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UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania says Impeachment of Judges Who Struck Down Gerrymandered Map Is “A Conversation That Has to Happen”
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/22/toomey-pennsylvania-gerrymandered-
map/
A Republican legislature in Pennsylvania drew the congressional lines back in 2011, which led to the GOP winning 13 of the state’s 18 districts in the 2016 election. The new map from the judges is intended to restore fairness. The 4 million registered Democrats in the state outnumber the 3.2 million registered Republicans.
The GOP map had given Republicans a nearly 3-1 congressional majority in a state that leans Democratic; the court’s new map will still give Republicans a significant advantage, but slightly less of one. For Senator Pat Toomey, that amounted, he said, to a “blatant, unconstitutional, partisan power grab that undermines our electoral process.”
In the wake of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order that struck down a Republican congressional map as unconstitutionally gerrymandered, Sen. Pat Toomey said that impeachment of the justices is “a conversation that has to happen.”
“I think state House members, state senators, are going to be speaking among themselves and their constituents,” Toomey said. “Does that rise to the level of impeachment? That’s ultimately their decision but it’s a conversation that has to happen.”
The new map means several Republican incumbents now risk losing their seats, and a half-dozen competitive Republican-held congressional districts move left.
Toomey’s floating of impeachment drags what had been a fringe position into the GOP mainstream. And the rhetoric is already intense. The Pennsylvania House Republican spokesman Wednesday morning called the judges “unaccountable despots” after drawing the new lines.
It’s one of the most consequential events yet in the Democrats’ effort to retake the House. There are now at least five plausible opportunities to pick up a seat in the commonwealth, including the seat held by Rep. Pat Meehan, who is retiring after a sexual harassment case. Besides the districts that have all been shifted away from Republicans, the only other notable change is for Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican moving into a more conservative 11th district. But even there, activists in his Lancaster district say they are still determined to beat him, even if the hill is steeper.
State lawmakers are expected to sue to overturn the new maps and President Donald Trump gave Republicans his blessing to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court “if necessary,” arguing that the original version the court ruled unconstitutional was actually “correct.” Legal experts, however, note that the issue is about state law and Republicans probably won’t find much help in federal courts.
“It’s unfortunate that the only way the Republican Party can win elections is to dismantle democracy, relying on unconstitutional gerrymandering and calling for the impeachment of judges that have been elected by the voters of Pennsylvania,” said Greg Edwards, a Democratic candidate for Congress running in the Lehigh Valley. “It shows Democracy is nothing more than an accessory to put on and take off when most convenient to the Republicans.”
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That's not going to happen SECOND. The new boundaries makes sense. They run according to counties. Pennsylvanias' supreme court had an independent group draw the lines and then they made it law. Gerrymandering has had a worse effect on our politics than money. This is great and I hope to see this sweep across the nation.
Our supreme court won't touch this.
T 
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania says Impeachment of Judges Who Struck Down Gerrymandered Map Is “A Conversation That Has to Happen”
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/22/toomey-pennsylvania-gerrymandered-
map/
A Republican legislature in Pennsylvania drew the congressional lines back in 2011, which led to the GOP winning 13 of the state’s 18 districts in the 2016 election. The new map from the judges is intended to restore fairness. The 4 million registered Democrats in the state outnumber the 3.2 million registered Republicans.
The GOP map had given Republicans a nearly 3-1 congressional majority in a state that leans Democratic; the court’s new map will still give Republicans a significant advantage, but slightly less of one. For Senator Pat Toomey, that amounted, he said, to a “blatant, unconstitutional, partisan power grab that undermines our electoral process.”
In the wake of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order that struck down a Republican congressional map as unconstitutionally gerrymandered, Sen. Pat Toomey said that impeachment of the justices is “a conversation that has to happen.”
“I think state House members, state senators, are going to be speaking among themselves and their constituents,” Toomey said. “Does that rise to the level of impeachment? That’s ultimately their decision but it’s a conversation that has to happen.”
The new map means several Republican incumbents now risk losing their seats, and a half-dozen competitive Republican-held congressional districts move left.
Toomey’s floating of impeachment drags what had been a fringe position into the GOP mainstream. And the rhetoric is already intense. The Pennsylvania House Republican spokesman Wednesday morning called the judges “unaccountable despots” after drawing the new lines.
