HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state police can't hide from the public its policy on how it monitors social media. Advocates for civil liberties cheered the decision. The law enforcement agency had argued that fully disclosing its policy for using software to monitor online postings may compromise public safety.

All four Democratic justices supported the majority decision, which said the lower Commonwealth Court went beyond its authority in trying to give the state police another attempt to justify keeping details of the policy a secret. Tuesday's order appears to end a six-year legal battle. A state police spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the court decision.

Andrew Christy, a lawyer with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said the ruling “sort of puts law enforcement on the same playing field as all government agencies. If they have a legal justification to keep something secret, then they have to put forth sufficient evidence to justify that.”

People need to know what police are doing in order to decide if it's appropriate, he argued.

The scandal surrounding former NFL player Michael Oher and his “adoptive” parents Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy has led to a closer examination of The Blind Side, the movie based on their story. In the film, Michael is presented as a foster child with no family and a dangerous, uncertain future until the Tuohys take him in, because they’re just good, honest Christians. It really lays on the white savior tropes, which is a favorite of the Oscar voters.

Superstar actress Sandra Bullock was widely praised for her performance as Leigh Anne, and swept through awards season, winning nearly every Best Actress honor. By the time the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010 came along, she was a lock to win the Best Actress Oscar. But the lawsuit between Oher and the Tuohys has left that win with an asterisk next to it.

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Some people are calling for the Bird Box actress to return her Oscar. Let me be clear, there’s no reason for Sandra Bullock to give up her award. Plenty of actors have won for playing dishonest characters, so she shouldn’t be punished for someone else’s faults. Plus, if we’re taking back Oscars, there’s a long list of problematic men we need to start with. If the lawsuit proves that Michael is telling the truth about the Tuohys, and they knowingly misrepresented themselves as the people who saved his life, when they were actually the ones who stole from him, I’m not sure it makes much difference where Bullock or her Oscar are concerned. Let’s be honest, if they didn’t strip Will Smith of his Academy Award after he slapped the hell out of Chris Rock during the ceremony, they’re not going after hers.

There’s a reason movies like this say they’re “based on a true story.” What those words actually mean is “we’ve taken a lot of dramatic license with this boring life story, so only a small part of it is actually true.” Yes, there’s a big jump between adding a speech into a scene and completely rewriting the facts, but the most that will come out of this is The Blind Side being taken out of rotation on TNT. And don’t bet against the Academy awarding Bullock with another Oscar, just so this one can be negated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman are pressing Norfolk Southern to join a federal rail safety program that the company said it would join more than four months ago, after one of its freight trains derailed in East Palestine, Ohio in February.

The Federal Railroad Administration’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System allows employees to report near-misses or close calls on railroads and protects them from discipline for reporting such incidents.

Norfolk Southern said in March that it was engaged in a working group on the program and planned to join, noting it would build on its own close-call reporting system and mark “another step we are taking to further our commitment to safety,” according to CEO Alan Shaw.

But the senators, both Pennsylvania Democrats, say the Atlanta-based company hasn’t met its pledge. In a letter to Mr. Shaw, they called the FRA’s close call reporting system “a promising program with real potential to improve rail safety, protect employees, and reduce incidents if adopted by a larger swath of the rail industry.”

On Nov. 18, 2016, my daughter, Jayanna Powell, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. She was 8 years old.

My four children were walking home from school around 3 p.m. when Paul Woodlyn III drove around a stopped trolley car at North 63rd Street and Lansdowne Avenue and hit two of them: Jayanna and her brother Hassan Cox, 12, who had been holding her hand. Jayanna was thrown 100 feet in the air; she died later that day at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Hassan suffered injuries to his leg.

Woodlyn fled the scene. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Crash Investigation Division found that there were no tire marks on the roads, indicating that the driver didn’t even try to stop.

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After running into my children in broad daylight, Woodlyn took his vehicle to an auto body shop in Chester County. His girlfriend, who dropped off the car at the body shop, said that the damage to the car happened when it hit a deer. When the owner of the auto body shop saw the news reports of the fatal crash, he reported the vehicle and the suspect to authorities. If that shop owner hadn’t seen the news, we might never have found my daughter’s killer. A matter this important shouldn’t be left up to chance.

