Free Republic

March 19, 2014 Tea Partier wins write-in race for Pennsylvania state Senate seat Mark Tapscott York is a modest little city in Southern Pennsylvania not too far from Baltimore and right in the heart of Dutch country. It's not the sort of place where political revolutions are found. But Republican state Senate nominee Ron Miller may think differently this morning because he just lost a special election to a write-in Tea Party candidate, Scott Wagner. "With 100 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595, or 47.7 percent, to Miller's 5,920, or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of...

Pennsylvania Democrats were caught on surveillance tape reportedly accepting cash bribes in return for opposing Voter ID in the Pennsylvania Legislature. Gifts of Tiffany’s jewelry were also given to Democrat legislators from Philadelphia, reportedly in exchange for “NO” votes on a Pennsylvania Voter ID bill that passed in 2012.Despite this evidence, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has not charged any officials. Kane is a Democrat.Kane’s excuse for her inaction? Racism: some of the legislators caught on tape accepting bribes were black Democrats from Philadelphia. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: In a statement to The Inquirer on Friday, Kane called the...

Pennsylvania Democrats reportedly were caught on tape accepting cash bribes, including one lawmaker who was paid to vote against a state voter identification law, but Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane shut down the investigation. "Before Kane ended the investigation, sources familiar with the inquiry said, prosecutors amassed 400 hours of audio and videotape that documented at least four city Democrats taking payments in cash or money orders, and in one case a $2,000 Tiffany bracelet," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. "Typically, the payments made at any one time were relatively modest -- ranging from $500 to $2,000 -- but most of...

In what appears to be an unexpected victory for a conservative businessman who had made s point of bucking his own party, Republican Scott Wagner is presumed to have won a write-in campaign to defeat party nominee Ron Miller for an open seat in the state Senate. The closely watched, hotly contested face-off ended in disappointment for the Republican mainstay and a first major victory for the tea party in York County. With 100 percent of the precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in votes totaled 10,595 or 47.7 percent, to Miller's 5,920 or 26.6 percent. Democrat Linda Small of New Freeedom...

NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. -- State police are searching for an unlikely suspect in a western Pennsylvania hit-and-run accident: the driver of an Amish buggy. Troopers from the Mercer barracks say the buggy twice hit a passenger vehicle at a crossroads on Route 158 in Wilmington Township, about 6 p.m. Sunday. The buggy then left the scene and its driver has yet to be identified. Police say the victim is a woman who owns a Honda CRV, a crossover vehicle that was struck on its left side. Nobody was hurt in the crash.

Today is election day for voters in Pennsylvania's 28th State Senate District. They're voting in a special election that was called suddenly two months ago when sitting Republican State Senator Mike Waugh resigned his 80-thousand dollar plus job to take a 100-thousand dollar plus job as director of Pennsylvania's Farm Show. Waugh was up for re-election this year and was not planning on running for a fifth term. His resignation led to the calling of a special election two months ahead of the scheduled May primary. It was common knowledge in political circles that local businessman Scott Wagner whose money...

The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office ran an undercover sting operation over three years that captured leading Philadelphia Democrats, including four members of the city's state House delegation, on tape accepting money, The Inquirer has learned. Yet no one was charged with a crime. Prosecutors began the sting in 2010 when Republican Tom Corbett was attorney general. After Democrat Kathleen G. Kane took office in 2013, she shut it down. In a statement to The Inquirer on Friday, Kane called the investigation poorly conceived, badly managed, and tainted by racism, saying it had targeted African Americans.

It started as a plea arrangement between a lobbyist arrested for fraud and the Republican attorney general of the state of Pennsylvania. And it ended not with a bang but a whimper by the new Democratic attorney general, who shut down the investigation without filing a single charge. Philly.com quotes Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, who took office in 2013, as telling the Inquirer that the investigation was “poorly conceived, badly managed, and tainted by racism, saying it had targeted African Americans.” The undercover sting, begun three years ago by Kane’s predecessor, Republican Tom Corbett, captured leading Philadelphia Democrats, including...

