The ACLU and others appealing the Commonwealth Court decision to uphold Pa's voter ID law filed their brief with the state Supreme Court today in advance of a Sept. 13 hearing in Philadelphia. The Corbett administration has to file theirs by next Friday.

UPDATE 4:15PM: Nice overview of this and more here from Philly City Paper's Randy LoBasso.

And here's Karen Langley's story.

The brief is below:

Aclu Voter ID Supreme Ct Brief

So what does a federal court rejecting Texas' new voter ID law mean for the one here in Pa? Probably nothing.

Election expert Rick Hasen from Cal-Irvine first gets into why the court rejected it:

Using this simple structure, the court concludes that Texas, which bears the burden of proof in a section 5 case, cannot prove its law won’t make the position of protected minorities worse off.  And the court suggests this was a problem of its own making: Texas could have made the i.d. law less onerous (as in Georgia, which the court suggests DOJ was probably right to preclear) and Texas could have done more to produce evidence supporting its side at trial, but it engaged in bad trial tactics.

Will it go next to the US Supreme Court?

Texas is likely to appeal this case to the Supreme Court, and I would expect to see an application for an emergency injunction allowing Texas to use its voter id law during the upcoming election.  If this happens, this will be a major question for the Roberts Court, and it would have to be decided in short order.  Given the closeness to the election, it is not clear to me that even if the Supreme Court disagrees on some of the analysis with the district court that it would grant such emergency relief.  This is a big unknown.

And to the question on other states:

The court was very careful to show that not all voter id laws are created equal, that states may have ample good reasons to impose voter id laws, and that such laws can be put in place in ways which do not discriminate against minority voters.  Not only did the court suggest that Georgia’s voter id law was probably ok; the analysis here could well be key in how the separate district court hearing the challenge to South Carolina’s voter id law will resolve that case. It is certainly possible that South Carolina’s law could be precleared, especially given some key concessions this week at trial.

Rick Santorum told Pennsylvania delegates that this fall's debates will be crucial and he predicted that they could count on Mitt Romney to take an aggressive approach to President Obama.

"I debated Mitt Romney. I can tell you, he is no John McCain. He is not going to pull punches,'' said the former presidential candidate. "He is going to go right back at Barack Obama just like he went right back at me,'' he said.

While praising the man who defeated him in the primaries, Mr. Santorum appeared to question the tactics of the last GOP nominee.

"[It] is going to be a blood bath, and that's what we need,'' Mr. Santorum told the delegation as they tackled their eggs and coffee. "I know all of us, four years ago, just pulling our hair out, four years ago because, why don't you just stand up to the fraud of what his man believes in, who he, is what he wants to, and what he has been doing to this country.''

"I know how important these debates are, they were everything the primary ... people paid attention.''
This fall, he said, "They're going to watch these debates. Watch Mitt Romney. He will do us proud. He will do us proud tonight, we need to step up in Pennsylvania.''

Whether a reflection of their interest in the former senator, or a measure of how late the delegates had been out partying the night before, the turnout for the breakfast was noticeably smaller than it had been the day before when New Jersey governor Chris Christie addressed the Pennsylvanians.

Mr. Santorum was followed by Gov. Tom Corbett, who denounced the president's energy and environmental policies.

"Barack Obama is trying to put Pennsylvania out of business,'' he charged.

Mr. Corbett told the delegates what they had heard repeatedly from the DoubleTree Hotel stage this week, that, polls to the contrary notwithstanding, Pennsylvania remained in play in the presidential race. He also urged them to work to defeat Sen. Bob Casey, although he didn't mention the name of Mr. Casey's opponent, businessman Tom Smith.

The PG's Erich Schwartzel had a nice story Sunday on the coal industry's aggressive attempts this year to defeat Barack Obama and elect Mitt Romney president. The story has context on the challenges coal faces from cheaper natural gas and has a telling quote from a mine owner who hosted Romney in Beallsville, Ohio, on Aug. 14:

Increased competition from cheap natural gas and Environmental Protection Agency decisions to shutter dozens of coal-fired power plants have led to unprecedented drops in coal demand.

Last month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that domestic coal- and natural gas-powered generation were equal for the first time since the agency began calculating the information.

"What is depressing the coal industry is probably more due to the gas than what Obama has done," conceded Robert E. Murray, the president and chief executive officer of bituminous coal mine firm Murray Energy in Pepper Pike, Ohio.

Mr. Murray said natural gas started to compete as a power plant supplier when gas prices hit $3.50 per Mcf. Gas has been below that price since October 2011.

It turns out that Murray forced his (non-union) employees to attend the Romney event. The workers complained to a WWVA-AM's David Blomquist (a well-known conservative talk radio host in Wheeling; the station's HQ is adjacent to the historic Capitol Music Hall) about the political pressures they face at the mine, and the fact that the Romney event forced them to miss a day's pay.

The Plain-Dealer broke the story and the LA Times has more on it today:

Employees who contacted Blomquist and others in the industry contend that the August event is the latest example of the lengths Murray is willing to go to back his political priorities. In the days just after the rally, about seven or eight mine workers, supposedly independent of one another, emailed and called Blomquist to tell him about the circumstances surrounding the rally. The radio host, known as Bloomdaddy, said once he began talking about the issue on the air, he was contacted by other current and former Murray employees, bringing the number of those sharing the same concerns to 15 to 20 people.

The wife of an hourly employee at the Century mine said in an interview with the Washington Bureau the event was mandatory, and that workers were told to arrive at 8 a.m. to a local school, where they registered to attend the rally and then waited much of the day to be bused to the mine. The schedule ate into her husband's free time, which bothered him, she said. She said she did not want to be identified for fear her husband would lose his job.

"He was really upset that they took his free time with his family away from him," she said. In general, she said "he felt like they were pushing the Republican choice on him and he felt a little intimidated by that."

Blomquist's correspondents said they are routinely pressured to donate to Republican causes and that the company keeps track of who gives and who doesn't. Workers sometimes have their pay envelopes stuffed with political literature, the employee's wife said.