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The Jan. 10 order struck the original Jan. 17 deadline given in the memorandum opinion and gave the state the responsibility to come up with new deadlines for the upcoming May 8 election.
Attorneys filed the motion for a stay Jan. 6, which would clarify rules the state would work under while waiting for an appeal to the nation's highest court.
The filing period for candidates hoping to run for Congress in this year's election began Jan. 9 and will end Jan. 28.
"The filing of an appeal by the defendants likely makes it more difficult (or even impossible) for Secretary Tennant, county officials, and potential candidates for Congress to comply with the current deadlines, but that is a choice reserved for the state, which certainly has the ability to modify those deadlines in aid of its litigation strategy," the Jan. 10 order stated.
However, deadline stress is not enough to show irreparable harm, judges wrote in the order.
"Therefore, reiterating our strong preference that the state act on its own behalf in redistricting, we shall defer any and all action with respect to a remedy until after the Supreme Court has disposed of defendants' forthcoming appeal," the order stated.
snip
Stephen Skinner, representing the Jefferson County Commission, also said he is pleased with the order.
"It shifts even more of the burden back to the state to come up with a plan," he said. "It puts a lot of pressure on everybody to work it out as quickly as possible... Time is ticking."
Tim Manchin is not running for Congress this time around: Times WV.
Just to remind the folks at Politico and the DCCC, there is already a Democratic candidate in the race and she is planning to win the seat back. Sue Thorn is our Woman!
Legislature is back in session on Wednesday. This should be an interesting session. Will there be a new and proper redistricting plan in place before the Jan. 17 court deadline? edit: forgot the appeal gives the legislature more time. I'm hoping for a WV-02 that makes geographical sense.
What other issues are you looking forward to this session?
This is a good win for the state. The decision is here.
Upon careful consideration of the parties' written submissions and the testimony, evidence, and arguments of counsel, we conclude that West Virginia's congressional apportionment was not accomplished in conformance with the Constitution of the United States.
Great job, Jefferson County! This blog has long pointed out that the plan that made the state's redistricting plan made no sense from a geographic, demographic or political standpoint.
Clem and I were just talking about this very subject tonight.
My theory is he's not releasing for at least 3 reasons: 1) how much he still makes from vulture capital -- he got rich off buying compnies, looting them and laying off everybody to take their pension funds before declaring bankruptcy so they wouldn't have to pay the workers their pensions, 2) how little he actually pays in taxes 3) how much he gives to the Mormon temple, an organization many right-wing Republican evangelicals consider a cult.
The West Virginia Young Republicans crossed a line tonight. The organization posted a "New Year's Eve Warning" telling their members to beware of "drunken incumbents". They pulled up a news story from 2003 when my father was arrested for drunk driving, an incident that's no secret to anyone but also happens to be eight years old.
I'll start by pointing out the obvious. This vitriolic form of politics actually discourages young people from wanting to be civically engaged. The West Virginia Young Republicans might get points for being clever, but these are not tactics that inspire a new generation to participate in the political process.
More importantly, the part of the story that goes untold in this classless Twitter post is the fact that my father hasn't had a drink of alcohol in more than eight years. The incident in 2003 was probably the darkest moment in my dad's life, but it was also a turning point for our family. My father publicly acknowledged a 20 year battle with alcoholism and checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic just days after his arrest. With the support of his family and friends, he has never looked back. God works in mysterious ways.
The following year, my father paid a political price and lost his race for reelection to the State Senate. At the time I said that if the Snyders (myself included) never won another election, it didn't matter to me because my dad had his health back and my family was whole for the first time in two decades. Fortunately, the voters of Jefferson and Berkeley Counties gave my dad another chance in 2008 when he returned to the Senate, and by all accounts has established an incredible record of service to his constituents in the Eastern Panhandle. It's actually a beautiful story of redemption and second chances.
