The New Year brings with it enormous challenges for Virginia lawmakers who are returning to the General Assembly.
Most of us would like to think that the bread and butter issues that impact the lives of the people would be high on the list of things to do for our elected officials.
Would you consider transportation, education and the budget to be in the Top 10? That is what many of them promised to focus on during the election cycle.
But I'm a parent and I've learned that there are times when lawmakers, if left without adult supervision, sometimes behave as though they are children making excuses about why they didn't complete their homework.
That said if you take the time to vote, the follow up should be taking a good look at what the folks we elected to office consider a priority for the short 45-day legislative session ahead.
Virginia Republican Del. Bob Marshall is at it again. For a guy who represents a party that advocates keeping the government out of an individual's personal business, he may need to re-read the GOP handbook.
Marshall made national news last year by leading the effort to successfully defeat the nomination of a gay Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland to a general district court post solely based on his sexual orientation.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, said at the time "in my consideration of judicial candidates I only consider the individual's ability to do the job well, if anyone voted against Mr. Thorne-Begland because of his sexual orientation that would be very disappointing and unacceptable."
This session Marshall is leading what some may consider the "unacceptable" charge to intrude into the private lives married couples and women as it relates to private decisions about contraception coverage.
Marshall has introduced HB 1314 for the 2013 legislative session. In summary the bill requires insurance companies offering employee policies to offer policies that omit contraception coverage, so that employers may deny their employees that kind of reproductive care. This puts the personal, private medical decisions of employees — mostly women— in the hands of their employers.
At a time when many families worry about the economy, job security, and the price of gas and groceries Mr. Marshall is busy having a virtual peek into the bedrooms of the hard-working tax-paying citizens of the great state of Virginia.
Marshall has represented the 13th district in Prince William County since 1992. For a lawmaker with that level of experience and tenure one would hope that he would come to the table this session with some ideas that are not laser focused on pushing his own personal views on birth control down the throats of his constituents.
In case you haven't kept up with Marshall's mania, this isn't his first time he's created a rodeo of the ridiculous by introducing anti-women's choice legislation.
One wonders what was he thinking when he suggested that children born with disabilities are God's punishment to women who have previously had abortions. "When you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," he said.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth is credited with saying, "if you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me."
Well, Mr. Marshall, I'm not the only one talking about you. The question is: Are you listening?
Ciara is a news anchor at WTKR NewsChannel 3. Her column runs on the first Monday of the month. She can be reached at Barbara.Ciara@wtkr.com or at 446-1344.
