, you LITERALLY HAND YOUR OPPONENT THE BALL? This WILL be the Governor’s legacy issue, and Democrats WILL campaign on this. 

Mr. Speaker, thanks for the changes on transparency. You’ve made our government better with that. But with this deal with the opposition for short term political gain, you have put our party’s label and the trust of our loyal activists in serious jeopardy.

As you’ve probably heard by now, Speaker Howell has reached a compromise with Governor Kaine that, the two men believe, will allow a bill largely banning smoking in public places to pass after years of such legislation being submitted. From the Washington Times:

Gov. Tim Kaine and House Republican leaders announced an agreement Thursday on a bill that would curb smoking in most public eateries and bars.

The bill represents a compromise between the Democratic governor’s longtime backing for an outright ban on all smoking in bars and restaurants and traditional Republican opposition to mandated smoking restrictions.

If passed, the measure will ban smoking except in private clubs and inside walled-off areas of restaurants designated for smoking and served by a ventilation system separate from the one that serves nonsmoking parts of the establishment. 

Governor Kaine has pushed rigorously for this action across the last several years, having previously banned smoking in state buildings. Now, after being founded by, raised on, and funded through King Tobacco, it looks like the Commonwealth’s four hundred year love affair with the sweet leaf may be finally coming to an end. 

Although not a smoker myself, I am firmly against this legislation due to very strong personal convictions. However, before I lay out my own case against the move, I think we should look at how this is shaking out in the political world, and why I feel this decision is just as disastrous politically as it is ideologically. 

At the beginning of this session, it appeared that state level Republicans were beginning to coalesce around the view that the party needs to re-brand itself as one that is focused on personal responsibility and fiscal conservatism without betraying or selling-out the social conservatives who have bolstered the party for years. While it became clear that we could not allow social issues to overwhelm the main thrust of our message, it seemed that our candidates could maintain the focus without alienating the grassroots (with the exception of certain extreme elements which will never be satisfied). Indeed, this strategy seemed to be helping us make major inroads in Northern Virginia, where we came within spitting distance of winning two separate special elections within the last month.

And then this issue reared its ugly head. I’ve been arguing for years that this is one of those issues that has the potential to blow apart the conservative coalition. On one side you have business-minded and libertarian leaning conservatives who see the measure as a fundamental violation of property rights. On the other side you have moderates and social conservatives who, either as an issue of public health or (rather or not they’ll admit it) morality, see this as a place where the government should be able to step in. You can see the fundamental disconnect here. 

And that disconnect has spread throughout the party. While Speaker Howell is very proud to have brokered this compromise. From Bearing Drift:

“The compromise strikes a fair balance between the rights of smokers who choose to enjoy a legal product and the rights of other individuals who want to enjoy a smoke-free environment when eating at a restaurant.

“This is the kind of balanced approach to resolving a tough issue that Virginians like to see their elected leaders seek to achieve. Also, it is a good example of bipartisan cooperation that people want.

However, many Republicans don’t see if the same way. Majority Leader Morgan Griffith has freed the Delegates to vote as they please. And thusly, Republican voices are making themselves heard in a very loud way. Delegate Todd Gilbert, who as a member of General Laws voted against the bill was quoted not once but twice. First in the Roanoke Times:

“I fear this is nothing more than the nanny state mothering us yet again for our own protection,” Gilbert said. “This bill sets a very bad precedent for the free market and for private property rights in general.”

And from the Delegate’s “favorite” paper of record, which generally seems to have no sense of humor, the Washington Post:

Conservatives are also blasting the proposal, saying it curtails individual freedom. “It’s a property rights, liberty and freedom issue,” said Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah). “One of the basic tenets of our party is that we trust people to make decisions that are right for themselves.”

But Delegate Gilbert is not only. Delegate Robert Lee Ware (with a name like that, he’s about as Virginia as you can get without actually being the women on our state flag) gave a stirring speech against the measure:

The principal craftsman of our Constitution, James Madison, insisted that it is not in a piece of parchment that our freedoms flourish. No, our liberty exists, is experienced, and is preserved in the customs, the social manners, the interchanges between free peoples, the private associations that individuals form, and in the institutions that are “intermediate” between the people and their government.

