Maryland, My Maryland!

Wow, three articles on Maryland today! First, at Am Great, Salena Zito explores Maryland Voters Send a Warning Shot to Democrats, "The problem for Democrats and Biden is they listen too much to the loudest liberal activist voices in the party and ignore the people who put them in office."

In October, the Goucher College poll conducted here in Maryland showed that since March, Biden’s job approval went from 62 percent to 53 percent, with only 43 percent of independent voters approving of his performance.

The two Democrats representing the state in the Senate, Senator Chris Van Hollen, who is up for reelection in 2022, and senior Senator Benjamin Cardin, were underwater at 44 percent and 46 percent.

Republican Governor Larry Hogan, conversely, is at a robust 68 percent approval rating, up 6 percentage points since the last poll

Hogan has lived up to his promise to be a good conservative manager and not an ideologue. Whether they are here or Baltimore, Hagerstown, Cumberland or the suburbs of Bethesda and the Chesapeake Bay, his voters have rewarded him for living up to his promise.

He won this very blue state’s support in 2014 under very similar circumstances to what happened in neighboring Virginia in its gubernatorial race, an antidote to a party and a White House bent on plowing ahead with overreaches voters never elected them to do.

Barack and Michelle Obama campaigned here against him that year alongside Hillary Clinton, never fully understanding that they were the reason voters were unhappy.

The polling in blue Maryland showing Biden losing the heart of the bluest of voters, a place where the chance of a Republican winning here for president is less than zero, is not an outlier. It is happening all across the country in both red and blue states.

The problem for Democrats and Biden is they listen too much to the loudest liberal activist voices in the party and ignore the people who put them in office. Yet, oddly, it appears they are operating as though they are one and the same.

He's the best we can hope for in this indigo state. Second, by way of Da Sun, Zebras in Maryland have been caught after four months on the run, officials say. Too bad, I was rooting for the Zebras.

And finally, blog-friend William Teach at Pirate's Cove is first with the news that Ocean City flasher, Chelsea Eline is taking the Free the Nipple fight to the Supes: Good News: Showing Boobs On The Beach Could Go To The Supreme Court

Will the Supreme Court take up the issue? Might they be amused enough that people will spend gobs of money on this? I have my doubts, because it really seems more of something that is a 10th Amendment issue, not a federal constitution issue

Could Ocean City’s topless ordinance head to the Supreme Court? The latest legal battle

The constitutionality of Ocean City’s law banning women — and not men — from sunbathing topless could potentially go before the U.S. Supreme Court after the attorneys representing five women in the case petitioned the nation’s highest court earlier this month.

The petitioners are asking the Supreme Court to review the Aug. 4 federal appeals court ruling, which determined that Ocean City’s law is constitutional.

This petition was filed Dec. 1, and the court has until Jan. 7 to respond, according to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.

While the Supreme Court hears only a small percentage of cases petitioned, this move continues a new chapter in the ongoing debate over what is protecting “moral sensibility” or violating gender equality in Maryland’s largest beach town.

In 2017, Ocean City passed a law banning only women from exposing their breasts in public. It came after one of the plaintiffs in the case, Chelsea Eline, contacted Ocean City police and said it was her right to go topless.

Eline and four other women then filed a lawsuit against the town in 2018, claiming that the ordinance violated their constitutional rights.

A federal judge first ruled in April 2020 that the town’s ordinance was legal and did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, as the plaintiffs argued.

It doesn’t seem to violate, more importantly, the Maryland Constitution, because the federal Constitution really doesn’t say much of anything about not being able to pass any laws that keep people from walking around on the beech with the boobs hanging out. What’s next, showing full nudity? Walking around the streets with boobs hanging out? There’s always been morality laws and rules in society, some which are wrong, some which are just simple propriety.

After losing in federal court, which, really, should have never heard the case, referring it back to state court, they lost at the federal court of appeals

In this decision, Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote that Ocean City’s elected leaders are within their rights to enact laws that protect public sensibilities.

“The judicial legacy of justifying laws on the basis of the perceived moral sensibilities of the public is far from spotless. Some government action that we now rightly view as unconstitutional, if not immoral, has been justified on that basis,” Quattlebaum wrote. “Even so, in this situation, protecting public sensibilities serves an important basis for government action.”

Some people just have this sense of Moral Outrage that they aren’t allowed to do everything they want in public, and want to force everyone to comply with their demands. And, no, restricting women to keeping their boobs covered at the beach is not the same as making them wear a full body covering nor telling blacks they can’t ride at the front of the bus. But, they’re still petitioning the Supreme Court.

This latest move asks the court to declare that Ocean City’s ordinance violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution “because the discriminatory gender classification contained in the ordinance does not further an important governmental interest, and is not narrowly tailored to achieve its objective.”

It’s a pretty big stretch. But, amusing.

It will be amusing to see how the women on the high court react. I've covered this controversy in the past and must say that Chelsea is one of the few people in the "Free the Nipple" movement. Well, her and Lina Esco of SWAT.