O'MALLEY BUDGET SECRETARY

SENTENCED

FOR

DRUNK DRIVING

Foster is Second Prominent Democrat

Caught Driving Drunk in 2007

Judge Issues Slap on the Wrist

Sentence

Washington Post and Gazette

Cover Up Story to Protect

Democratic Party

The Baltimore Sun and WBAL radio report that Governor Martin O'Malley's budget secretary, T. Eloise Foster, has been sentenced to probation and a one-year abstention from alcohol for driving while intoxicated on I-95 in June. Pulled over by one of Maryland's finest, Foster failed several sobriety tests. Shockingly, this incident went entirely unreported by the Washington Post and Gazette newspapers. Had this been a Bob Ehrlich administration official, this would have been front page news.

Less surprising is the double standard at work here. Foster's sentence allows her to expunge the DUI incident from her record entirely, if she complies with its terms. Chairman of the House Alcohol and Drug Committee, Bill Bronrott, has not released a statement to the press critical of Secretary Foster's dangerous vehicular escapades. Bronrott also declined to criticize fellow Democrat Kumar Barve, also arrested for drunk driving in 2007. We have to ask Mr. Bronrott and his comrades at the Post and Gazette again: Is drunk driving a dangerous behavior and serious offense? Or not? Well, what is the answer? We are still waiting to hear it. All we have now are a double standard for Democratic drunk drivers, hypocrisy, and a cover-up by the Democratic house organs, the Post and Gazette.

I attended a sham of a "town hall meeting" in Kensington last September. A town hall meeting on the O'Malley tax plan where the "town" was not allowed to speak. Along with State Senator Richard Madeleno and Montgomery County's own Michael Kinsley clone, the panel also featured Secretary Foster. She lectured all of us, the taxpayers, about all of the wonderful new taxes we would pay. And how these massive, regressive, flat taxes on the poor and middle class would allow our brilliant governor to solve all of those super-serious budget problems we have in Annapolis.

Turns out, three months before lecturing the poor on taxes, Ms. Foster was intoxicated and tearing up I-95 in her expensive Jaguar. As with the Barve incident, I ask again, why is a public official becoming intoxicated in public in the first place? And then turning their vehicles into deadly weapons by getting behind the wheel drunk?

What kind of message does all of this send to the taxpayer, and to young drivers receiving the Democrats' double message on drunk driving?

More importantly, what kind of message will you send to Annapolis in the 2010 election?