Today, through a feel-good surrender of another parcel of liberty to The Nanny State, we are chipping further away at the individual liberties and also the social bonds and institutions without which our people can not be free. And of course, predictably, it is in a seemingly “little thing” that this is occurring: the private citizens and private businesses of Virginia are to be compelled by government to ban the smoking of a perfectly legal substance that has for centuries been a cornerstone of our social, cultural, economic, and political life: the smoking of tobacco. And, to justify ourselves, we have first had to discredit (and of course to tax) a single class of people into an inferior status–those of our people who smoke.

Guess which statement is featured on RPV’s website? Hint: It’s not Howell’s. This issue is a political time bomb. It is pitting the party apparatus (or at the very least, Chairman/Delegate Jeff Frederick) against the party’s leadership in the House. Just as it looked like Kaine’s Governorship was headed to an early grave, Speaker Howell has handed Kaine a way to salvage his reputation simultaneously put a kink in efforts to re-brand the party as the one of small government.

Efforts that were being led by the party’s ostensible standard bearer for 2009, Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who’s own legislative agenda over the past four years has focused on issues such as government transparency and the reduction of bueracracy. Clearly, for him, this would be a step-backwards. From the WaPo:

J. Tucker Martin, a McDonnell spokesman, said the attorney general is happy that House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) tried to work out a compromise but believes ‘the free market” should decide if smoking is banned in bars and restaurants.

“He generally believes this is an issue that should be solved by the free market and not government,” Martin said.

However, it’s not just party officials that are having issues with this legislation. It’s also raising the ire of Americans for Prosperity, a free market group that is gaining increasing influence within the party. From the WaPo:

Americans for Prosperity, a group that supports limited government and free trade, has hired a company to make tens of thousands of phone calls to the offices of a dozen legislators to pressure them to vote against a smoking ban.

….

“Our members are upset that the Speaker has chosen to trust big government to solve our problems instead of consumers,” said Ben Marchi, the group’s state director. “This is a consumer rights issue. This is the government telling consumers they aren’t smart enough to decide for themselves where to patron.”

Meanwhile, the same sorts of splits are being seen throughout the right side of the blogosphere. SWAC Girl expressed her displeasure with the move, while over at Too Conservative, two different bloggers on the same blog have differing opinions, with Vince Harris supporting it and VA Blogger opposing it. One argument that I just feel the need to respond too, though, comes from Riley over at Virginia Virtucon:

This is a sensible compromise.  I take a libertarian viewpoint on this — I won’t interfere with your rights if you don’t interfere with mine. Start infringing on my rights, and you’re going to find yours curtailed to the extent that they no longer impact mine.  There is nothing I hate more than to go to a restaurant and be put in the non-smoking section at a table right next to the smoking section and have no division between the two.  I don’t think the government should outlaw smoking,  but I do think that there is a limited role for it to play if smokers cross the line and impact others who don’t want to be exposed to it.

Here’s the problem, with that logic–the bill knowingly sets a very high bar for restaurants that want to continue to serve their customers who choose to smoke. It fundamentally cuts into the rights of owners of restaurants. Some people try to frame this almost as if it is a civil rights issue, having to balance the “rights” of smokers versus non-smokers. However, the fundamental difference here is that being a smoker is not an immutable characteristic such as someone’s race. Immutable characteristics deserve protection and individuals should not be allowed to be discriminated against. However, the government should also not knowingly and outright ban a consensual behavior that does not directly harm those who choose not to engage. 

This is the crux of the argument for me; people seem to think that they have a fundamental right to patronize any establishment they want without encountering smokers. To me, this logic is akin to saying that restaurants such as Hooters should be required to have their employees be further clothed because some people enjoy the food but don’t want to be bothered with the sexual overtones. You know the nature of the restaurant, so you don’t patronize it. Why can’t the same be held for smoking? Because smokers, even though they are engaging in a consensual behavior, are on the bottom rung of society. However, this is not about status. This is about consensual adults being able to engage in behaviors they choose and to make their own decisions within the confine of another accepting individual’s private property.

However, I think ultimately this is a bill that myself and my colleagues in the blogosphere can reasonably disagree on and debate. Here’s the biggest problem: Speaker Howell has knowingly handed Tim Kaine his “legacy” issue and, while in the midst of a crisis that was showing the possibility of uniting the party on principle, blew it apart on an issue that, while certainly worthy of debate, is drawfed by the crisis we now face. And for what? For purely political gain. From the WaPo:

According to GOP delegates, Howell stressed during a closed-door House Republican caucus meeting Wednesday that the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and American Lung Association had dispatched a paid organizer to his district. Officials close to the organizations confirm that an organizer had been working in Howell’s district to “educate” the public about his previous opposition to an indoor smoking ban.