I'm extremely proud of my dad for what he has accomplished politically, but I'm far more proud of how he took responsibility for his actions, faced down his personal demons and dramatically changed the course of his life. My father is my hero, and there's nothing the West Virginia Young Republicans can say or do that will diminish that.
If the Young Republicans want to take shots at me and my position as president of the Young Democrats of America, that's totally fine. But leave my family out of it.
Rod Snyder is president of the Young Democrats of America
More good news for West Virginia Democrats. Donn Marshall is running for delegate to represent the newly created 63rd District in Berkeley County. It's an open seat and Marshall, who challenged in 2010, has campaign experience, great positions, and a strong personal story. He would serve the district and state well.
I would single out first and foremost (Donn's) demonstrated personal integrity and moral courage... He is energetic and purposeful, knows how to plan and implement, has shown an unusual capacity for working with people of differing backgrounds ... and has a keen sense for what is important.
Samuel V. Wilson Lieutenant General, U.S. Army - Ret.President Emeritus, Hampden-Sydney
Great news! Jefferson County resident Stephen Skinner, president of Fairness West Virginia and long active in Democratic politics at the local level, is running for state delegate to represent the 67th District.
And a thank you to our long-time delegate John Doyle, who had announced his decision to retire. Doyle has served us well.
Skinner Announces for House of Delegates
Runs for Seat Left Open by Doyle
Shepherdstown---Local attorney Stephen Skinner announced Monday that he is running of the West Virginia House of Delegates from the 67th District. Skinner's announcement followed last week's revelation from current Delegate John Doyle that he will not run again.
"As I have spoken to people about running for this seat, I have been overwhelmed by their support and commitment. My number one priority is the people of Jefferson County, and I want to fight for them in Charleston."
This week Skinner will represent the Jefferson County Commission in Federal Court in Charleston in the attempt to strike down the recently enacted congressional redistricting. The new plan not only places Jefferson County in the same district as Charleston-over 300 miles away---it also includes more people than the other two congressional districts thereby diluting the votes in the district.
Stephen Skinner was born and raised in Jefferson County. He graduated from Jefferson High School, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and the West Virginia University College of Law in 1994. He also attended the West Virginia Governor's Honors Academy while in high school.
Skinner's legal career includes five years based in New York City where he fought for aviation disaster and other catastrophically injured victims. He traveled extensively with his New York firm before returning to Jefferson County in 2004 to rejoin his father and his brother in the family firm.
Skinner is an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. He serves on the Shepherd University Foundation Board of Directors, and the Board of Trustees of the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University. He was on the steering committee for the recently concluded successful comprehensive campaign for Shepherd University.
He was elected in 2008 in West Virginia's Second Congressional District as a pledged Delegate for Barack Obama to the Democratic National Convention. Skinner also serves on the Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee representing the Shepherdstown District.
Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., says extending the payroll tax holiday for only two months is "absolutely ridiculous" and urges leaders in the House and Senate to appoint conferees to negotiate a deal to extend this much needed relief for a full year. Moreover, tax experts agree that a two-month plan isn't workable because it does not leave enough time for businesses to comply which significant changes in tax policy.
So I guess the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and pretty much every other Republican not kowtowing to the Tea Party were wrong to tell the House Republicans like Capito to quit playing games.
But since she's on the right side, she'll stick by her guns, right?
Those guns the House Republicans were sticking to backfired:
By reaching a deal], House Republicans ended five days of increasing tensions that developed after a contentious Saturday conference call in which rank-and-file Republicans rebuffed Boehner's initial efforts to sell them on the Senate deal that passed with bipartisan support on Saturday. After voting down the Senate deal Tuesday, Democrats led by President Obama and a rising chorus of Republicans criticized them for blocking a deal.
The impasse was brokered in part by the Senate's top Republican, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who broke with House GOP leaders on Thursday and called on them to approve the short-term patch in exchange for Senate Democrats formally naming negotiators to finalize a full extension through 2012 when Congress returns in January.
