Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed and where the U.S. coal, oil and nuclear industries began, has adopted what may be the most anti-democratic, anti-environmental law in the country, giving gas companies the right to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning laws, seize private property and muzzle physicians from disclosing specific health impacts from drilling fluids on patients. 

The draconian new law, known as Act 13, revises the state’s oil and gas statutes, to allow oil companies to drill for natural gas using the controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, where large volumes of water and toxic chemicals are pumped into vertical wells with lateral bores to shatter the rock and release the hydrocarbons. The law strips rights from communities and individuals while imposing new statewide drilling rules. 

“It’s absolutely crushing of local self-government,” said Ben Price, project director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has helped a handful of local communities—including the city of Pittsburgh—adopt community rights ordinances that elevate the rights of nature and people to block the drilling.  “The state has surrendered over 2,000 municipalities to the industry.  It’s a complete capitulation of the rights of the people and their right to self-government.  They are handing it over to the industry to let them govern us.  It is the corporate state.  That is how we look at it.” 

“Now I know what it ...

In a decision that could set a national precedent for how local governments can regulate gas drilling, a New York state court yesterday ruled for the first time that towns have the right to ban drilling despite a state regulation asserting they cannot.

At issue was a zoning law in Dryden, a township adjacent to Ithaca and the Cornell University campus, where drilling companies have leased some 22,000 acres for drilling. In August, Dryden's town board passed a zoning law that prohibits gas drilling within town limits. The next month, Denver-based Anschutz Exploration Corp. sued the town, saying the ban was illegal because state law trumped the municipal rules.

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When we talk about hypocrisy in politics, we usually highlight personal behavior. The serially-married politician who proclaims “family values” while also having affairs is now a rather dreary stock figure in our campaign narratives.

But the hypocrisy that matters far more is the gap between ideology and practice that has reached a crisis point in American conservatism. This Republican presidential campaign is demonstrating conclusively that there is an unbridgeable divide between the philosophical commitments conservative candidates make before they are elected and what they will have to do when faced with the day-to-day demands of practical governance. Conservatives in power have never been — and can never be — as anti-government as they are in a campaign.

Begin by asking yourself why so many conservative politicians say they’re anti-government but spend long careers in office drawing paychecks from the taxpayers. Also: Why do they bash government largesse while seeking as much of it as they can get for their constituents and friendly interest groups?

Why do they criticize “entitlements” and “big government” while promising today’s senior citizens — an important part of the conservative base — never, ever to cut their Medicare or Social Security? Why do they claim that they want government out of the marketplace while not only rejecting cuts in defense but also lauding ...

Mitt Romney opened a commanding lead in Florida Sunday, driving his rivals to start shifting their sights to other states as more suitable battlegrounds to keep challenging him for the Republican presidential nomination.

Three new polls showed the former Massachusetts governor seizing a double-digit lead over his nearest competitor, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, in Florida, where voting will end on Tuesday.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania trailed far behind, with little hope of victory in a state where the winner will take all 50 delegates, and the rest will get nothing.

Gingrich planned to barnstorm the state by air Monday in a primary-eve push to close the gap. But he also looked past the likely loss on Tuesday, insisting the anti-Romney vote eventually will coalesce around him. "We will go all the way to the convention," he said Sunday.

Santorum, who suspended campaigning to be at the hospital bedside of an ailing 3-year-old daughter, sent surrogates to Florida. Rather than return to the state, he announced new plans to campaign instead in four other states Monday and Tuesday.

And Paul, who already abandoned ...

First, the earth around the rural town of Dimock, Pa., was cracked open as gas drillersused fracking to tap the vast energy supplies of the Marcellus Shale.

Then, in  READ FULL POST DISCUSS

On December 7, following the US Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the Philadelphia District Attorney’s final avenue of appeal, current DA Seth Williams announced that he would no longer be seeking a death sentence for the world-renowned death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal--on death row following his conviction at a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Japanese Diet, Nelson Mandela, and many others. Abu-Jamal’s sentence of execution was first “overturned” by a federal court in December, 2001, and during the next ten years, he was never transferred from death row at the level five supermax prison, SCI Greene, in rural western Pennsylvania.

Shortly after the DA’s announcement in early December, Mumia Abu-Jamal, now 57 years old, was transferred to SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA, 100 miles from Philadelphia. Once there, it was expected that he would be released from solitary confinement and transferred into general population where he would finally have contact visits and generally less onerous conditions. However, he was immediately placed in “Administrative Custody,” in SCI Mahanoy’s “Restrictive Housing Unit” where his conditions of isolation and repression are now in many ways more extreme than they were on death row.

