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

Butler County Judge Michael Yeager ruled Tuesday that a group of Middlesex Township residents can’t be sued because they protested a township zoning amendment that would expand acceptable areas for shale gas drilling.

Yeager’s decision, in response to a case brought shale gas leaseholders claiming the protesters were interfering with their rights to exercise drilling contracts, is a stroke in favor of American First Amendment rights.

It’s beyond ridiculous to argue that citizens of this country can’t petition their government to change something they disagree with. That’s precisely what the protesters were doing — and the principle on which Yeager based his ruling.

Shale gas drilling is likely to continue to prove a contentious issue for years, and both sides of the argument deserve to have their voices heard. Attempting to use the judicial system to silence critics is a particularly unsavory enterprise.

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

It’s an inspiring story told repeatedly by Senate Democratic nominee Katie McGinty.

There’s only one problem, say BuzzFeed reporters Christopher Massie and Andrew Kaczynski: McGinty has been lying about being the first in her family to go to college.

“As the ninth of 10 kids and the first in my family to go to college, I’ve been privileged to live the American Dream,” McGinty told the Associated Press in January.

“I was the first in my family to go to college, and I did so with the help of a scholarship,” McGinty posted on her Facebook page in February. She repeated the claim in a May 23 news release and on her campaign website.

Yet, according to commencement records reviewed by BuzzFeed, her brother John McGinty graduated from La Salle University, a four-year college, in 1973 with a bachelor of arts degree. He transferred to La Salle after attending the Community College of Philadelphia from 1968 to 1970. John McGinty’s Facebook page lists him as a member of the La Salle class of ’73 and the Temple University class of 1978, where his page says he was awarded a master’s in education.

Katie McGinty did not enter Saint Joseph’s University until 1981.

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

It could take up to two years for medical marijuana to become available through Pennsylvania retailers, but officials at the state Department of Health are saying they hope to make it possible for patients to buy it from out-of-state purveyors far before that.

The department aims to publish regulations next month to guide parents of children on how the drug can be legally bought from other states and brought into Pennsylvania, to administer it to a child with a qualifying condition.

There’s plenty of red tape to be had, and patients must have one of only 17 qualifying conditions to be eligible to use medical marijuana. But these quick-hitting regulations to allow young patients the relief they deserve are undoubtedly a good thing.

This process has been a long and arduous one, but it appears to be coming to a very satisfying conclusion for all involved.