News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Record Participation In March For Life — The 37th Annual March for Life held in Washington D.C. yesterday drew a record number of participants. Estimates range from 250,000 to 400,000.
The march is held on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision which declare abortion to be a constitutional right. The first march had 20,000 participants.
Don’t expect a lot of details about it in the dinosaur media.
Ellie Light, Obama’s BFF — The Philadelphia Daily News carried a letter to the editor from Ellie Light, Jan. 19, in which she said “It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, andthat a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything.”
Ellie gave her address as Philadelphia.
The next day the San Francisco Examiner carried a letter from Ellie with the same sentence. This time, though, Ellie gave her address as Daly City, California.
Variations of the letter from Ellie defending Obama have within the two weeks also appeared in papers in Ohio, South Carolina, Maine, Michigan, West Virginia and Iowa, and in each Ellie used a local address.
The revelation of this particular “best friend forever” for our embattled president came about when Sabrina Eaton of the Cleveland Plain Dealer received an Ellie letter via email and did a little investigation because the name resembled that of a former co-worker..
Kudos to Sabrina.
Have the Democratic Party’s operatives really become so lame? This bodes well for the GOP this November.
Here’s the letter that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News.
Here’s a letter that appears in today’s Lebanon Daily News in which Ellie claims to be a resident of Cornwall.
Penn State football coach Joe Paterno may give testimony in the federal lawsuit filed by former player Austin Scott who was falsely charged with rape in 2007.
Scott says the case damaged his chances of a career in the NFL.
The case was dropped in 2008 after a judge ruled to allow evidence that his accuser made similar assault allegations against a Moravian College student whom a jury acquitted.
Scott is suing university police, prosecutors and his accuser, whose name has still not been used by the papers covering the matter.
A former Naval officer is seeking the Democratic nomination to to run for Congress to represent Pennsylvania’s 12th District, a seat long-held by fellow Democrat John Murtha, who has become a bit of a controversial figure in the last few years.
Seeking the seat is Ryan Bucchianeri, 34, who was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1997 and who has a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he focused on international security, political economy, and human rights.
Most recently he has worked as a manager at Lockheed Martin.
Murtha has represented the district since 1974. Among the acts that has garnered him national attention were his involvement with Abscam in 1980 in which he was videotaped telling FBI agents posing as Arabs “I’m not interested… at this point. [If] we do business for a while, maybe I’ll be interested, maybe I won’t” before which he had provided the names of banks and businesses in which the money could be invested; his claim that Marines were guilty of war crimes in Haditha, Iraq before their trial ; and his observation during the 2008 presidential race that in his district “There’s still folks that have a problem voting for someone because they are black. This whole area, years ago, was really redneck,” which gave us this rather enjoyable Saturday Night Live skit.
Pa Unemployment Fund $2 Billion In Red — Pennsylvania’s Unemployment Fund has a balance of $125 million and a debt of $2.05 billion, which was borrowed from the federal government.
To try and pay it off the state’s employers will pay $48 more per employee in unemployment taxes in 2010 which will be $432 per worker. Which of course means the employers will be less likely to hire. Which of course means continued high unemployment.
Pennsylvania’s debt puts it behind California at $6.4 billion; Michigan, $3.29 billion; and New York, $2.3 billion.
Here’s how Pa. ranks regarding unemployment tax per worker.
Kudos to Nate Benefield for the tip.
The Philadelphia Inquirer — in its news stories and opinion columns — seems unhappy with yesterday’s 5-4 ruling in which the Supreme Court said that well a privately funded documentary regarding a political figure is just as protected by the First Amendment as, well, a 60 Minutes documentary regarding a political figure.
The decision in Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission overturns laws prohibiting corporations and unions from contributing to political campaigns.
Sounds bad? Maybe until you realize that what it does is level the field a little between, say, the owner of a chain of pizza shops and George Soros, and would allow that pizza shop owner to attempt to influence an election to the same degree as Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC.
Here’s what the court says:
Although the First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” §441b’s prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is an outright ban on speech, backed by criminal sanctions. It is a ban not withstanding the fact that a PAC created by a corporation can still speak, for a PAC is a separate association from the corporation. Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence.
Why would the Inky take issue?
And while on the topic of the Inky, today’s editorial concerns the Luzerne County judge scandal. Still no mention of the party that starts with the letter D.
The office director for ACORN Housing Corporation in Philadelphia sued a pair of investigative journalist, Jan. 21, in U.S. District Court For The Eastern District Of Pennsylvania on the grounds they violated Pennsylvania’s wiretap law when they sought counseling from the office regarding how best to set up a prostitution business using minor girls illegally in this country.
The plaintiff is Katherine Conway-Russell. The journalists are James E. O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles.
The PDF of the complaint can be found here.
Well the shoe was eventually going to drop.
Concerns over the state of SEPTA’ s pension fund has caused it to sue Goldman Sachs Group Inc. regarding the way it was managed.
SEPTA is claiming Goldman Sachs pays it’s executives too much. SEPTA wants Goldman to make up the value in lost stock holdings.
The fund was worth $640 million at the time of September’s strike — down from $719 million in June 2008 but up from $471 million in March.
The suit was filed Tuesday in Delaware Chancery Court.
Wonder why SEPTA didn’t have a Pennsylvania-based firm manage the fund? What’s the moral difference between going to Delaware for a fund manager or going to Delaware for a bottle of wine?
Something to think about.
Venture capitalist Steve Welch said an interview Thursday that he will remain in the GOP primary race for the 6th Congressional seat despite incumbent Jim Gerlach’s late decision to seek re-election.
Kudos to GrassrootsPA.com for the tip.
Yuengling Sales Strong In Stormy Beer Sea — D.G. Yuengling & Son is sailing strong in a stormy beer sea. While beer sales fell 2.2 percent last year, sales of Pottsville-based Yuengling rose from 1,811 to 2,025 barrels or 11 percent.