Even many Republicans are coming to the right conclusion that these Republicans in the House, including so-called moderates like Capito who is showing she's a radical partisan, are incapable of governing.
The same House Republicans who can justify any tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are ducking an effort to vote for the bipartisan Senate bill to extend the payroll tax cuts.
The Republicans know a payroll tax cut will help millions of Americans and provide a needed boost to help the economy, but since their entire goal is to keep President Obama from being re-elected, they'd rather the nation suffer than do something to help America.
HUNTINGTON - Award-winning reporter and long-time columnist Jack Hardin died Tuesday at the age of 84.
He is remembered for covering some of the biggest news stories in the Tri-State during his tenure at The Advertiser and The Herald-Dispatch, including the Marshall plane crash, President Lyndon Johnson's visit and talking an escaped killer into surrendering to police.
Sean Hannity calling President Obama on Fox News Channel a "socialist" every night in prime time on the Fox News Chanel is only the visible tip of the conservative propaganda iceberg. The Right's real power lies in its ability to shape the narrative and define what is fair and out of bounds for the rest of the media.
Last week MSNBC reported the following:
"So you may not hear Mitt Romney say 'Keep America American' anymore, because it was a rallying cry for the KKK group, intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews, and the progressive AMERICAblog was the first to catch on to that."
Within hours, so-called liberals at MSNBC like Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton were falling over themselves to see who could offer the most debasing, abject apology to Mitt Romney.
Predictably, the rest of the so-called mainstream media and more of the "Liberal Media Establishment" weighed in on the issue, all to denounce MSNBC and to portray Romney as an innocent victim.
As recent as last night, Bill O'Reilly and fellow right-wing media ideologist Bernard Goldberg hashed over the affair in Prime Time. The focus of their debate was whether NBC did enough in their apologizing or whether they were still evil because of their so-called liberal bias.
The otherwise normally sensible Mediaite.com describes the story this way:
"It turns out, the (MSNBC's) story was not exactly true. ..."
There is only one little problem with all of this hysteria. MSNBC's story that Romney said "keep America American" and that this was a phrase used by the Klan appears to be 100% factual and truthful!
The Romney campaign initially refused to respond to this story for two days. Finally, they claimed that Romney never said "Keep America, American." They claim he said "Keep America, America." The central point of evidence is a video you can see here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?f...
When I play the video to various people, most claim they hear Romney saying "Keep America American" (I definitely do). But to be fair, a few do hear Romney saying "Keep America America." But here's what isn't a close call. The Los Angeles Times reporter on December 9, 2011 reported that Romney said this: "We have on one side a president who wants to transform America into a European-style nation, and you have on the other hand someone like myself that wants to turn around America and keep America American with the principals that made us the greatest nation on Earth. And I will do that with your help."
Was the reporter ever contacted by the Romney campaign demanding a retraction? Are there comments on the LATimes website at the time of the story (this was before the controversy broke out)?
No and no.
So now we are supposed to believe that The Los Angeles Times reporter just makes up stuff and that most people who hear Romney on this video with their own ears saying "Keep America American" should disbelieve their own ears and instead put their trust in the Romney campaign's press release.
This stretches credulity.
Another school of thought in most of the media reporters is that MSNBC was horribly irresponsible for not providing more context to the story, presumably to cast Romney in a more favorable light.
Fair enough; let's parse the phrase "Keep America American." After all, it truly would be unfair to pick a random phrase like "I love America" or "I am a vegetarian" and show that the Klan or a Nazi had once used the phrase. But "Keep America American" is not that general. It's not a phrase that easily floats from everyone's mouth. The phrase had a specific meaning in the 1920s and it has one today. The similarity is that in both cases, what it means is this "My ideas and principles are good and the ideals and values of people who oppose us are bad. And these ideas are bad because they got their ideas from other countries and other parts of the world. We should reject their ideas and values not just because they are bad but specifically because their ideas originated from other parts of the world."