While he has financially supported mainstream Republicans, Wagner has also been outspoken against incumbent Republicans and supported the campaigns of tea party and other independent challengers. As an apparent response, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee have launched television and mail ads against him. The mailer comes on the heels of a television commercial that featured a picture of Wagner superimposed with dead fish. The ad, according to Wagner, misrepresented a 2006 paperwork error as an environmental disaster.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office ran an undercover sting operation over three years that captured leading Philadelphia Democrats, including four members of the city's state House delegation, on tape accepting money, The Inquirer has learned. Yet no one was charged with a crime. Prosecutors began the sting in 2010 when Republican Tom Corbett was attorney general. After Democrat Kathleen G. Kane took office in 2013, she shut it down. In a statement to The Inquirer on Friday, Kane called the investigation poorly conceived, badly managed, and tainted by racism, saying it had targeted African Americans

'The pernicious impact" of federal immigration enforcement "on certain communities in Philadelphia" is pushing the city to curtail police cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Public Safety Director Michael Resnick said Wednesday. At a City Council hearing packed to the balcony benches with immigrant-rights groups, Resnick said Mayor Nutter would soon sign an executive order barring police and prison officials from honoring immigration detainers except when a suspect in custody was previously convicted of a violent felony and ICE obtained a warrant to support the detainer request.

The York County Sheriff's Office released dash cam video from a traffic stop in which a deputy shot an elderly man reaching for his cane. WARNING: Video includes some graphic material and language.

Pennsylvania House Resolution 665 PA State Legislature page for HR665 Summary: A Resolution urging the Congress of the United States to designate Spanish as the official language of the United States and to mandate its use in all official acts of the Federal Government.

Bill Clinton is wading into a hotly contested U.S. House primary in Philadelphia and its suburbs to raise money for Marjorie Margolies, the mother-in-law of Chelsea Clinton...

State Senate Democrats say borrowing nine billion dollars is the best way to address the state's rising public pension debt. It's a shift from a caucus that has previously supported a wait-and-see approach with the 2010 law that reset scheduled payments into the pension systems. Those payments are set to increase by hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years, eating up precious funding for other government programs, only to decrease again in 20 to 30 years. Now they Senate Democrats say a $9 billion bond could refinance some of the pension debt. Sen. John Blake (D-Lackawanna) said...

... The Environmental Protection Agency is set to issue regulations that farmers like Mr. Lemeke say may require them to get permits for work for which they have long been exempt. The E.P.A. says the new rules are needed to clarify which bodies of water it must oversee under the federal Clean Water Act, an issue of jurisdiction that the agency says has been muddled by recent court rulings. Opponents say the rules are a power grab that could stifle economic growth and intrude on property owners’ rights. There is no timetable for when the rules will be released. But...

The productivity of oil and natural gas wells is steadily increasing in many basins across the United States because of the increasing precision and efficiency of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in oil and natural gas extraction. Many resource-producing basins are experiencing an increasing yield over time in either oil (Bakken, Eagle Ford, Niobrara) or natural gas (Marcellus, Haynesville). The geology of each oil and natural gas resource play is diverse, and individual rig or well performance can vary dramatically. However, drilling activity in U.S. shale plays is now generally producing greater quantities of oil and/or natural gas than in...

.... Jay Paterno was on the field with his dad as an assistant coach at Penn State. Now he wants to be lieutenant governor. So when he sat down with KDKA political editor Jon Delano for his first TV interview since announcing, the basic question was--why? "Having had a career in education for two decades, education is an issue I fell very passionately about... I felt like a lot of different people talked about doing a lot of different things politically, and I looked at it and thought this is where I can do the most good for the most...

PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia judge has ordered philly.com to reveal the name of an anonymous commenter, in a defamation suit brought by electricians’ union leader John Dougherty. An attorney in the case says it could have a broad impact on incendiary online comments and those users, sometimes called “trolls,” who post them anonymously. The anonymous defendant in the suit, disguised by the nonsense name “fbpdplt,” called Dougherty a name in the comments section of an article on the website, one of the properties in the media group that also owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News.

A neighbor of two East Liberty sisters found slain inside their home early last month has been arrested and charged with killing them. Allen Wade, 43, a convicted felon, faces charges of homicide, burglary, robbery, theft, access device fraud and carrying a gun without a license. - The foyer was in disarray, police said, and the walls, floor and basement doorway were spattered with blood. In the basement, police found Susan Wolfe naked, and bleach and laundry detergent had been poured on her. Sarah was found clothed with a blanket over her head and liquid detergent had been poured on...