Video: "Sideshow Bob" Says Board of Health Can Only Spend Money on Abortion Regs He Likes

Yes, our old friend Del. "Sideshow Bob" Marshall (R-Extremesville) is at it again. This time, he introduced legislation which "aimed at halting Gov. Terry McAuliffe's (D) push to ease existing regulations on abortion clinics." Nothing new there. What's "amusing" (in a dark, warped way) is Marshall's justification for his "reasoning" on this (e.g., his claim that his motives are really all about protecting "the safety of the woman" from "retained products" and other complications of abortions), and specifically his exchange with Del. Dave Albo (R). Check it out. Del. Albo: "So your amendment says 'No expenditures may be made to implement any changes in regulations for abortion clinics.' What if some changes were changes that were ones that you liked? Like, say, pro-life oriented. Wouldn't your amendment bar that?"Del. Marshall: "If the McAuliffe administration is gonna start putting pro-life amendments on abortion clinics regulations, I will go to church every day and kneel for six hours, Mr. Speaker." Del. Albo: "Well that's kind of not the question I asked you..." Zing! Of course, Marshall doesn't care that Del. Albo nailed him, just goes on bloviating, including his opinion that the State Board of Health supposedly doesn't have the "competence" to be doing, well...exactly what it's supposed to be doing, which is prescribing standards for health clinics in Virginia. Amazingly, this amendment actually passed the House of Delegates, 52-47, thus becoming part of the budget bill, which itself ultimately passed with just 17 Democrats, plus Independent Del. Joe Morrissey, voting "nay."P.S. For all the Democrats - David Bulova, Michael Futrell, Eileen Filler-Corn, Johnny Joannou (if he can even be considered a Democrat), Luke Torian, Mark Sickles, etc. - who voted for the budget bill in the end, it seems to me that the inclusion of "Sideshow Bob"'s poison pill should have been more than sufficient for you to have voted "nay" on this. Of course, the failure to include Medicaid expansion should have been sufficient, in and of itself, to oppose this budget strongly, but that's a subject for another blog post.