If the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania has a problem, it’s not that the organization has a penchant for showboating or making much ado about nothing. So it should be telling that the League last week filed a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court asking a judge to throw out the state’s map of congressional districts.

The reason: Pennsylvania’s broken and partisan Redistricting Commission has proved itself to be unconcerned with creating cohesive congressional districts. Instead, the commission — which is controlled by whichever state party is in power — is preoccupied with doing all it can to maintain and expand the controlling party’s legislative majority. The situation is bad enough that the Brennan Center for Justice in New York singled out Pennsylvania as one of three states where the practice, known as “gerrymandering” is particularly egregious.

It’s obvious to any reasonable individual who examines a congressional map that Pennsylvania’s districts are poorly drawn and serve congressmen, not their constituents. We wish the League luck and success as it fights to rectify this embarrassing state of affairs.

[naviga:h3]Jeer [/naviga:h3]

Mentally ill defendants in Pennsylvania deserve better than they’ve been getting from the state, which often makes them (and prosecutors) wait more than 300 days to receive the treatments meant to make them fit for trial.

On Thursday that state of affairs took a major turn for the better, with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services agreeing to add beds to its treatment facilities and hire an expert to examine the state’s forensic mental health system.

Those are good steps. The sad truth, however, is that it’s taken two years and a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Pennsylvania to achieve this result — and this isn’t even expected to fully alleviate the problem. It shouldn’t take federal court rulings and legal agreements to prompt state officials to improve upon a system that clearly fails to meet basic standards of care.

[naviga:h3]Cheer [/naviga:h3]

The opioid crisis is killing thousands of Pennsylvanians each year, and no one — the doctors who irresponsibly overprescribe addictive painkillers, the dealers who shepherd addicts into the world of illicit drugs, or the pharmaceutical companies which market the opioids to doctors and hospitals in the first place — should be exempt from the blowback.

So far we’re batting two-for-three. Doctors in Pennsylvania now face punishment if they don’t use a state database to flag opioid prescriptions and prevent doctor shopping; and dealers are facing tougher punishments through the “Not In My Backyard” initiative by Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger.

So it’s enormously encouraging to hear Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announce that the state is joining Virginia, Texas and Illinois in a probe of how drug manufacturers marketed and sold opioids during this crisis.

It’s unclear whether they are investigating this matter as a criminal or civil affair, but Shapiro and his fellow attorneys general should follow the information wherever it leads them.

—PAR