Quiet Story of the Week: Maryland Abandons Wal-Mart Law Appeal

Photo of Tom Blumer.

Of course there were many other newsmaking events this week, but the relatively silent treatment this story received from Old Media is still not a surprise (the link is to a story at a trade publication's web site; very few papers had a related story written by the Associated Press):

Maryland Abandons ‘Fair Share’ Health Care Fight

Maryland is giving up on its effort to require Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to spend more money on employees’ health insurance benefits.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler said Monday, April 16, that the state will not seek U.S. Supreme Court review of an appeals court decision earlier this year—upholding a lower court ruling—that the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act pre-empted the Maryland law.

“The reason we are not seeking review is not because we think the law is unconstitutional. What the courts found was that the law was pre-empted by a very broad federal law called ERISA. We believe that seeking further review would not be successful,” Gansler said in a statement.

Mr. Gansler must have been absent the day in law school where he would have learned that because ERISA is constitutional, a state law that violates ERISA isn't.

Now that what was a cause celebre has been decisively thwarted, Old Media, in typical fashion, as shown in this Google News search, gave it relatively little play.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.


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I'm just surprise this headli

I'm just surprise this headline wasn't used

"States Rights Dealt Blow"

Tom, i love your 'he must have missed that day in law school' point.

sewersides

i clicked on the link and absolutely loved the article on guns .. imagine, 30,000 gun deaths a year in this country .. just like iraq .. had to do some further searching, though, to find the actual stats .. 18,000 of those were suicides .. so only 12000 from all 'other' causes .. hunting accidents, playing pistolero, and, of course, unloaded guns kill more people than loaded ones .. the crybarbie libs are so crazed in their madness to control our lives .. their real problem is cojones .. they were never taught manhood, they were never allowed to play cowboys and indians, they were never allowed to play games where there were winners and losers, they had to share to prove they were nice .. what a bunch of crap .. saco tripas ..

never look a gift skunk in the tail ..

TD,Anyway to find out how man

TD,

Anyway to find out how many of the 12,000 were 'gangstas' and how many were registered gun owners?   I'm sure we'd find that the law-abiding are not the problem and the 'gangstas' aren't likely to be affected by any gun-control now are they?

Yet for some reason, the most

Yet for some reason, the most regulated activity in America causes 45,000 deaths a year.  That activity?  Operating a vehicle...

I never ceased to be amazed at the hypocrisy of the left pushing agendas that seem to never reduce anything but one's civil rights. 

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

Thanks

Thanks on the law school point. Modified to fit the circumstances, it unfortunately applies to quite a few actions and inactions by Attorneys General and others who should know better.

Wasn't the same type of strat

Wasn't the same type of strategy used by the courts when ruling on the Geneva Convention?  When it clearly applies to uniformed country of origin identified troops they went to another article?

I've come to an epiphany

After thinking about and analysing the arguments/discussion that I've had with some liberal thinking acquaintances, I think I have made a rather important and shocking realization...

Some liberals use the term "unconstitutional" to mean "I disagree with it", and conversely, they use "constitutional" to mean "I agree with it".

Agree

Yeah, that's similar to any time a reporter writes "some believe...." He or she really means "in my opinion...."

an "anonymous source&quo

an "anonymous source" means my 5 year old made this up. 

No, no, no, no, botg,It means

No, no, no, no, botg,

It means Katy Couric's fifteen year old made it up.

Your five year old is smarter than Katy, obviously, since you're not a journalist!

And i thought Katy's daughter

And i thought Katy's daughter was the 'highly placed source'

Silly me

What they really mean is they

What they really mean is they saw the light!

The silence in the media about this has been deafening....

Surprising?

NOT!

Here is some other good news,much to the leftists disdain....http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8OKI9S01&show_article=1

Ya my Exxon stock closed at

Ya my Exxon stock closed at 79.2 yesterday.  I love a bull market. 

Nuke em til they glow then shoot em in the dark. -- save my gun, shoot a liberal.

Good Dan...GOOD!You are a gre

Good Dan...GOOD!

You are a great patriot and a good man...you deserve it!

Now, I just wished I had some of that...sniff sniff....boo hoo hoo...