Free Republic

Thank you. Lieutenant Governor Davis, Madam Speaker McClinton, Madam President Pro Tem Ward… Leader Pittman, Leader Costa, Leader Bradford, Leader Cutler… Thank you for convening this special session and giving me the honor of addressing you today. While I’m grateful to see the House and the Senate gathered here together, I’m also mindful that one of our colleagues is not able to be with us. Representative Joe Kerwin from Upper Paxton Township is currently 7,000 miles away, on deployment with the Pennsylvania National Guard. To Representative Kerwin and every member of the Pennsylvania National Guard at home and abroad, thank...

Sunday night, another horde of young people descended on yet another victim. This time, the target was a Philadelphia falafel shop owned by Israeli Jews. Per the usual modus operandi, a mob arrived at the establishment named "Goldie" and began shouting, “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.” Nothing demonstrates a desire for peace like hundreds of rabid animals surrounding a falafel shop. A mob targeting businesses because they are owned by Jews? It seems to me we've seen this before. According to the New York Post, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro posted in response, “Tonight in Philly,...

With many eyes focused on the 2024 presidential election, issues of election integrity are again coming to the forefront of the national conversation, as they should. Without fair, honest, and secure elections, we can’t sustain our democratic republic. Because the Framers of our Constitution placed primary responsibility on the states to administer and set out the rules and procedures that apply in our elections, that’s where most battles over election integrity have been—and will continue to be—fought. Fortunately, the citizens of many states, their legislators, and even judges who hear challenges to recent commonsense election reforms all are starting to...

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s budget address Tuesday laid out his vision of policies to prioritize in his proposed $44.4 billion budget, and he made an attempt to unify those listening. “Let’s work together,” he urged House and Senate members who assembled to hear his plan. And, “believe in us,” Shapiro, a Democrat, asked of those who didn’t vote for him. He offered ideas that have potential for bipartisan support such as better funded police and expanding the property tax rent rebate program for seniors and for disabled residents, increasing the maximum rebate from $650 to $1,000 a year and raising...

Gov. Josh Shapiro Thursday boldly called on legislators to abolish Pennsylvania’s costly, ineffective and immoral death penalty. In urging legislators to act, an unprecedented move, Mr. Shapiro showed some sorely needed leadership from the governor’s office. Unless Mr. Shapiro engages the legislature, the death-penalty statute will endure. He needs to take the lead in persuading the Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate to approve bills that would repeal it. Former Gov. Tom Wolf refused to do that. In making his statement a month after his inauguration, Mr. Shapiro signaled that getting state government out of the business of killing people will...

From the hardscrabble hills of western Pennsylvania to the hardknock blocks of Northeast Philadelphia, children are getting inferior educations in underfunded school districts with low property values and incomes. Crowded classrooms in the state’s 100 most poorly funded districts deny children, who may enter kindergarten a year behind their more affluent peers, the attention they need. Those districts, including South Allegheny, East Allegheny, New Castle, Sharon and Philadelphia, educate one-third of the state’s 1.5 million students, two-thirds of its Black students, and nearly 60% of its poor students. Leaky roofs, obsolete and unsafe buildings, and broken laptops plague many of...

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who took office last month after having been state attorney general, said "the system is fallible, and the outcome is irreversible." Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Thursday that he will not sign any execution warrants while in office and called on the General Assembly to abolish the death penalty...

Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro will be sworn-in next week on three Bibles with significance to his family and Jewish faith. Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s outgoing attorney general, will use a family Bible that he has used for swearing-in ceremonies since 2005, a Hebrew Bible that was in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh during the 2018 massacre, and a Bible carried by a Jewish soldier from Philadelphia during the D-Day invasion in World War II. Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro Shapiro, who embraced his deep Jewish faith on the campaign trail, will be the third Jewish governor in Pennsylvania history after Milton Shapp...

Pennsylvania Governor-Elect Josh Shapiro has filled six positions in the governor’s office; “deputy chiefs of staff” who will focus their expertise in various sectors. They will be staffers on the leadership team in the governor’s office who will act as liaisons to related departments, a spokesperson for Shapiro’s administration confirmed to The Epoch Times. “With these dynamic, smart, and capable public servants joining our team as deputy chiefs of staff, our administration will hit the ground running to streamline communication, operate nimbly, and get things done for Pennsylvanians,” Shapiro’s incoming Chief of Staff Dana Fritz said in a statement. “Governor-Elect...

