On today’s BradCast, the Super Bowl victory for the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday was fantastic, but the victory for all of Pennsylvania (and, indeed, voters across the entire nation) on Monday was even better! [Audio link to show follows below.]
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rejected Pennsylvania Republicans’ request to block, overturn, deny, or delay the state Supreme Court’s recent order to redraw all U.S. House districts in the key swing-state immediately and in time for the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections. The state’s highest court found two weeks ago that the GOP-controlled state legislature had unlawfully gerrymandered the Keystone State’s U.S. House maps following the 2010 census in such a way that the GOP ended up with 13 seats to the Democrats’ 5, despite Democratic registration and voting far out-pacing Republicans statewide.
The PA GOP’s request for SCOTUS to intercede in a state constitutional matter was denied on Monday. That is also very good news for the country, as discussed on today’s show.
But the SCOTUS decision has yet to stop the state GOP from refusing to follow state court orders on the matter. Moreover, while the state GOP is demanding that its state Supremes overturn their own ruling, new reporting over the weekend reveals that a Republican state Supreme Court Justices who voted against the order to redraw U.S. House district maps, received several undisclosed donations — including a huge one from the state Senate President Pro Tempore, as well as from two Republican U.S. House members effected by the ruling — when she ran for a 10-year term last year. The donations were given to her after the challenge in the gerrymandering case had already been filed, yet her campaign now admits she failed to disclose those donations until they were revealed over the weekend.
Then, we move on to a number of late developments in the failing attempt by the chair of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Team Trump, by using specious claims about the self-generated GOP House Intel Committee memo released on Friday. Both Nunes and Trump (and other Republicans) had claimed the memo supposedly reveals some sort of partisan bias in the FBI/DoJ and now Special Counsel probe. One GOPer even went so far as to claim the memo revealed “evidence of treason”. (It doesn’t. Not by a long shot.)
In fact, as we detail today, even statements by other Republican members on the same committee — including Trey “Benghazi” Gowdy — over the weekend, seriously undermine the claims made by Nunes and Trump himself over the weekend and again on Monday.
And, as we detailed at length on Friday’s show, Nunes — who now claims that former Trump Campaign advisor and suspected Russian intelligence asset Carter Page’s rights were somehow violated by the procedure used by the FBI to obtain a warrant to eavesdrop on his communications — showed no such concerns about the FISA law used to obtain that warrant when he voted in favor of extending it and expanding it for 6 more years just weeks ago. Trump also signed that extension.
Oh, and the Dow had its worse day since 2011 and largest all-time point drop today.
Finally, we open the phone lines to take listener calls on all of the day’s hypocrisy and much more on today’s BradCast!…
“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rejected Pennsylvania Republicans’ request to block, overturn, deny, or delay the state Supreme Court’s recent order to redraw all U.S. House districts in the key swing-state immediately and in time for the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections.”
This is an outrage. How dare Alito take away the GOP’s inherent right to cheat!
Alito huh?
Very surprising and welcome. Thank you justice Alito.
Russian hackers scanned US voter rolls
The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 election.
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/w...-1156236355667
Eric @ 3:
The report you refer to is, apparently, no more than a restatement of claims made by the DHS last September and disabused on the show and the blog at the same time, back here.