It doesn't matter how you slice or dice it, the phrase "Keep America American" is a rhetorical cheap shot used by demagogues in the act of committing demagoguery. No, it doesn't mean Romney is a closet Klansman, but it does mean he uses rhetorical cheap shots that have a long tradition and it's fair game to point out their tradition.
So are we being unfair to Romney for looking at the phrase he used and inferring one set of ideas when he was really implying something else? NO. Just look at the full quote above. Romney is rejecting Obama and his ideas, specifically because Obama's ideas are European. That's what makes them bad, they aren't from America-get it?
What O'Reilly and all of the right wing echo chamber have been doing for the last week is tending to the media landscape. And what they have done, to a remarkable degree of success, is to say that any suggestion of racism among prominent republicans is out of bounds. In the conservative media establishment's worldview, there is no such thing as racism among conservatives. Only liberals can be racist. Therefore any story that hints at or suggests that a conservative is racist is inherently wrong and demands an immediate denunciation and retraction.
This bit of zeitgeist shaping was done with such efficiency and collaboration that it left the other side helpless.
In the conservative world view, it is quite Ok to brand Obama a "socialist" or even a "communist" if he does something so radical as suggesting Richard Nixon's healthcare plan. Never mind that socialism and communism are hated ideologies by most Americans and is represented by regimes such as Cambodia's where 7 million people were slaughtered by a genocidal communist. No, that's considered completely fair, and normal because, well, because that's what every conservative gets away with in the media every day.
But no one is ever allowed to compare any extreme Republican rhetoric with, say, fascists or racists. That's considered automatically beyond the pale. There is an un-written rule imposed by the conservative media establishment and accepted by even liberal mainstream media:
"Thou shalt not accuse any Republican of doing anything even mildly racist or even racist-friendly unless you can capture video tape of the republican saying 'I hate all black people and want to string them all up and kill them!'"
The result is a media climate where any ambitious, smart reporter pulls his/her punches when reporting on Republicans. Don't report anything that can tie a Republican to an extremist cause or organization, even if the facts bear it out. Instead, use that time to report that Obama isn't a citizen or that Bill Clinton made a fortune on Whitewater or that House Democrats want to wage "class warfare" because they want to raises taxes to the same rates they were in 1994.
The strongest form of power is away the subtlest and Conservatives have both overt and subtle power to get the media, all the media, to sell their propaganda.
Tish Chafin has announced in an email that she plans to file for the West Virginia Supreme Court in January. She is currently ranked 4th in the Democratic Primary, but is expected to gain polling points after the first of the year.
How do you feel about Tish Chafin and her candidacy for the Supreme Court?
Below is the complete email sent from Chafin.
Dear Supporter,
On January 9, 2012, I plan to officially file my candidacy papers for the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia with the Secretary of State's Office. This same evening, there will be an official filing fundraising reception in Charleston at the Marriott.
Your support is greatly appreciated, and it would be an honor if you would lend your name to the invitation as a host for this event. As a candidate on the Democratic ticket, May 8, 2012, I plan to run a well-organized and successful campaign. Supporters and friends like you are what will make this possible.
The Honorable W. Kent Carper has agreed to chair my campaign committee. Oshel Craigo serves as the chair of my fundraising committee. In addition, Anthony Majestro volunteered to serve as the campaign attorney, and Chuck Smith serves as the campaign treasurer.
Rainmaker, Inc. is heading up the campaign operation, and Cartney McCracken is coordinating the January 9th reception. Please email her at Cartney@chafin2012.com regarding how you would like your name to appear on the invitation if you agree to serve as a host.
I am extremely honored by the support I have received as a pre-candidate for this office, and I would be humbled to receive your support for my candidacy as well.
Republican darling South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has some explaining to do about her forming a nonpartisan committee to study creation of a state health exchange to help the uninsured:
Meanwhile, back in May, the Charleston Post & Courier filed a Freedom of Information request with the governor's office for information on the committee. For its efforts, the paper received some press releases and nothing of great interest. Then in November the newspaper filed an almost identical public records request with the Department of Health and Human Services.
