By Len Barcousky / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Divided along party lines, Allegheny County’s election board voted this afternoon to file a lawsuit challenging the state’s new Voter Identification law.

Board chairman John DeFazio and county Executive Rich Fitzgerald, both Democrats, voted to sue, while Heather Heidelbaugh, the lone Republican on the three-member board, voted against the measure. Both Mr. DeFazio, of Shaler, and Ms. Heidelbaugh, of Mt. Lebanon, serve on the election board because they are at-large members of county council.

“We should be making it easier to vote,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “This legislation [the Voter ID law] is trying to deny that right and make it more difficult for people to vote.”

The measure, which takes effect with the Nov. 6 general election, requires that all voters have some form of state-approved photo identification when they come to the polls.

Ms. Heidelbaugh noted that the bill was passed by two houses of the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Tom Corbett.

“This suit is sour grapes by an elected official who doesn’t like the new law,” she said.

County solicitor Andrew Szefi said the lawsuit likely would be brought on behalf of both the election board and the county.

The heart of the county’s argument would be that the state constitution sets just four requirements for voting eligibility: minimum age, U.S. citizenship, residence in Pennsylvania and a specific election district.

The new requirement that voters show photo identification before they can cast ballots should have been imposed via constitutional amendment, he said.

Mr. Szefi estimated it would take the county law department about a week to prepare the lawsuit, which will be filed in Commonwealth Court.

The county has standing to bring the suit, because it pays elections costs and will have to spend additional money to train poll workers to enforce the photo ID rule, Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Len Barcousky: lbarcousky@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1159.

Charles Scott Howard, Kentucky Miner, Wins Reinstatement In Whistleblower Case

Kentucky miner Charles Scott Howard lost his job at Cumberland River Coal Co. last May, after years of butting heads with management over safety issues at the mine. Now, more than 13 months later, Howard may suit up and head back into the mine, whether his employer likes it or not.

A federal judge ordered Friday that Howard’s company immediately reinstate him at the mine and pay a $30,000 fine for discriminating against a whistleblower. The sharply worded decision said managers at Cumberland River, as well as its parent company, coal giant Arch Coal, went to great lengths to find a reason to fire Howard after he brought his mine to the attention of federal safety officials.

“It is obvious that [Cumberland River] worked diligently to end Howard’s employment,” wrote Margaret A. Miller, an administrative law judge for the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. “The discrimination against Howard ran through [Cumberland River] and its parent, Arch, at the highest management levels.”

Continue reading Kentucky Miner Wins Reinstatement In Whistleblower Case →

by Randy Shannon

The growing mass movement of students in Quebec against high tuition increases has become a threat to Government control of austerity in Canada. The Government is attempting to break the student resistance to austerity with an unusually harsh law against public gatherings, rallies and marches. This anti-free speech law was a signal to the Provincial Police, who used brutal violence against peaceful marchers, using clubs to bloody and break the bones of tuition hike opponents.

The public response last week could result in a quick retreat by the ruling conservatives in Canada. Hundreds of thousands of parents of students and workers marched with the students in open defiance of the new law. Amnesty International condemned the new law against free speech.

See the Guardian article below.

Quebec student protesters split over tuition fee compromise

Disagreements come as Amnesty declares controversial Bill 78 to be in breach of Canada’s international obligations

Adam Gabbatt
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 26 May 2012 17.16 EDT

One of the student leaders in Quebec’s tuition fee row has suggested students are “ready for compromise” with the government over increases in university education.

Leo Bureau-Blouin, president of Quebec’s college student federation, made the comments in an interview with Canada‘s national public broadcaster on Saturday.

But in an interview with the Guardian, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokesman of Classe, one of the other two student groups involved in the debate, said it was “not true” that students would begin to compromise before an offer had been made by the government.

The disagreement reflects some of the intricate politics involved in the tuition fee debate in Quebec, with the government negotiating with three different student organisations, including Bureau-Blouin’s official student organisation FECQ and Nadeau-Dubois’s larger Classe.

Bureau-Blouin, whose term as president of FECQ ends on 1 June, made his comments in an interview with CBC radio’s ‘This House’ programme, which aired on Saturday.

“We are ready for a compromise — and if the Quebec government is ready for it too, I think we can come to something,” he said.

“If the Quebec government agreed to move on the amount of the tuition fee hike, I think it would be a great step in the right direction.”

The FECQ, which represents 80,000 people enrolled in CEGEP, or Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel, is one of three organisations involved in negotiations. Its counterpart, Quebec’s university student federation, represents some 125,000 students, with Classe, which has the long term aim of free university education in Quebec, having a further 100,000.

