to be voted on in a referendum. The California teabaggers will probably do the same.
Tea Party Victory… In Marylandhttp://thegraph.com/2011/06/tea-party-victory-in-maryland/No sooner was the final vote tallied,
two conservative Delegates, Neil Parrott and Pat McDonough, were working tirelessly to have the law suspended and placed on the 2012 ballot as a referendum vote. They set up a website, MDPetitions.com, to drive for online petitions. Several volunteers including myself and Delegate Justin Ready, took to the streets to collect signatures in support of the referendum. And just as Maryland is known as a hot spot for liberals, the bluest state is equally dismissive of its rather small Tea Party influence.
However, on May 31, Delegate Parrott proudly announced that the petition drive had submitted over 60,000 signatures. By state law, in order to keep the petition alive, 18,579 valid signatures were required by that date, with the balance of 55,736 signatures due by June 30. With the Maryland Board of Elections charged with the task of verifying and validating the signatures, it is likely that some will be litigated out.
It is unclear as of yet how many of the submitted signatures will be accepted by the BoE, but
a few things have become very clear. Maryland’s Tea Party movement is a force to be reckoned with.Meanwhile, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, was busy complaining that Republicans and conservatives think that illegal immigration “should in fact be a crime.” Governor O’Malley fought for this bill and signed it so that “new Americans” would have a fighting chance. Perhaps Miss Schultz and Mister O’Malley should get out of their offices and spend some time with the good people of Maryland, liberals and conservatives alike, and find out the majority of Americans, including the newly vocal Maryland Tea Party movement, do in fact think that illegal immigration is a crime.