Monday, 10 September 2007
Stumbo - The Political Hack That Won't Go Away
« Beshear on Education (Not Jobs) | Main | Beshear's Solution for Health Care »Once again we get another assault from the Stumbo Center of Democratic Public Policy, more commonly known as the Attorney General's Office. This time it is in regards to the make up of the state university board of directors.
The law (KRS 164.011) states that members of the board must reflect the political registration of the state of Kentucky. And since a majority of the "appointed board" is registered Republican, Stumbo has gone into a tizzy.
In his letter last week, Stumbo said, "The citizens of Kentucky are entitled to representation on these boards that faithfully reflects their own political choices and makeup. By creating a Republican majority among the gubernatorial appointees to those boards, you have denied the people their guaranteed voice."
So now he is going to take Fletcher to court once again. This is by far the most stupid thing that Stumbo has done to date. If anything he should be challenging the legality of this absurd law.
How can a law that mandates the composition of a board be made based on political registration be Constitutional? Political party is not a protected class of citizen in the US. It is not like race or gender where you can't change your membership (at least not easily). In fact given 15 minutes, I or anyone else could change their party registration. To base membership on such an arbitrary classification is at best silly. But if I were to accept the ridiculous notion that Political party is a protected class then half of the state's population which is not registered to vote has been disenfranchised by this law.
But the real stupidity of this law is not it's unconstitutionality, but how easy it would be to manipulate. If I were Fletcher, I would go to a couple of Republican board members and ask them to switch their political registration while they served so as to be in compliance. In fact, if I were Fletcher I would ask all of them to switch their registration to cause an imbalance of Democrats on the board. Next I would then remove the previously registered Democrats and replace them with Republicans to "restore balance" to the board and highlight the absolute stupidity of this law.
At this point I can't see how anyone could argue with a straight face that Stumbo as AG has been nothing less than a political shill for the Democratic party of Kentucky. He has become an embarrassment and should just go quietly into the night. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case.