Continue reading Students Suggest Quebec Government Negotiate Tuition Increase, Fight New Repressive Law →

Bill To End Indefinite Detention Fails In House

WASHINGTON — A judge may have found unconstitutional the law that allows people to be held indefinitely without trial by the military, but the House of Representatives voted Friday to keep it anyway.

On Wednesday, Federal Judge Katherine Forrest found that the law violates rights to free speech and due process. But House members defended it, ultimately voting 238 to 182 against an amendment to guarantee civilian trials for any terrorism suspect arrested in the United States.

The measure, sponsored by Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), had been backed by a mix of conservatives, moderates and liberals who argued that letting the president decide to detain anyone — including Americans — deemed to be a terrorist was granting the executive too much power. And they argued that with more than 400 terrorists having been tried and convicted in civilian courts while dozens of plots were prevented, the law was unnecessary.

Continue reading House Votes for Military Detention of US Civilians →

Opponents of a U.S. law they claim may subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism persuaded a federal judge to temporarily block the measure.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan yesterday ruled in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Defense Department, claiming a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 31, puts them in fear that they could be arrested and held by U.S. armed forces.

The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges. The plaintiffs contend a section of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to people engaged in hostilities against the U.S., such as al-Qaeda.

“The statute at issue places the public at undue risk of having their speech chilled for the purported protection from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’ – i.e., ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’” Forrest said in an opinion yesterday. “The vagueness of Section 1021 does not allow the average citizen, or even the government itself, to understand with the type of definiteness to which our citizens are entitled, or what conduct comes within its scope.”

Continue reading Military Detention Law Blocked by New York Judge →

Tell Congress: End Too-Big-To-Fail. Make Banking SAFE

By Isaiah J. Poole

May 16, 2012 – 3:05pm ET

JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion bad bet has made it crystal clear: The Wall Street banksters are still recklessly gambling with government-guaranteed money. And the too-big-to-fail banks are still too big.

It is time for Congress to act. Tell Congress to break up the big banks by passing Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Keith Ellison’s SAFE Banking Act. That legislation is the one tool on the table that will cut too-big-to-fail banks down to size.

When President Obama signed Wall Street reform into law two years ago, one crucial piece was missing: a cap on how big banks can get. The bank lobby defeated all efforts to include a limit on their size.

Now the six largest banks – led by JPMorgan Chase – are collectively bigger and more concentrated than they were before they blew up the economy, with the assets they control growing from $6.1 trillion before the collapse to more than $8.5 trillion today, according to Federal Reserve data.

Continue reading Tell Congress to Pass the SAFE Banking Act →

Elizabeth Warren Is Right: Jamie Dimon Needs To Resign From NY Fed

Peter S. Goodman

Business Editor, The Huffington Post

Not for the first time, Elizabeth Warren has spoken a simple truth, one that ought to be heeded: Jamie Dimon must surrender his seat on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The seat in question is part of a body that has god-like influence over the most crucial questions governing high finance. Like, for example, whether colossal institutions such as Dimon’s ought to be spared from collapse by taxpayer largess when bad things happen. And as Dimon’s bank has just helpfully reminded us, courtesy of its $2 billion-plus in losses on a bum trade, bad things happen all the time, especially when the financial lobby manages to keep fighting off any semblance of sensible regulation.

Yes, you heard right: The chief executive of JP Morgan Chase — the largest bank in the land, and the exemplar of a ‘too big to fail’ institution — is allowed to sit at the table with the people tasked with deciding when and how much of other people’s money gets earmarked for his rescue. This is not the fox guarding the hen house; this is the fox guarding the hen house while selling synthetic derivatives whose value increases with every hen he gobbles up, and who burns down the hen house so he can collect on his fire insurance policy, and then gets the government to build him a new hen house at taxpayer expense. And then, after that, he still gets to guard the new hen house.

Continue reading Oust JP Morgan Oligarch from New York Federal Reserve →

By Randy Shannon

South Heights Borough Council President Bob Schmetzer will represent concerned citizens before a panel of drillers and their paid Republican Party legislators at Beaver Lakes Country Club at 1:00pm on Tuesday May 15th.

Schmetzer chaired an April 21st public meeting  in Ambridge where scientific experts presented evidence of the dangers to the Ambridge Reservoir of hydraulic fracturing of shale.

Schmetzer has also alerted local communities to the risks to the Creswell Water Authority aquifer that will be caused by drilling. Site clearing around the aquifer is now underway.

The Brockway, PA Municipal Authority recently experienced loss of its Well No. 5 when the aquifer was pierced by a gas well. Water flow was halted for 29 hours and subsequent turbidity increased 500%.  Well casing requirements in PA are below standard quality that would avoid such leakages. This substandard practice saves money for the drillers, who pass it on to Republican politicians who control the DEP.

Continue reading Gas Drillers Send Republican Jim Christiana to Attack Concerned Citizens →