It well known that Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Carluccio’s anti-abortion opinions are sufficient reasons why voters should reject her in favor of Superior Court Justice Daniel McCaffery for Supreme Court. But the Philadelphia Inquirer, in an editorial this week, endorsed Daniel McCaffery, and unveiled an entirely new argument of why Carluccio is unsuited to occupy a seat on the state’s highest court. Here are some excerpts from that editorial.
“During a Republican forum in Erie last spring, Carluccio said she would welcome a chance to review Act 77, a law passed in 2019 with overwhelming GOP support that expanded mail-in voting. She declared the law 'bad for the commonwealth' and referenced unproven 'hanky-panky' with mail ballots.
“But Carluccio told this board she would follow Act. 77. A different answer for a different audience?”
“During the meeting with this board, Carluccio was asked: Do you think Joe Biden won the election? She initially said, ‘I have no idea.’
“After seeing the surprised reaction of a board member, Carluccio tried to clarify her response with this muddle: “Yeah, I think he’s the president. Obviously, he’s our president. I believe he won the election. There are people in my party who don’t believe that. I do believe that I’ll be very clear about it. And I should have just been more direct in the beginning.”
Carluccio’s dedication to her own opportunism appears to overshadow any commitment to properly applying the law to those cases that will come before her if elected to the state’s highest court. Daniel McCaffery, on the other hand, carries no such baggage, and all indications, according to The Inquirer editorial, are that he will make a superb justice on the state’s supreme court.
Also, a bill sponsored Senator Ryan Aument (R., Lancaster) would require parents to opt-in to allow their children to access library materials that are judged by some arbiter to be unsuitable for certain age groups. This week, the state senate voted, primarily along party lines, to approve the bill. Here again, we have the tail wagging the dog, since it appears that the majority of families are fine with the library policies in most school districts across the state. And this is also one more instance where the Republicans (the party of de-regulation) is committed to creating more red-tape and increasing bureaucratic busywork.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the Central Bucks School District are becoming rather desperate about their school board candidates and their prospects in the upcoming election. Signs are appearing in the Central Bucks School District declaring that Democratic school board candidates support “defund the police & Marxist BLM,” and “sexually graphic books for minors”. Other signs proclaim “Hey Democrats! Groom dogs not kids! Schools teach academics not porn”. The law in Pennsylvania mandates that such political advertisements must contain a disclaimer carrying the ad’s funding source. Some signs have small stickers saying “PAID FOR BY: LetsGoBrandon.com.” Other signs say nothing. Bucks County millionaire Paul Martino, who has heavily funded school board races in 2021 and this year, claims not to have anything to do with these signs, although he has recently admitted that he had supplied seed money for the PAC – Stop Bucks Extremism – that sent mailers in August with sexual images and telling residents that “Extreme Central Bucks Democrats are fighting to keep these books in our middle school and high school libraries.” Families appeared to be less upset by the targets of the mailers than by the mailers themselves, and Staples subsequently banned the PAC from its stores.
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