It’s one of the most consequential events yet in the Democrats’ effort to retake the House. There are now at least five plausible opportunities to pick up a seat in the commonwealth, including the seat held by Rep. Pat Meehan, who is retiring after a sexual harassment case. Besides the districts that have all been shifted away from Republicans, the only other notable change is for Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican moving into a more conservative 11th district. But even there, activists in his Lancaster district say they are still determined to beat him, even if the hill is steeper.
State lawmakers are expected to sue to overturn the new maps and President Donald Trump gave Republicans his blessing to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court “if necessary,” arguing that the original version the court ruled unconstitutional was actually “correct.” Legal experts, however, note that the issue is about state law and Republicans probably won’t find much help in federal courts.
“It’s unfortunate that the only way the Republican Party can win elections is to dismantle democracy, relying on unconstitutional gerrymandering and calling for the impeachment of judges that have been elected by the voters of Pennsylvania,” said Greg Edwards, a Democratic candidate for Congress running in the Lehigh Valley. “It shows Democracy is nothing more than an accessory to put on and take off when most convenient to the Republicans.”
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Quote:edited, added first column:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:Quote:One thing to notice with this survey, there is no weighted balance, which Libtards hate to do when they have 82% of their respondents as Liberals, and 5% Conservatives.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:Quote:Of the 170 respondents, 9 (5.3%) self-identified as Conservative. 20 (12%) self-identified as somewhat conservative.
Originally posted by second:Quote:29 of the political scientists that contributed to the survey of Presidents were self-described Conservatives. 21 self-described as Republicans.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The problem is that there aren't actually any Conservatives in Political Sciences. Their idea of a Conservative is anybody just a tad right of Karl Marx.
57% identify as Democrats. 32.5% self-identified as Liberal, 26% as somewhat Liberal, 24% as Moderates. Most telling, there was "no significant difference" and "little variation" in the results between "self-identified" Democrats, Liberals, somewhat Liberals, and Moderates.
This 82.5% block that mostly can't comprehend that they are ultra-Liberals ranked Reagan as 14th, yet the 5% of Conservatives swayed the results toward reality so much that Reagan ended up 9th overall. The study refused to breakdown the Conservative results, instead muddying them with self-identified somewhat Conservatives.
Although they were able to obfuscate the actual figures for the 5% Conservatives, enough data is exposed that we can extrapolate and interpolate data to find a more accurate ranking.
The list below shows the resulting balanced Rank, and then balanced Rating, for the first 2 columns. The next 2 columns of Rank and Rating are results if we pretend that PoliSci experts who self-identify as "Moderates" are really not Liberals (and those results are not used in weighted balancing). In the 5th column I included the Rank presented in the Report. Then the Name and sequence number.
Quote:
-1.32 #1 93.71 #1 93.92 #1 95.03 Lincoln 16
+0.80 #2 93.39 #2 93.48 #2 92.59 Washington 1
-5.57 #3 83.52 #3 84.36 #3 89.09 FDR 32
-3.09 #4 78.30 #4 78.39 #4 81.39 T Roosevelt 26
-2.48 #5 77.06 #5 77.46 #5 79.54 Jefferson 3
+5.30 #6 74.54 #6 73.36 #9 69.24 Reagan 40
-0.78 #7 73.25 #8 72.78 #7 74.03 Eisenhower 34
-2.50 #8 72.65 #7 73.05 #6 75.15 Truman 33
+3.26 #9 64.16 10 63.53 17 60.90 Bush 41
+0.44 10 62.60 14 62.09 15 62.16 Jackson 7
-8.69 11 62.44 #9 63.99 #8 71.13 Obama 44
-0.85 12 62.39 13 62.59 14 63.24 Adams 2
-2.13 13 62.35 12 62.93 12 64.48 Madison 4
-6.90 14 62.16 11 63.41 10 69.06 LB Johnson 36
+6.63 15 62.12 18 60.55 19 55.49 McKinley 25
-2.36 16 61.89 15 62.00 13 64.25 Clinton 42
+0.49 17 61.23 17 61.36 18 60.74 Monroe 5
-6.46 18 60.94 16 61.43 11 67.40 Wilson 28
+3.36 19 57.45 19 56.35 20 54.09 Polk 11
+4.63 20 56.59 21 56.08 22 51.96 Taft 27
-6.36 21 55.50 20 56.26 16 61.86 Kennedy 35
+2.77 22 53.78 22 52.76 24 51.01 Cleveland 22 & 24
+10.09 23 52.32 24 51.44 28 42.23 Coolidge 30
-0.19 24 51.71 23 51.96 23 51.90 JQ Adams 6
-2.11 25 50.77 25 50.78 21 52.88 Grant 18
+2.65 26 49.93 26 49.13 25 47.28 Ford 38
+6.61 27 47.03 27 46.09 30 40.42 Bush 43
+0.27 28 44.54 28 44.25 27 44.27 Van BurNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Cow lady Hukubee shoud not be allowed to uze the word 'clear' ever agen.
