David Spett

HARRISBURG (Oct. 23) – Republicans have no standing to sue ACORN, a community organizing group that says it registered 140,000 low-income Pennsylvanians to vote, a lawyer for the group argued at a Commonwealth Court hearing Thursday.

“Article III of the Constitution says a plaintiff must have suffered an injury” to have standing to sue, said Kathryn Simpson, a Harrisburg attorney representing ACORN. “There is no voter fraud. There has been no election. … And until there is voter fraud, there is no injury. That injury must be concrete, not conjectural or hypothetical.”

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 23) – Albert Masland, chief counsel for the Department of State and a GOP state representative from 1992 to 2000, rebuked leaders of his party on Thursday who said the results of next month’s presidential election cannot be trusted.

“As a registered Republican, I bemoan the tone of this petition,” Masland said of the lawsuit Republicans filed against the Department of State. “I bemoan the tone of the press conferences that have been waged unfairly and untruthfully.”

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 21) – Four parolees represented by law professors at the University of Pennsylvania and Widener sued Gov. Ed Rendell Tuesday, alleging that the parole moratorium he announced in September and partially lifted Monday night is unlawful.

“What we’re alleging is that he’s got no authority to even tell the parole board what to do, or to tell the Department of Corrections not to release people,” said David Rudovsky, a senior fellow at Penn’s law school.

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DERRY TWP. (Oct. 20) – In a packed municipal building Monday night, the major-party candidates for state Senate in the 15th district, Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, and Judy Hirsh, held a wide-ranging debate, criticizing each other for negative campaigning.

“I want to make sure that when I get into office, someone can’t send out mail that is so misleading and false,” Hirsh said, holding up a Piccola mailer that said, “Judy’s friends pull the strings.” Hirsh called the mailer “unconscionable.”

The advertisement connects Hirsh to the 12 Democrats implicated in the Bonusgate probe. It also criticizes them and other Democrats for stalling reform efforts and for supporting a 50 percent pension raise for legislators, a measure Piccola supported as well.

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 17) – The state Republican Party is suing the Department of State and ACORN, a community rights group leading a massive voter registration drive, because “we’re not confident we can trust the results of this election,” Rob Gleason, the Republican State Committee chairman, said Friday.

The lawsuit, filed in Commonwealth Court, seeks an injunction forcing the state to improve its database of voter registrants, known as SURE, which Gleason said is unreliable and faulty, preventing counties from verifying new applicants; to take extra measures to require that first-time voters present identification before voting, a rule Gleason said some counties and polling places do not enforce; and to increase the amount of provisional ballots available at polling places.

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 16) – The state’s parole moratorium could end as early as next week for nonviolent offenders, Gov. Ed Rendell announced Thursday morning.

With overcrowded prisons and the need to cut spending in response to projected revenue shortfalls, the only obstacle keeping the moratorium in place, Rendell said, is the lack of a definition for the term “nonviolent offender.”

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