This time, the answer included a number of emails to and from the governor, which had either conveniently not been saved by Haley's office or just not included in the May response.
Among them was a message from Haley to her top aides and the person who wrote the committee's report seven months later - DHHS Director Tony Keck - telling everybody up front that despite the wording of her own order, the point of the panel was not to consider the idea of a state health exchange but "to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange."
Given that bombshell, revealed by the newspaper last week, those committee members unaware of the plan, who spent hours debating, researching and investigating in the faith that they were actually doing something, were understandably upset. One person involved called the whole thing "kabuki theater - all for show." The story so far - dictating the outcome of a supposedly independent, nonpartisan committee beforehand, and then omitting public records from a response to a FOI request - was bad enough. But then came the stonewalling, backtracking, obfuscation and deflection as the office bristled at being called out.
For my generation, the end of a war is something of a foreign concept. I was 22 years old when we went into Iraq, and for most of my adult life, our country has been at war in Iraq.
Our military has fought valiantly throughout those nine years, fulfilling every mission it was given, even though it seemed at times as if our occupation would be indefinite.
But on Thursday at a ceremony in Baghdad, our military leaders cased its colors and left the country. By the holidays, our troops will be home with their families.
For those of us who supported Barack Obama in 2008 in part because of our shared opposition to the Iraq War, this is a significant day. The leader we helped elect has kept his word and brought this war to a responsible end.
We are also proud that our President has restored our image around the world and relationships with allies, both of which had been tested by our involvement in Iraq. The President rightly refocused our attention on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the 9/11 terror plot was hatched, and has eliminated more than half of al Qaeda's leadership - including, of course, Osama bin Laden.
While the end of a war may be new to young Americans, the return of our veterans is something we know well. My generation takes great pride in our military and what it has accomplished, including this new era of democracy for the Iraqi people who, starting today, will determine the future of their nation.
The President takes seriously his responsibility to ensure that everyone whose service made this day possible can get the care and benefits they earned. And we support the President's fulfillment of another promise: to make sure our Iraq veterans can go to college at no cost, get quality healthcare and get the training they need to find a job in the civilian workforce. He's also encouraging companies to hire our veterans and put them back to work - a plan that will help not only those companies and veterans, but also our economy as a whole.
As we celebrate the end of a war, we keep close to our hearts the memories of 4,500 brave Americans - many of them young Americans like us - who gave everything for our country. They are my generation's truest heroes.
Washington, D.C. - U.S. Representative Nick J. Rahall (D-WV) Friday joined the call of Members of the House Education and Workforce Committee, led by Ranking Member George Miller (D-CA), for the U.S. Department of Justice to vigorously investigate and pursue prosecution of individuals whose actions led to the April 2010 deaths of 29 miners at the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine in Montcoal, Raleigh County.
"From the very day of the disaster at UBB, I have stood with the families of the 29 miners who perished and called for answers and accountability. We now know, beyond any doubt, what caused that explosion, but we have yet to see the justice that those men and their families deserve," said Rahall. "I appreciate the leadership shown by Congressman Miller and other Members of the Education and Workforce Committee who are, again, standing up for those families and pressing for prosecution of those who so callously risked the lives of the UBB miners."
I am not going to post her entire diary here. Go to DK to read it: I'm Sue Thorn and I'm Running for Congress. If you have time tonight, drop by and chat with her and her supporters.
This has been a magical week for her campaign. Sue spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington and came back with promises of help from major national organizations. Teacherken at Dailykos offered to provide advice and assistance, which has resulted in her first diary making it on to the rec list at DK.
Sue had her diary ready to go this afternoon when Mike Oliverio made his announcement that he was not going to run. I don't think that he was trying to help us, but the timing could not have been better. Thanks, Mike, and best wishes in your future endeavors!
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