….

Other Republicans caution that Howell’s decision to back the ban had little to do with his own campaign this year.

They say Howell brought up the organizer to warn other GOP delegates that they could also be targeted in the fall elections.

While it may not be true that this move was for his own gain, it is clear that the thought here is all on politics. And once again, electoral math trumps principle, the reason many of us threw ourselves in with this party to begin with. 

Let us always work to ensure that principle prevails, because that’s why they’re there in the first place. They will never be all things to all people, nor should they be. But if you are always clear and always guided in your principles, there is no shame in losing a single voter, because you did the right thing, the thing you were sent their to fight for: your principles, which your constituents embraced as their own in the last election. To do anything else is pure politics, and not worthy of true statesmen. 

McDowell warned that if the doctrine were revived, it might not “wear the same label. That’s just Marketing 101: if your brand is controversial, make a new brand,” he told his audience.
He suggested the doctrine could be woven into the fabric of policy initiatives with names like localism, diversity or network neutrality. “According to some, the premise of any of these initiatives is similar to the philosophical underpinnings of the Doctrine: the government must keep electronic conduits of information viewpoint neutral,” he said.
McDowell suggested that a stealth version of the doctrine may already be teed up at the FCC in the form of community advisory boards to help determine local programming. McDowell says he is fine with those boards if they are voluntary–some stations already seek such input. But that if they are required, as the FCC has proposed, “Would not such a policy be akin to re-imposition of the Doctrine, albeit under a different name and sales pitch?”

Perhaps even more frightening is what McDowell is hearing about how the Fairness Doctrine may be extended to other forms of media:

McDowell also said that efforts to reimpose the doctrine could stretch to cable, satellite, and even the Internet. “Certain legal commentators have suggested that a new corollary of the Doctrine should be fashioned for the Internet, on the theory that web surfers should be exposed to topics and views that they have not chosen for themselves,” adding: “I am not making this up.”

H/T Instapundit

 

A number of crosses used by the Young America’s Foundation during a anti-abortion event last week were desecrated and left in a Marvin Center office, and a member of the College Democrats has taken responsibility.

Members of the College Republicans found the crosses on Monday morning scattered around the office they share with the College Democrats. One was pinned upside down on a bulletin board and draped with a condom, another featured a drawing of Jesus along with the words “pwned” and “lol,” and others were emblazoned with words like “Darwin” and “Amelia West,” the vice president of the CDs.

A CD statement Thursday morning said a member of their organization had stepped forward and apologized for the vandalism. The perpetrator was not named.

Surely there must have been more civil and respectful ways of showing opposition to the message of YAF? Kudos to the College Democrats for distancing themselves from the individual members and apologizing on their behalf.

A judge’s order requiring a citizens group to pay attorney fees for four Gloucester County supervisors they tried to remove from office has prompted legislation to prohibit such sanctions in the future.

The 40 members of Gloucester County Citizens for Accountable Representation were stunned last month when the judge who dismissed the petitions ordered them to pay $2,000 each toward the targeted supervisors’ nearly $130,000 in legal fees. The balance will be paid by the county’s taxpayers.

The residents claim they were exercising their constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances in seeking the removal of four county board members who were indicted on charges of misusing their office by meeting in secret. The indictment was dismissed, then the petitions.

The article also points out a fact that makes this bill even more important:

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 18 states have recall provisions that allow voters to remove officials from office for purely political reasons — but Virginia is not among them. A recall procedure is essentially a second election demanded by voters before the official’s term ends.

Without a recall election, petitioning is the only means that citizens have to react to wrongdoing by their elected officials. While petitions may be frivolous at times (or be impossible to act upon due to judicial connections), it is a fundamental right, and should be protected as such.

More than 160,000 Virginians held active permits to carry a concealed handgun in October, according to state police, up some 30,000 from just a year earlier.

No one in the recent Saturday’s class said they’d been the victim of violence. But for most, that was entirely the point.

Student Pete Pomeroy said he decided to carry a handgun for personal protection.

“I have a small business, on the lower end of town, and I’ve noticed that there are a lot more unsavory characters around the area,” Pomeroy said.

Concern for his safety made him decide to start carrying a gun — to “learn the rules the right way, and have a permit so that in my mind there’s no question of what I can and can’t do with a gun.”

….