Presently at SCI Mahanoy, Mumia Abu-Jamal is shackled around his ankles and wrists whenever he is outside his cell, even to the shower and during already restricted visits--where he is already behind Plexiglas; Before going to the yard he is subject to strip searches before and after ...

The Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania suffered a serious setback when Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in education funds from the state budget. The cuts landed hardest on poorer districts, and Chester Upland, which predominantly serves African-American children and relies on state aid for nearly 70 percent of its funding, expects to fall short this school year by $19 ...

The mood was both celebratory and angry among a 1000-plus overflow audience packed into the balcony space of the Constitution Center in Philadelphia on the evening of Dec. 9.

The crowd of supporters of Philadelphia journalist and black political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal had come to denounce the over 29 years that he has spent locked in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s grim death row since his conviction for the shooting of a white police officer, Daniel Faulkner. But they were also there to celebrate the surprise decision, announced two days earlier by Philadelphia DA Seth Williams, not to seek to reinstate Abu-Jamal’s death sentence, which had been permanently vacated by a recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Technically, the Supreme Court, last Oct. 11, had decided not to review a decision by a Third Circuit Court panel that had upheld a 2001 Federal Judge’s ruling declaring his 1982 death sentence to have been unconstitutional. The Federal Court and Appeals Court decisions had been appealed by the district attorney’s office for years, all the way to the Supreme Court.

The event at the Constitution Center had initially been planned to mark the 30th anniversary of the shooting incident that had led to Abu-Jamal’s arrest and to his trial and conviction. But only two days before, Williams, who had 180 days from the Supreme Court’s ...

President Barack Obama jets to Scranton, Pa., on Wednesday to ramp up pressure on Congress to extend and perhaps expand a payroll tax cut for another year — a move that Senate Republicans suggested Tuesday could happen, at least the extension.

Last year, Obama and Congress agreed to cut the payroll tax paid by workers for Social Security by 2 percentage points, to 4.2 percent. Obama now wants to extend that another year — and even expand it so that workers would pay only 3.1 percent tax on their wages up to $106,800. If Congress doesn't act however, the 2-point tax cut ends Dec. 31, effectively raising taxes on workers.

The tax cut extension is a major part of Obama's $447 billion job creation package, and White House officials said he plans to champion it aggressively in the few weeks that Congress has remaining until it recesses for Christmas.

"If Congress refuses to act — then middle-class families are going to get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time," Obama said last week in Manchester, N.H. "The question they'll have to answer when they get back from Thanksgiving is this: Are they really willing to break their oath to never raise taxes, and raise taxes on the middle class just to play politics?"

The White House has put a tax calculator on its whitehouse.gov webpage, allowing visitors to run the calculations themselves and warning that ...

Already a killer storm, Irene sloshed through the New York metropolitan area Sunday, briefly flooding parts of the city and severing power to a million people but not provoking the doomsday urban disaster that had been feared.

Diminished to a tropical storm and racing to its own overnight demise in New England and Canada, Irene killed at least 18 people in six states. More than 4.5 million customers lost power along the East Coast and well inland. Initial property damage estimates ranged up to $7 billion.

And it was not over yet.

“Many Americans are still at serious risk of power outages and flooding, which could get worse in coming days as rivers swell past their banks…,” President Barack Obama said Sunday evening. “There are a lot of communities that are still being affected.”

Irene dumped immense amounts of rain on a region already saturated by summer downpours. Many communities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, upstate New York, Connecticut, Vermont and elsewhere endured life-threatening floods and toppling trees.

State and local authorities warned of more to come and they begged residents not to become complacent. It takes some time for rain runoff to accumulate, they said, tree roots were weakening in the over-moist soil and the danger will not end for days.

“Stay inside,” Gov. Chris Christie told New Jersey residents. “The real issue that we’re going to have to deal with now is flooding. We’re going to experience major flooding. Some rivers haven’t crested yet, and it’s still raining.”

Christie noted at least 300 road closures and obstructions across his state, though he said the New Jersey Turnpike and bridges were clear, so tree-clearing equipment was on its way. Deep floods swamped portions of Hackensack, Westwood, Ridgewood, Hillsdale and other communities in New Jersey.

In New York City, ocean water invaded some beachside ...