She uzed up her lifetime alotment a long time ago and iz alwayz lying wen she sez it.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:She means clear to those with a brain. Sorry you feel excluded, but that is likely common in ChicagoLand.
Originally posted by JO753:
Cow lady Hukubee shoud not be allowed to uze the word 'clear' ever agen.
She uzed up her lifetime alotment a long time ago and iz alwayz lying wen she sez it.
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Quote:Back in the day, clearly Republicans felt at least a twinge of inhibition when thinking of endorsing policy positions that could make them appear hypocritical. Those days, of course, are pretty much gone. GOP elected officials today seem to have no internal guidance mechanism telling them, “Hey, if I spent eight years attacking Barack Obama for increasing the deficit, shouldn’t I think twice about supporting tax and budget policies that do the same?” They’ve learned that the voters they really need to care about, the ones who can unseat them in primaries, simply don’t care whether they’re hypocrites, as long as they endorse the policy positions these voters demand, which are basically whichever ones Donald Trump happens to be supporting at any given moment.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
She means clear to those with a brain. Sorry you feel excluded, but that is likely common in ChicagoLand.
Of course, no politician is less burdened by concerns over hypocrisy than Trump himself. While others might see a flashing red light saying, “Don’t go there, you’re personally vulnerable!” he steamrolls ahead, heedless of the danger. The whole Russia scandal is a daily reminder of this tendency of his. But it now looks like the same lack of inhibition is at play in his legal immigration plan.
When Trump was running for president, he actually didn’t talk all that much about restricting legal immigration. He didn’t endorse any long-term changes to legal immigration. Then Trump began calling for restrictions on family reunification, what he calls “chain migration.”
But when he did this, did it not occur to him that his own in-laws are taking advantage of precisely the “chain migration” provisions he wants to deny others?
The parents of first lady Melania Trump have become legal permanent residents of the United States and are close to obtaining their citizenship, according to people familiar with their status, but their attorney declined to say how or when the couple gained their green cards.
Immigration experts said Viktor and Amalija Knavs very likely relied on a family reunification process that President Trump has derided as “chain migration” and proposed ending in such case.
The Knavses, formerly of Slovenia, are living in the country on green cards, according to Michael Wildes, a New York-based immigration lawyer who represents the first lady and her family.
David Leopold, an immigration lawyer and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the first lady’s sponsorship of her parents appears to be the only reasonable way they would have obtained green cards because the process currently gives preferential treatment to parents of U.S. citizens.
Will the apparent fact that Trump’s own family is benefiting from a policy he is actively trying to deny other families in any way harm the chances of the proposal becoming law? Or hurt the GOP generally in the polls? No and No.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/02/22/in-the-gop-political-universe
-hypocrisy-has-no-meaning-or-consequence/
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Speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced a policy idea that at a normal time would have dramatically moved financial markets. But nothing of the sort happened.
He said that unless he can get Mexico and Canada to agree to sweeping changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would eliminate the US-Mexico bilateral trade deficit, he “will terminate the deal and we’ll start over again.”
Specific companies that depend on the ability to easily import goods from Mexico to the United States should have seen their share prices plummet while firms that compete with Mexican imports should have seen prices soar. Instead, it was a blah day on financial markets, with the Dow up slightly and no particularly surprising moves from individual companies.
Corporate America just shrugs off his various pronouncements on trade policy. Trump also promised to eliminate the bilateral deficits with China and Vietnam, and nobody in the business world took note.
His rhetoric has nothing to do with the actual conduct of the Trump administration. And Trump’s CPAC speech was filled with such moments — moments that would be blockbuster news from a normal president but that are largely irrelevant given Trump’s marginal role in the Trump administration. He’s a Potemkin president who riles up crowds at rallies but has no real role in governing the country.
“We have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” said Trump, “one of our great natural resources.” Coal exports increased, but in fact, US coal consumption dropped in 2017 as natural gas and renewables continue to displace it, and Trump’s own Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointees killed Trump’s proposed bailout of US coal-burning electric generating plants.
