Governor Wolf, We need your help in holding this monopolistic corporation accountable for wasting billions in PA taxpayer subsidies through the BFRR program. Thousands of rural citizens in the commonwealth suffer from terrible service, ignored maintenance requests, and general disrepair of the copper wire line which supplies their only option for high-speed internet. VZ accepted taxpayer money to provide this service over a decade ago - if they no longer wish to provide it reliably, as their lack of action appears to indicate - they need to have their right of ownership over the PA wire line rescinded.

We call on New Hampshire's legislature to support a constitutional amendment to prevent outside spenders, including billionaires and big businesses from buying our democracy.

As a retired Texas school teacher of thirty plus years, I am pleading with the Texas Legislators to please NOT advocate new laws mandating Texas teachers be allowed to or required to carry guns or receive training in weapons under the guise of student safety at a school with a 'shooter" on campus. Teachers already are overloaded with teaching academics, teaching the state-mandated "tests", maintaining order, teaching proper behavior, manners, social skills.placating parents, principals and school boards who neither ask for our input or thoughts and we do so with often fifty to sixty-hour weeks- week in and week out year in and year out Now perhaps some parents will be requesting their child's teacher for the next year based on the teacher's target accuracy as well. as their perceived teaching competency!. This is just going to create more firefights going on in a real "shooter" situation and most of us would step in front of a bullet to protect our students if necessary and have done so without needing guns on a campus in each classroom.This is an insane idea and at its base is just another way to take money away from academics and transfer it to gun promoters and trainers, ENOUGH- let Texas teachers TEACH.!!!!!

A convicted murderer was granted a new trial in 1980. He never got one. So what's he still doing in a state prison 32 years later? Michael Graczyk/AP When American civilization finally crumbles, and future historians download the wreckage, it is conceivable that they will cite the case of Jerry Hartfield to explain to their curious audience how law and justice in our time could be so bluntly subverted by the very men and women whose job it was to administer it. Look how these public officials elevated form over substance, our descendants will say; look how hard they defended such manifest injustice. Look how long it took for the justice system to do justice, even after it became clear to the world that a man was imprisoned for decades without a viable judgment against him. Hartfield is a black man from Kansas who was quickly convicted in 1977 of murdering a white woman in the Deep South. He is a man who once recorded an IQ of 51, which is far beneath the level at which courts recognize mental retardation in criminal defendants. He is the inmate who remains locked in a Texas prison 32 years -- 11,800 days -- after a state appeals court reversed his murder conviction and ordered that he be given a new trial, a new trial he has never received. He is the prisoner who has continued to sit in a cell while state and federal judges, and state attorneys, piddle over the technicalities of his case. It has now been more than six years since Hartfield first began to try to unravel the series of errors and omissions which resulted in his wrongful imprisonment. And it could be years more before the courts finally grant him relief. It's hard to know which period is more infuriating: the 23 years during which Hartfield's rights were left unprotected by the justice system; the half-decade or so years since, when state officials, including judges, have refused to help him; or the years more of legal briefings and oral argument that the man will likely have to endure before he gets some relief. Past This story begins in June 1977, when Hartfield was convicted of murdering Eunice Lowe, a bus station ticket agent, whose body was found by her daughter in a storeroom at the station. Prosecutors briefly played the race card and told the capital jury that Hartfield had confessed to the crime and that his fingerprints were on a bus ticket found at the station. Hartfield's trial attorney, Robert Scardino, says that he used an insanity defense, and Hartfield himself insisted (then and now) that the confession was falsely obtained. Following the conviction, Hartfield was swiftly sentenced to death. Today, he still says he is innocent. Three years later, on September 17, 1980, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously reversed Hartfield's conviction, declaring that prosecutors had violated Hartfield's due process rights by "striking a juror for cause because of her reservations about the death penalty." Under Texas law, the remedy for such a violation, reasonably enough, was to grant the defendant a new trial. But that's not what prosecutors sought. Instead, they tried during that period to rescue the conviction by eliminating the death penalty component to the case. They tried, in other words, to find a way around the reversal. They did not succeed, at least not on the books. From 1980 to 1983, the Texas courts refused to allow prosecutors to "reform Hartfield's sentence to life imprisonment." State law was clear, state judges told state prosecutors: A jury taint like the one in the Hartfield case entitled the defendant not just to a new sentencing hearing but to a completely new trial. These judges did not permit Texas officials to get around the 1980 reversal. But nor did they press prosecutors to give Hartfield the "speedy trial" he is entitled to under the Sixth Amendment. Hartfield, meanwhile, evidently also was in no big rush to be re-tried. In 1983, the story turned. By March 4th, the Court of Criminal Appeals had had enough. It issued a mandate to Texas declaring that the conviction against Hartfield was "reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings in accordance" with the 1980 ruling ordering a new trial. Ten days later, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that then-Governor Mark White commute Hartfield's sentence from death to life in prison. On March 15th, the Governor commuted the sentence and sent a copy of his proclamation to the Texas court. And then nothing happened in the case -- nothing at all -- until 2006. Texas prosecutors thought that the governor's commutation resolved the issue, at least until someone challenged the commutation for failing to supersede the mandate of reversal. The state judges in 1983 reckoned that the mandate had been issued, and that if the case weren't properly resolved they would soon hear about it from prosecutors or defense counsel. And Hartfield's lawyer says that he stopped representing his client when the commutation came through. Everyone dr...

Weebly Platform change for paying customers without notice.

Las Vegas does not need a new gas chamber. We have better things to spend our tax dollars on. Stop this unjust, needless, and expensive use of taxpayer dollars!

In this time of crisis and political upheaval in New York, we call on the New York State Legislature to lead. We call on the New York Legislature to begin moving our state towards true economic and racial justice by investing in our schools, housing, healthcare, food security and more by passing the Invest in Our NY Act in the April 1st State Budget. We are also calling for two full, independent investigations: into the attempted cover up of nursing home deaths, and into the allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Stop the construction in New York City of the dangerous and environmentally destructive Spectra pipeline.

Stop the unfair practice of withholding evidence in a criminal case.

Please, sign the Petition to Tell the President of the United States, the White House, the US Congress, your Governor or State Legislators, State House and Senate Representatives to help put an end: To an Era of out of control Hyperinflation, too much Spending and Extreme Price Hikes that hurts the Recovery of the US Economy and encourages an influx of Economic Depressions, Recessions that discourages and Hinders an Economic State of Boom and Prosperity for all Americans alike, including the Rich and Poor! Help Us, put an End to a Chaotic and Senseless Era that causes too much Mental strain and emotional distress causing Socio-Economic stress and duress on the Poor, the Lower-Class, the Middle-Class and Working-Class, including Veterans & Military Families and dividing the Nation Apart by a Social and Economic Civil War between 'The Haves and the Have Nots' that are the cause of Spiraling High-Crime Waves, Social Unrest, Anarchy, Subversion, Rebellion and Disobedience and Distrust in Government. Together, the People --including our Elected Officials, Representatives in Congress, Business Entrepreneurs & Corporate Executive Officers, the Rich & Poor alike, must work together to reverse the spiraling trend of an out of control Hyperinflation, too much Spending and Price Hikes that are hurting the People, dividing the Nation Apart and hindering and disrupting our Way of Life and hindering the Successful Recovery and Booming of the Economy of the United States of America! Thus, "We the People", Pledge In the name of Providence and the Blessed Constitution of the United States of America --Do Stand Together for the American Way of Life, Truth and Justice in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. People of America, "United We Stand, Divided We Fall." We must Work Together, now or die divided, decayed and demoralized as a Nation!