Pennsylvania

TITUSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA — Shoehorned between the state line and the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania’s northwest corner, the city of Titusville is as red as America gets, a place where virtually every one of its 5,601 residents identified his or her race as “white” on the 2010 U.S. Census, and a few storefront windows, rather  bewilderingly, display Confederate flags and “Trump: Make America Great Again” campaign banners even now, more than a year after the 2016 presidential election.

Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district is in the southwest corner of the state. Most of the voters live in the hilly suburbs west, south and east of Pittsburgh although there are large rural sections of the district in Washington and Greene counties. The 2015 PVI (R+10) slipped to R+11 this year after Trump won the district 58.1% to 38.5%.

A few days ago, we compared the endorsement questionnaires that Lancaster Stands Up sent out to the PA-16 candidates.

As we mentioned late Friday, today is D-Day for gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. Yes... TODAY. There are 3 gerrymandering lawsuits wending their way through the courts in Harrisburg and the first one makes its judicial splash today. "The litigation," reported Reuters on Sunday, "is part of a growing set of legal challenges to partisan redistricting, including a U.S.

Pennsylvania is one of the most absurdly gerrymandered states in the country. Let's call it a 50/50 state. The 5 most recent presidential elections:

• 2000- Gore 50.6%, 48.6%• 2004- Kerry 51.0%, Bush 48.5%• 2008- Obama 54.7%, McCain 44.3%• 2012- Obama 52.0%, Romney 46.8%• 2016- Trump 48.6%, Hillary 47.9%

The 5 most recent presidential elections:

PA-16 is another of those bizarrely gerrymandered congressional districts courtesy of a Republican legislature that shouldn't be in the majority. Pennsylvania is a 50/50 state, perhaps with a slight Democratic lean. The state's PVI is EVEN, although the districts were drawn to yield 13 Republican seats in Congress and just 5 Democrats instead of 9 from each party.

Armed with assault rifles, Pennsylvania cops forced a 66-year-old woman out of her home, handcuffing her in her underwear while ransacking her home, looking for marijuana.
They ended up finding only hibiscus plants.
Buffalo Township police also handcuffed her 69-year-old husband at  gunpoint after he arrived home and finding a dozen cops rummaging through their home, looking for the non-existing marijuana plants.

A U.S. Army veteran set out on a trip across Pennsylvania taking a knee at several police stations within the state to protest police brutality while playing the National Anthem.
Chris Mueller, 32, has been a one-man roving protest and says he wants to “piss off” as many people as he can while bringing attention to an important issue.

You're out, bitch-- now go home and stop embarrassing everyoneThe Tim Murphy saga started unfolding Wednesday and we mentioned it as part of the coverage of the GOP's latest anti-Choice bill.

A man who was trying to help Pittsburgh police make an arrest ended up brutally beaten, tasered and arrested himself.
And it was all caught on video.
Police claimed Daniel T. Adelman “took a fighting stance,” which is common police lingo used to justify beatdowns, even if the person had no intention of fighting cops.
And the video recorded by a witness does not show what took place before the beatdown, but it shows five police officers beating the man with one of them repeatedly punching him, then grabbing him by the head and bashing it on the asphalt.