It’s not that Rep. Maloney decided that the law, indeed, is stupid…
New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s wedding last month had it all — celebrities, fireworks and even a small drone used to shoot a spectacular wedding video.
But the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits the commercial use of drones like the miniature helicopter that gathered the breathtaking aerial footage of Maloney’s June 21 wedding to Randy Florke in Cold Spring, N.Y.
[snip]
Prior to [the] wedding, the Gyokeres [owner of Propellerheads Aerial Photography] and Maloney briefly discussed the murky legality of drone use and lack of clear federal policy, a source said. Maloney mentioned that he sits on the subcommittee overseeing the FAA but didn’t want to discuss policy on his wedding day, according to the source.
…it’s that a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee has a responsibility to follow the law that two random people getting married don’t have. The fact of it is that the FAA regulations in question, however normally unenforceable, were easily enforceable in this case: everybody involved knew what the law was, and everybody – including representatives of the Capitol Police and US Secret Service, who were there for security service reasons – ignored them.
Nan Hayworth, who is running in NY-18 to get her seat back from Sean Maloney, thinks that Maloney should resign from this subcommittee if he doesn’t want to set a good personal example, and I don’t blame her in the slightest for that. But what really bugs me, personally, is the fact that there is apparently nobody in the Democratic party leadership who ever says Hey, maybe we should respect the dictates of the State even when they personally inconvenience us. I mean, these people love the idea of rule of regulation, right? Then you’d think that they’d honor it more when it comes to them.
That’s a rhetorical statement, of course. These people think of themselves as aristos. And the rules are only supposed to apply to you. Vote accordingly*.
Moe Lane
*To forestall any immediate objection: yes, Republican legislators are not immune to that attitude, either. But at least ours are scared that we will bite them if they are not careful. The next Democratic Member of Congress to be scared of progressive disapproval will be the first.
“I mean, these people love the idea of rule of regulation, right?”
.
Good Lord, no, they don’t. They love the power of regulators. Heck, their sainted Ted Kennedy saw no issue with negligent homicide and treason.
Dems have never seen a regulation they don’t like, nor have they ever seen one they want to follow themselves.
Or as Al Gore responded when accused of taking implausibly large and almost certainly illegal contributions from Buddhist nuns, there was “no controlling legal authority” regarding that particular crime.
(Translating the legalese, that seems to mean that the law has never been tested in court, so until someone is tried and convicted for breaking the law he intended to ignore it. And oddly enough, the Clinton administration declined to make him the test case. Funny how that works, isn’t it?)
Eh, I find it difficult to get worked up over that because it reflects my own attitude of ignoring little laws I find both stupid and inconvenient. But then I live quite a ways out from town where nobody is particularly watching or caring what I’m up to.