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"Cohabitators, Homosexuals or Fornicators"

No I'm not describing my circle of friends at Tuesday's terrific judicial reception honoring Judge Huck, but rather quoting from Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell's 1989 master's thesis, which denounced various degenerate activities that most of us would consider pretty standard here in sunny South Florida.

This NYT profile of him and Virginia AG Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who along with partner-in-crime Bill McCollum have launched the ND FL lawsuit seeking to have the health care bill declared unconstitutional, is pretty fascinating:

Outspoken and unwavering in his opposition to abortion and homosexuality and in support of property and gun rights, Mr. Cuccinelli is a purist among pragmatists. He stands out as a pugnacious culture warrior in a party more eager to court moderate and fiscal conservatives, and in a state whose governor hopes to portray himself as a consensus builder.

?Ken was a tea partier before there was a Tea Party,? said David B. Albo, a Republican delegate from Fairfax County and close friend of the attorney general. ?I tend to take my job responsibility as doing what a majority of my constituents want me to do. Ken sees his job as setting a path and trying to explain to his constituents that this is the way we want to go.?

In recent weeks, though, some of Mr. Cuccinelli?s hard stands have become a headache for Governor McDonnell.

Last week, the governor was left to respond to questions about his attorney general after an audio clip surfaced on the Web in which Mr. Cuccinelli, in a recorded telephone conversation offered a legal strategy for testing the notion, popular among certain conservatives, that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States and therefore lacked eligibility to run for president. It was ?possible,? Mr. Cuccinelli said, that a person could ?challenge? a federal law as illegitimate because ?someone qualified to be president didn?t sign it.?

Oy -- this is who you joined in with?

The DBR has a story today in which various legal scholars declare the suit to be more or less bunk:

Bruce Jacob, a Stetson University law professor who teaches constitutional law, said there is always a chance the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court could side with McCollum. But he said arguments cited by McCollum make it sound ?like they are grasping at straws.?

?It bothers me they are wasting the time of the country with this kind of lawsuit,?? he said.

Barry Richard, a Greenberg Traurig shareholder in Tallahassee who was part of the team that represented George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election recount, said he read the lawsuit and doesn?t think the high court will go along with it. ?I don?t see any basis for the United States Supreme Court to say that Congress can?t do this,?? he said. ?This would severely emasculate the power of Congress.??

See Bill, that's what you get for not hiring Barry!

BTW, you can sign a letter to Mr. McCollum asking him to dismiss his facacta suit here.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on March 25, 2010 (boomark / email).