While Attorney General Hilgers has shown great skill at legislating on behalf of executive priorities, I prefer my elected representative — state senators — to do the lawmaking.
Hilgers has already successfully steered the Legislature away from its oversight mission by defanging inspectors general offices via his "non-binding" opinion on the offices' originating legislation. No law was changed, but the access to two executive-run agencies is now limited.
Next, we were treated to the slathering of First Amendment legal theories on Second Amendment yearnings, as expressed in another "non-binding" opinion by AG Hilgers on the reach of Sen. Tom Brewer's ill-advised concealed carry law. As Hilgers sees it, Supreme Court opinions that limit the government's ability to prohibit speech in "quintessentially public" spaces also apply to limiting guns in those spaces.
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Uh, no.
Urban senators, I support the mayors of Lincoln and Omaha and their police forces on sensible guardrails around Sen. Brewer's Wild West fantasy. You should too. It's time to defend the text of the law from "non-binding" opinions that obscure it.
Now, Hilgers wishes to insert himself in the ongoing legislative debate over cannabis prohibitions. Because why not? The Nebraska courts have signaled that even the people themselves, via their so-called petition rights, are powerless to break that conservative taboo.
Like they say, nature abhors a vacuum. Perhaps it especially abhors a power vacuum. Senators need to get it together on behalf of us, the increasingly powerless public.
Right now.
Gregory Wees, Omaha