Johnson also spends time teaching students what to do if the worst-case scenario does happen, and they’re forced to wound or kill an assailant.

Shooting another human being is a traumatic experience.

“You may feel elation. ‘Yes, I’m alive!’” he said. “Is it morbid? Yeah. But it’s natural.”

“You may be revulsed by what you had to do,” he said.

Talking to a professional counselor is also a must, he said. The emotional aftermath of a life-or-death scenario is a trauma no one can handle alone.

“No matter how well you think you’re going to be able to cope with it, you’re wrong,” he said.

That’s one reason Johnson spends a significant amount of time teaching his students how to avoid using the firearms they’ve gone to so much trouble and expense to obtain.

Carrying a gun isn’t a license to be a hero or a cowboy, he said. Rather, it’s a fighting chance to come out of a deadly encounter alive.

The best way to come out of a deadly encounter isn’t to shoot — it’s to stay out of one in the first place.

See a suspicious looking crowd on the sidewalk? “Walk across the street and go around,” he said.

Johnson held up his custom handgun and showed it to the small class.

“I’m hoping it never comes out of the holster,” he said.

Not only were the charges thrown out, and not only was the county ordered to pay part of the $125,000 in legal fees amassed by the Supervisors, but a group of citizens who circulated a petition to remove the gang of four were ordered to pay $85,000 in legal fees.

Outrageous. 

Fortunately, sanity is prevailing in the General Assembly. Tamara Dietrich at the Daily Press has more:

In the next few weeks and if sanity prevails, the General Assembly will teach the judge that here in America, you can’t blast citizens for exercising their constitutional rights — then thwack them with a bill on top of it. 

Because of Parker, two local Republican delegates — Tom Gear of Hampton and Harvey B. Morgan of Middlesex — have filed measures in Richmond to protect citizens against being forced to pay removal costs, attorney fees or other sanctions, should those citizens have the audacity to petition to remove an elected official.

Sadly, the move seems to have already had a chilling effect in the southeast region of the state on our fundamental right to petition our government (First Amendment, if you’ve never had the chance to read the constitution but just don’t have the time to read the whole thing): 

Just this week, Carl Holt of Newport News tried to raise signatures on a petition supporting a training center for children and adults with developmental disabilities. Innocent enough, right?

But some people, said Holt, who works at Northrop Grumman‘s Newport News shipyard, told him that “because of this thing in Gloucester, they were afraid to sign it. Can you believe that?”

He tried to explain that the two situations weren’t similar at all, he said, but couldn’t change their minds. They were just too gun-shy.

“This judge,” Holt said, “he just screwed everybody, basically.”

Past rulings and the general mood in the region seems to ensure that the ruling will be overturned, but this is still extremely troubling for any citizen activist. Petitioning the government is a fundamental right, and as these are elected officials, they become involved in the process by choice and should not expect that they are above reproach. 

Closer to home, we have an odd story in which an activist in Front Royal has filed a complaint against a friend of a member of the Social Services Board. While the situation has to be settled by authorities and could be waived off as a simply overreaction, the story revolves around some more disconcerting actions by the Board member: 

Pierceall said the reason that Burke approached him has to do with the relationship Burke has with Mathews. Pierceall has taken the social services board and Mathews to task on several issues recently, including audiotaping of meetings, which the board reinstated on Thursday.

Mathews tossed Pierceall from the board’s Dec. 18 after he took a photo of the panel. Pierceall is now videotaping the board meetings, which he did on Thursday.

Pierceall and Mathews also have a difference of opinion about him sending her e-mails. Pierceall told the board he should be able to contact Mathews that way, but she insisted that he should not continue to send her e-mails, but instead contact her through the Department of Social Services.

“I’m going to take this issue directly to the board of supervisors because in effect the board appointed her to the position,” Pierceall said. “In view of Mathews’ remarks concerning e-mails, the audio recording, I want some assurance from the board of supervisors that I don’t have to fear for my life if I go before the board of directors and make a comment.”

When elected officials and appointees get involved in government at any level, they should never believe for a second that their conduct is never outside of question, that anything they say can’t be used for or against them, or that constituents have no right to be heard by them. They have the right to disregard their constituents opinions–that’s why we have elections to maintain the balance of power. But citizens have the right to be heard and to share their opinions with other. Yes, Freedom of Information Laws protect some information that (rightly or wrongly) the government believes should be protected, but outside of that, citizens have the right to know the actions of their government. Anything short of respect for that right should be held with the utmost disdain.