Pennsylvania governor-elect Josh Shapiro, who rose to prominence by downplaying Republican claims of voter fraud, charged one of his former campaign consultants on Wednesday with "wide scale" forgery of voter ballots. Shapiro, in his capacity as Pennsylvania attorney general, alleges that Philadelphia political consultant Rasheen Crews duplicated more than 1,000 signatures on petitions to add his clients to Democratic primary ballots for Philadelphia city elections in 2019. "By soliciting and organizing the wide scale forgery of signatures, the defendant undermined the democratic process and Philadelphians’ right to a free and fair election," Shapiro said in a statement announcing the charges....

According to Jeff Flock there are 500,000 jobs in Pennsylvania linked to the oil sector producing $800 billion to the economy. (That number seems a high) The U.S. fracking revolution has caused natural gas prices to drop 47 percent compared to what the price would have been prior to the fracking revolution in 2013. A 2020 study found that a fracking ban would increase annual household energy costs by over $600 per year.

Customer Ken Lewandowski Describes The Rise In Crime & Says It's “Scary…Anywhere You Go Now”: A Wawa Is Shut After More Violence In Philadelphia (11/4/22)

The GayBINGO! event featured "campy entertainment" that was guided by the "antics of the drag-queens-on-skates Bingo-Verifying Divas." ... Josh Shapiro, the Democrat candidate running for governor of Pennsylvania, attended an event called GayBINGO! In November 2009, which featured drag queens skating around and entertaining the crowd, including "children." A photo posted to social media shows then-State Representative Shapiro guffawing on stage next to one of the drag queens as bingo numbers are read. The caption to the photo reads, "Rep. Shapiro sponsored a game of BINGO for the AIDS Fund Philly's monthly GayBINGO! Event." ... According to Philadelphia Gay News,...

With 562 murders, 2021 was a record year for Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. So far in 2022, the city has seen 441 murders. As of Oct. 30, the Philadelphia Police Department reported 12,923 violent crimes in 2022, including 154 violent assaults in the previous seven days. Philadelphia crime has climbed each year since 2013, when the city had 246 murders. Crimes spills out of the city into surrounding counties. Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano focused on crime during a recent campaign stop in Lancaster County. While traveling the state, Mastriano says he has been hearing a lot of...

Pittsburgh police said six people were shot outside a funeral in the city's Brighton Heights neighborhood Friday. All six victims were reported to be in stable condition, police said. The shooting happened just after noon outside a funeral service for John James Hornezes, Jr., one of the three killed in a shooting on Pittsburgh's North Side on Oct. 15. That service was being held at the Destiny of Faith Church on Brighton Street. A source says someone was driving by the church in a vehicle and fired shots. Police were not able to confirm that's where the shots came from...

Pecksville, Lackawanna County — State Senator and Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano was holding his 'Restore Freedom Tour' in Monroe, Luzerne and Lackawanna counties today. Mastriano is asking Pennsylvanians to volunteer for his campaign in the hopes that he can beat his Democratic challenger Attorney General Josh Shapiro next month. Former attorney general Ernie Preate was a guest speaker and predicts Republicans will be victorious November 8th including in Harrisburg. “Mark my words, there is a red wave coming,” said Preate. Preate was one of several speakers at Mastriano's campaign event at the Fiorelli Banquet and Conference Center in Peckville...

Here we having Tom Wolf talking about the economy and how things are going currently in Pennsylvania check this out

President Donald Trump released a glowing statement in support of Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano. On Tuesday, the 45th president said, “Doug Mastriano will be a GREAT Governor for Pennsylvania. I know him well and he is a fantastic guy.”As the November midterm elections quickly approach, Mastriano appears to have a legitimate chance at flipping the state of Pennsylvania and securing a major win for the Republican Party, despite facing opposition from establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell. In a recent Trafalgar Group poll, Josh Shapiro, the Democrat nominee, only held a two percent lead over Mastriano, well within the...

PHILADELPHIA - As Election Day nears, a new InsiderAdvantage/FOX 29 poll shows Republican nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz has gained ground on Democratic nominee John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race. The race is now a dead heat, according to the poll of 550 likely voters conducted three weeks before Election Day on Nov. 8. The poll has a margin of error of 4.2% |Fetterman and Oz are now tied in the polling at 46%, with 5% of those polled remaining undecided. Libertarian candidate Erik Gerhardt came in at about 2%. InsiderAdvantage Chairman Matt Towery says Fetterman’s shrinking lead was a...