Georgia lawmakers reacted to Wednesday's news that their Attorney General, Democrat Thurbert Baker, would not sign on to a multi-state lawsuit to block the health care bill in his state by filing papers to have him impeached.
The blog Peach Pundit reports that the resolution to impeach Baker, also a candidate for Georgia governor, now has at least 30 signatures and is still going forward.
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, petitioned Baker to sign on to the joint lawsuit filed by more than a dozen attorneys general across the country earlier this week that seeks to shield states from the effects of the new health bill, including the so-called "individual mandate," which forces most people to buy insurance.
"I cannot justify a decision to initiate expensive and time-consuming litigation that I believe has no legal merit," Baker wrote in a two-page response to Gov. Perdue. "In short, this litigation is likely to fail and will consume significant amounts of taxpayers' hard-earned money in the process."
On Thursday Gov. Perdue said he would appoint a "special attorney general" to sign on to the lawsuit challenging the health care bill since Baker would not do it himself, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Perdue made the announcement a day after state Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a Democrat running for governor, told Perdue, a Republican, he would not pursue a lawsuit.
Though the impeachment process appears to be in motion, some see it as a futile distraction that will not succeed because the threshold for impeachment is so high. It requires a vote of one-half of the State House and two-thirds of the State Senate.