Just my radio station roof after last night's windstorm, looking like the upper deck of the Millennium Falcon after a battle with a squadron of TIE fighters.
www.wesa.fm/environment-...
Bottom line: Democrats requested this accommodation well before the due date for their petitions, and a court found their concerns were legitimate. As a reporter I don't love the withholding of information from the public sphere. But I hate threats to elected officials' safety even more.
In essence, the court balanced the public interest in having an address (limited in this case by the narrow residency requirement) against the safety concerns of elected officials, which are arguably elevated at this particular moment in the nation's history.
... Which is why Commonwealth Court granted their request to keep address information under seal in mid-February, due to "recent, reasonable, and legitimate concerns for their and their families' personal security and safety."
It's worth noting too that residency requirements to run for Congress are (perhaps surprisingly) laxer than those for, say, a state Rep. You only need to be a resident of your state at the time of your election. So a residency challenge now would be sort of pointless in a US House race.
This wasn't an oversight. Five House Dems in PA petitioned Commonwealth Court last month to have their addresses redacted from public petition filings due to safety concerns. And it's not an idle fear: Deluzio's office for ex. was targeted with bomb threats not long ago.
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Short thread on a matter I've heard discussed elsewhere, and that Congressional candidate Will Parker is tossing flags on. The public election petition filings of Congressional candidates Chris Deluzio and Summer Lee don't have candidate address info you usually see. There's a reason for that...
All the merch just became COLLECTOR'S ITEMS.
Just stumbled across this three-year-old photo while looking to clean up space on my phone, and I only just now realized that one of his eyebrows is mustard and the other ketchup. It's a property of great art that you discover new depths of meaning each time you look.
Yeah, I can definitely understand that perspective.
Turtle Creek Mayor Adam Forgie has an uphill climb in his bid to challenge Congresswoman Summer Lee in the Democratic primary this spring. But I will say I admire the "Forgielicious" messaging in his campaign merch!
Yeah, it's a fair question. I guess it's a "know it when I see it thing," which I fully admit is not a great standard.
Something at least in the four-digit range?
We're a week into this war on Iran. Has there been a single large-scale protest of note in the United States?
Micheal Fanone, a police officer attacked during the Jan. 6 uprising, cut a spot for John Fetterman's campaign in 2022. He feels ... differently about Fetterman now.
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“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too." -- A top Bush II aide (said to be Karl Rove) to a reporter, 2004.
I'd put my money on US/Israel continuing total domination of Iran, and it's prettttyyyy hard to mourn the loss of that country's leadership. But wasn't there ALREADY a food/water crisis in Iran? Is there a relief plan to address that if demolition of regime makes it worse? Did anyone think about it?
Voters in Fetterman's party widely believe the pillars of law and democracy are crumbling. But he's on TV talking about Dems waving paddles at last year's State of the Union. Even if you agree the paddles were stupid, if you're a Democratic voter is this what you're looking for in this moment?
If your position is "these Dems are opposing Trump in all the wrong ways," fair enough! But it's also fair for Dems to ask you to model the approach you think is correct. In Fetterman's case, that appears to be pinning a one-off tweet about how Kristi Noem should be fired. And ... not much else.
The pundit case for Fetterman is he's independent and willing to buck his own party. But the party isn't just Chuck Schumer. There are actual voters with actual concerns who supported him. And every day he shows himself to be uninterested in or hostile to their interests. Should they be grateful?
It's absolutely fair game to criticize Dem positions and messaging. They can be bad! But he seems way more invested in being anti-anti-Trump than anything. Like, here's a tweet no one asked for that dunks on his own party. A GOP Senator could have posted it. How does he expect other Dems to react?
Does Fetterman vote against Trump more often than Oz or some other R would? Yes, despite VERY conspicuous exceptions (shutdown votes, Noem/Bondi confirmation). But when he's on TV or social media, he defines himself in opposition to Democrats. No wonder Democrats oppose him! That's what they see!
And obviously the stroke sidelined Fetterman from his own campaign. By his own acknowledgement, his major contribution was a debate that nearly blew up the entire effort. He won thanks to an abysmal opponent, dedicated staff/vols, and social media vibes. Live by the vibes, die by the vibes.
"Don't we want the kind of Democrat who can flip a red seat?" is the kind of justification you make for Joe Manchin -- who Fetterman explicitly campaigned on NOT being. And Pennsylvania isn't West Virginia.
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Case in point right here. His brand-building anymore almost always comes at the expense of other Dems. So maybe not really a surprise that shows up on both sides of polling questions about favorability!
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Sort of amusing to see pundit response to new Quinnipiac polling showing Fetterman beloved among GOP voters while anathema to many Dems.
Guys, it's not that complicated: Every time you turn around, he's on Fox telling everyone that Dems are screwed up. What's not to love/hate?
TBF, old-school State of the Union speeches were boring. But Simon Says expressions of patriotism and the game show theatrics don't do much for me either. So how to make a SOTU address that's engaging AND substantive?
Only one answer I can see: Next year bring on the frisbee-catching dogs.
NEWS: Allegheny County's Human Services director, Erin Dalton, will leave to take a similar job in Zohran Mamdani's administration in New York. www.publicsource.org/mamdani-pick...
Haven't had time to say much here about the special election in state House 42nd district. But notable that the race was over within seconds of 8 p.m. poll closing: Democrat Mazzocco posted 3,660 mail-in votes in early vote dump; GOP's Leckenby had only 2,330 all night.
www.wesa.fm/politics-gov...
MORE: US Rep. Chris Deluzio, who has raised questions about this case and other ICE actions, said that if there are firearms charges in this case, it speaks to "why this agency needs to be communicating. ... The uncertainty and the lack of transparency from this agency is what's breeding distrust."
