Ryan J. Reilly @ryanjreilly
Asked Toomey if a lawyer who represented murderer of 8 people should be confirmed, didn't seem to realize I was talking about John Roberts.

Barry Jive wrote:this is pretty "gotcha" stuff but I thought it was funny

Ryan J. Reilly @ryanjreilly
Asked Toomey if a lawyer who represented murderer of 8 people should be confirmed, didn't seem to realize I was talking about John Roberts.

jerseyhoya wrote:His involvement with the case was current up till a few years ago, not 1981. Pat Toomey's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from a few weeks ago.

But it is one thing to provide legal representation and quite another to seize on a case and turn it into a political platform from which to launch an extreme attack on the justice system. When a lawyer chooses that course, it is appropriate to ask whether he should be singled out for a high-level national position in, of all things, law enforcement.

...

Given this context—and the fact that Abu-Jamal was already well represented and had funds at his disposal—it is difficult to understand why, as acting president and director of litigation at the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, Mr. Adegbile chose in 2009 to enter the circus created by Abu-Jamal and inject his organization into the case. Under Mr. Adegbile's leadership and through rallies, protests and a media campaign, the Legal Defense Fund actively fanned the racial firestorm. In a news release issued when it took over as Abu-Jamal's counsel, the Legal Defense Fund proclaimed that Abu-Jamal was "a symbol of the racial injustices of the death penalty."

At a 2011 rally for Abu-Jamal, Mr. Adegbile's co-counsel on the case stated that "there is no question in the mind of anyone at the Legal Defense Fund" that [Abu-Jamal's conviction] "has everything to do with race and that is why the Legal Defense Fund is in the case."

In 2012, even after Abu-Jamal's appeals had been exhausted, and after the Philadelphia district attorney's office had put the controversial case to rest by not seeking a new death sentence (which a court had voided in 2008 on the ground of faulty jury instructions), Abu-Jamal's website reported that the Legal Defense Fund would remain active in the cause by investigating new ways to challenge his conviction.

Mumia has always been a weird cause celebre for the anti-capital punishment crowd. The exalting of him as some sort of hero/victim tarnishes the people who've advocated for him in a way that isn't true for just about any other case I could possibly think of.

traderdave wrote:No mention yet of the dust-up between Cummings and Issa? Short story is Issa iron-handedly adjourned a meeting of the House Oversight Committee after Lois Lerner took the Fifth during questioning over whether or not the IRS targeted conservative groups. Cummings did not approve. The entire exchange is here, if anyone missed it and is interested (about 7.5 minutes):

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/cong ... rs-hearing

Perhaps even conservative Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, known for steadfast convictions regardless of political outcome, taking a step or two toward the ideological center in a bid to raise his historically low poll numbers.

Corbett on Thursday indicated a willingness to drop a proposed work-search requirement for Medicaid, something he had insisted on as part of his hand-crafted expansion plan. Instead, his administration now proposes a voluntary job-training pilot program offering participants lower insurance premiums.

G. Terry Madonna On Wednesday, Corbett signaled he will help Pennsylvanians whose food stamps recently were cut by Congress. The state will shift surplus home-heating assistance money to the food stamp program, preventing 400,000 people from losing $300 million in food stamps and benefiting businesses as well.
Of course, Corbett rejects any notion of politics behind either move. Poppycock, say pundits, who admittedly are operating on educated speculation, not inside information.

Today, fewer voters care about reduced government spending or budget cuts compared with 2010, said G. Terry Madonna, Franklin & Marshall College pollster and political science professor.

Today, more — although certainly not all — voters want more education spending, Medicaid expansion, a higher minimum wage and a governor who cares about the poor, Madonna said, basing his opinion on state polling.

In Madonna's view, Corbett's acting to drop the work requirement, intervene in the food stamp shortage and ask the state Legislature to increase education funding by $400 million in 2014-15 reflects an understanding of what voters want.

"There is a growing realization that what voters want is tied to his re-election," Madonna said. "He can't be a scrooge going into the fall."

Corbett got a 36 percent approval rating from adults in Lehigh and Northampton counties, according to a Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll released Monday. That tracks closely with four statewide polls, which also showed Corbett hypothetically losing to most of the seven Democrats running in the May 20 primary.

Fifty-five percent of respondents in a Quinnipiac University Poll said Corbett does not care about the "needs and problems" of people like them. Those results include 32 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents.

pacino wrote:In Madonna's view, Corbett's acting to drop the work requirement, intervene in the food stamp shortage and ask the state Legislature to increase education funding by $400 million in 2014-15 reflects an understanding of what voters want.

drsmooth wrote:Little Paulie Ryan, brown baggin' it

awwww

I mean his story's every bit as authentic as Team Teabag's Obamacare Horror Stories of Scary Horror

The left is making a big mistake here. What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul. The American people want more than that. This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my buddy, Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand.”

#$!&@ Reagan.

Bucky wrote:the more I think about it, the more I get angered about how most conservatives have turned the war vs. poverty into a war vs. the poor.

and I am open to being taught otherwise, but I believe that this has its major push from that conservative icon Ronald Reagan, who introduced the "welfare queen" to the world, thus firing the shot that morphed the war.

#$!&@ Reagan.

Bucky wrote:the more I think about it, the more I get angered about how most conservatives have turned the war vs. poverty into a war vs. the poor.

and I am open to being taught otherwise, but I believe that this has its major push from that conservative icon Ronald Reagan, who introduced the "welfare queen" to the world, thus firing the shot that morphed the war.

#$!&@ Reagan.