Trump offered a desultory announcement of new sanctions on North Korea:
"I appreciate everything you’ve done. I do want to say, because people have asked, North Korea, we imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before. And frankly, hopefully something positive can happen. We will see. Hopefully something positive can happen. But that just was announced, and I wanted to let you know. We have imposed the heaviest sanctions ever imposed."
Trump doesn’t even appear to be particularly supportive of the new policy, just saying blandly that “hopefully something positive can happen.” Most strikingly of all, he says that the new policy “was just announced” when he himself just announced it.
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Soundz even more disjointed than usual. Another sine that the pressure iz about to squish him like a sub that iz dropping below its max depth.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:Plagiarize much?
Originally posted by second:
Speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced a policy idea that at a normal time would have dramatically moved financial markets. But nothing of the sort happened.
He said that unless he can get Mexico and Canada to agree to sweeping changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would eliminate the US-Mexico bilateral trade deficit, he “will terminate the deal and we’ll start over again.”
Specific companies that depend on the ability to easily import goods from Mexico to the United States should have seen their share prices plummet while firms that compete with Mexican imports should have seen prices soar. Instead, it was a blah day on financial markets, with the Dow up slightly and no particularly surprising moves from individual companies.
Corporate America just shrugs off his various pronouncements on trade policy. Trump also promised to eliminate the bilateral deficits with China and Vietnam, and nobody in the business world took note.
His rhetoric has nothing to do with the actual conduct of the Trump administration. And Trump’s CPAC speech was filled with such moments — moments that would be blockbuster news from a normal president but that are largely irrelevant given Trump’s marginal role in the Trump administration. He’s a Potemkin president who riles up crowds at rallies but has no real role in governing the country.
“We have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” said Trump, “one of our great natural resources.” Coal exports increased, but in fact, US coal consumption dropped in 2017 as natural gas and renewables continue to displace it, and Trump’s own Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointees killed Trump’s proposed bailout of US coal-burning electric generating plants.
Trump offered a desultory announcement of new sanctions on North Korea:
"I appreciate everything you’ve done. I do want to say, because people have asked, North Korea, we imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before. And frankly, hopefully something positive can happen. We will see. Hopefully something positive can happen. But that just was announced, and I wanted to let you know. We have imposed the heaviest sanctions ever imposed."
Trump doesn’t even appear to be particularly supportive of the new policy, just saying blandly that “hopefully something positive can happen.” Most strikingly of all, he says that the new policy “was just announced” when he himself just announced it.
I see everything you copied was from a vox.com article posted at 1:10pm on Friday.
Trump's speech at CPAC was reportedly 75 minutes long, don't see when it started.
Stock Market started the day with a half percent gain and mostly stayed there for hours. Then the last 90 minutes of trading all 3 major indices started climbing, each gaining about 3/4 of a percent in 90 minutes. Perhaps the Market will continue this climb on Monday.
This does point out an interesting thing. Does the Market always go up when Trump has a speech? The Market dropped when the Jobs Report showed too many jobs, and then higher interest rates. How to make money from this info?
With Obama it was easy. His speeches about how he explained how he would destroy the economy would drop the Market, at a period it was trying to grow, and did grow when Obama wasn't speaking. So I would sell out of the Market the day before his speech and immediately schedule a buy-in the day after his speech. I recall gaining 12% in a 3-day span, plus many lesser gains of 8%, 6%, 4%, etc.
But making $ off Trump speech schedule could be trickier.
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Quote:Does the market go up when Trump is asinine? #MAGA?
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
This does point out an interesting thing. Does the Market always go up when Trump has a speech?
On January 29, 2017, the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team 6 launched a surprise raid in a remote part of Yemen, apparently trying to capture or kill an Al Qaeda leader. This was the first covert assault of the Trump era, and the White House, which was not challenged in the U.S. media, hailed it as “highly successful.”
Except it wasn’t.
When the report came out weeks later that SEAL Team 6 had killed women and children, Trump took action. U.S. aircraft returned to the village and repeatedly bomb and strafe it over four consecutive nights, killing the witnesses to the previous massacre by SEAL Team 6. #MAGA?
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/24/iona-craig-won-a-polk-award-for-he
r-investigation-of-a-seal-team-raid-that-killed-women-and-children-in-yemen-heres-how-she-did-it/
A Mexican official said Trump "lost his temper" on Feb 20th. US officials described the President as being "frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Pres. Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall." Trump wants the Mexican President to keep the American President’s promises. #MAGA?
www.cnn.com/2018/02/24/politics/mexican-president-cancels-white-house-
trip/index.html
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