The tea party movement came to Annapolis today.

A resolution to impeach the Attorney General was debated on the House floor and then considered by my committee.

There is absolutely no basis in law for impeaching the Attorney General because he wrote a legal opinion on same-sex marriage that some members disagree with. By no stretch of legal reasoning does it constitute “incompetency, willful neglect of duty or misdemeanor in office.”

Nonetheless, over the last two days, our attention has been diverted from the legislation properly before us to this attention getter.

In the meetings I participated in yesterday, we decided that the appropriate forum for acting on this matter was not the full House but the Judiciary Committee.

During today’s floor debate, I reminded my colleagues that both the Nixon and Clinton impeachment resolutions were referred to the Judiciary Committee. I also noted that a motion to expel a Maryland state senator twelve years ago was first sent to the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics.

Explaining my vote in committee, I stated, “The appropriate forum to decide whether the Attorney General correctly reasoned that the state may recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state is not the floor of the House of Delegates. It is not the Judiciary Committee. It is a court of law.”