Bravo to the Philadelphia Inquirer for highlighting this:
Against the backdrop of a looming Supreme Court fight, a less visible battle in the judicial wars is playing out over a conservative Western Pennsylvania attorney and charges of Republican strong-arming.
Senate Republicans are poised on Thursday to break with tradition and advance the nomination of David Porter, an attorney chosen by President Trump for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees cases in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands.
They are expected to do so despite objections from Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), who had moved to block Porter using a decades-old Senate custom — known as the blue slip— that gives lawmakers in either party the prerogative to reject judicial appointments from their home state.
It was a change from the GOP leadership’s behavior in 2016, when Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, used the same privilege to stop one of President Barack Obama’s nominees to the same circuit.
Porter, though, has received a hearing from the Senate Judiciary Committee and is scheduled for a committee vote this week.
The move is one more escalation in the decades-long fight over federal courts, one in which both parties have thrown out old standards meant to force compromise and pushed tensions to the boiling point now seen in the Supreme Court battle.
“The other word you can use is hypocrisy,” said Russell Wheeler, who studies judicial nominations as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The Republicans, they really weaponized that blue slip under Obama.”
At stake are lifetime seats on courts that can have vast influence over U.S. laws, and that often serve as stepping stones for future Supreme Court justices.
Yeah, this is complete bull shit what the Senate GOP is doing. It was ok when Toomey did it but not when Casey does it. By the way, I also want to applaud the Inquirer on this great story exposing the truth about the story that leads to Casey’s challenger and Trump’s Political Godfather to make a name for himself as being an immigration hardliner:
U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta slowed his GMC Denali on East Chestnut Street to tell the story of how Derek Kichline died and a law to restrict illegal immigration was born.
It is a story Barletta has been telling for a dozen years, the cornerstone to a political career that has taken him from mayor of Hazleton to the U.S. House and now to be the Republican nominee challenging U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s bid for a third term.
Kichline was working on his car in front of his house one night in 2006, Barletta said earlier this month, when two men approached. One raised a gun and fired a shot at close range into Kichline’s head, killing him.
The men were in the country illegally from the Dominican Republic, and police told local media they were involved in drug dealing.
The murder shocked this town of 25,000, 82 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Barletta, who was mayor at the time, pushed for a local ordinance making it illegal for employers to hire and landlords to rent to anyone in this country illegally.
It was approved by a 4-1 vote 64 days after Kichline was killed, amid a wave of immigration — legal and illegal — that was changing the face of Hazleton, in the anthracite coal region.
Barletta’s story — us-vs.-them, small-town go-it-alone anger and angst — established and defined his political brand and would eventually catch the eye of a New York developer running for president with a platform heavy with controversial claims about illegal immigration.
It was President Trump who, in a June 2017 phone call, first urged Barletta to challenge Casey.
Vice President Pence is coming to Philadelphia this month to raise money for Barletta, who has lagged far behind Casey in campaign resources. And Barletta said Trump has committed to campaigning in the state for him.
Casey, appearing eager to have a fight with Trump and Barletta, has highlighted their close connection and agreement on the issue of illegal immigration.
So Kichline’s story will be told some more.
But two elements are sometimes left out of the telling.
The men accused in Kichline’s killing were released after the case against them fell apart.
And the law Barletta pushed in Kichline’s name was never enforced — not for a single day — because a federal judge stepped in to immediately block it.
Barletta’s law was good for his political future but a colossal failure for his financially strapped hometown, prompting a decade-long federal court battle with a legal bill that reached nearly $1.7 million.
It’s a great piece because it also highlights how the influx of immigrants from the Dominican Republic helped revitalize Hazelton’s economy. Of course, Barletta will never admit that and it exposes how full of shit he’s been this entire time. By the way, in case you were wondering how Barletta responded to Trump’s meeting with Putin:
Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. candidate Lou Barletta said after President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday that Trump “understands that protecting the United States from all foreign threats is his highest obligation.” Barletta is a Republican congressman representing the 11th District.
Barletta’s temperate comments, even as a Republican, stand in contrast to the hail of condemnation from both Republican and Democratic elected officials of Trump’s apparent willingness to accept Putin’s denial that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Republican Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey called Putin an “international pariah” and said that Trump’s “blindness to Putin’s hostile acts against the U.S. and our allies — election meddling included — is very troubling.”
Barletta, an early and consistent Trump supporter, did say in his statement he agrees with U.S. intelligence services that Russia “attempted to interfere” in the election.
But he didn’t criticize Trump, and said he believes it’s “important to continue the dialogue between our two nations to address critical issues like stabilization in Syria and denuclearization.”
Of course, he wouldn’t criticize Trump. He’d follow him off a cliff. One thing’s for sure, we have to make sure Republicans pay the price big time in Pennsylvania for standing by the Traitor-In-Chief. Click below to donate and get involved with Casey and his fellow Pennsylvania Democrats campaigns:
Bob Casey
Tom Wolf