Donald Trump was indicted in Manhattan on 35 felony counts of business fraud. he was driven by motorcade to his arraignment where he pleaded not guilty and was released without bail. he was not handcuffed or fingerprinted, nor were mug shots taken. afterwards, Trump held a rally.

Kalief Browder was a 16-year-old kid from the Bronx. he was accused of stealing a backpack. cops arrested him, handcuffed him and took him to jail, where he was fingerprinted and photographed. at his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty. he was denied bail and was sent to Rikers Island to await trial.

Donald Trump was indicted in Florida on 40 felony counts of stealing classified documents and hiding them in the unspeakably ugly bathroom of his shitty vermin-infested Florida golf motel. he flew in his private jet to Palm Beach, where again he was driven by motorcade to his arraignment. again, he pleaded not guilty, and again he was neither handcuffed nor fingerprinted. no mug shots were taken, and he was released without bail. afterwards, he went on TV to whine about it.

after arriving at Rikers Island, Kalief Browder spent the next three years there — two of them in solitary confinement — waiting for a trial that never came. surveillance footage shows Kalief being beaten by both corrections officers and fellow prisoners. trial dates were set, and then postponed, and then set again, and then postponed again and again — for three years.

Local governments in Pennsylvania might soon have the option to hire professional firms to be municipal managers, a change that proponents say could improve local government services while saving taxpayers money.

Three sets of bills in the legislature would amend the governing laws for Pennsylvania boroughs, second class townships, and third class cities — classified by population sizes — and provide an alternative municipal management option. First class townships have had the choice since 2020.

Under current law, Pennsylvania municipalities can only appoint individuals as managers, a rule that state Rep. Bob Freeman (D., Northampton) said can be particularly burdensome for smaller communities that are unable to pay the salary and benefits of a full-time administrator or manager on their own.

The change would allow municipalities to hire a range of professional groups to serve as managers, said Freeman, a prime sponsor for one of the bills. The option also would address increased costs and a shortage of municipal managers that have made hiring difficult, he added.

WASHINGTON — Dr. Mehmet Oz has continued to raise money and use the proceeds to pay off the millions of dollars he lent his unsuccessful Senate campaign last year.

Dr. Oz — who reported lending his campaign $26.8 million, which was more than any other 2022 congressional candidate, according to the Federal Election Commission — is taking advantage of a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed the $250,000 cap imposed by Congress on how much candidates could reimburse themselves after the election.

The celebrity doctor paid himself back $1.2 million during the first six months of 2023 after raising more than $94,000 during the first six months of the year and receiving another $282,000 from renting out his list of supporters. That’s more than three-quarters of the $1.6 million in expenditures he reported from Jan. 1 to June 30, which also includes more than $303,000 in fundraising expenses.

The provision against such moves was part of the 2012 campaign finance law sponsored by U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority has overturned several parts of the law, most notably in its Citizens United decision.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. is stitching together slivers of political coalitions into one he hopes will be robust enough to keep his own decades-old career alive.

He lost the Democratic primary to a progressive challenger in May, but an unusual write-in campaign organized by the county's top Republicans ensured the lifelong Democrat will have a place on the November ballot — albeit under the GOP's banner. Then, this week, the recently formed Forward Party — a loose centrist coalition that's not even registered as an official party in Pennsylvania — gave the longtime prosecutor its endorsement.

Forward Party CEO Lindsey Williams Drath said that by having won both Democratic and Republican primaries throughout his career, Mr. Zappala has shown his “cross-partisan appeal.” What Ms. Williams Drath referred to as “cross-partisan appeal” is not only a wise strategy but “it’s what you have to do,” Allegheny County Republican Committee Chairman Sam DeMarco said.

Particularly if your own party threw its support behind someone new — in this case Matt Dugan, formerly the county's chief public defender. Mr. Dugan is the latest candidate to capitalize on a nationwide movement, backed by some of the Democratic Party's biggest donors, to elect political progressives to powerful local prosecutor's offices. He beat Mr. Zappala, who's held the office since 1998, by more than 10 percentage points.

hey, remember when we were all terrified by the idea of a Ron DeSantis candidacy?

he’s super competent, we were told. he’s going to be a lot worse than Trump, they said, because he’s smarter and he won’t be a lazy fuck-up. he’s going to be our worst fascist nightmare.

it was a pretty compelling story and we all bought it.

but now that we’ve gotten to see DeSantis on the campaign trail, holy shit — what the fuck were we so afraid of?