Cheer

Adam and Amanda Sherman of Harrisville know how to make an impression. The couple were just looking for routine maintenance on a truck Monday, when they visited a South Hills dealership. Instead, they walked out of the showroom with a new baby girl — Heather Lynn — after Amanda unexpectedly went into labor at the business.

She ended up delivering her second daughter right there at the business, and came home days later with a clean bill of health.

Everyone involved here, from the Shermans to the people at the dealership to the EMTs who took Amanda to the hospital, deserves kudos. They were faced with an unexpected and stressful situation, and came through with flying colors.

And now baby Heather will have an amusing story to tell people one day, when they ask where she’s from.

Jeer

As the U.S. Senate embarks upon a new session, it continues to fail to live up to one of its basic duties: staffing the federal courts that deal with everything from criminal to civil concerns in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s Western District court has struggled since 2013 with vacant judicial posts. There are now four vacancies — the most of any federal district court system in the country.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The district has two nominees (Butler County Judge Marilyn Horan and U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Baxter) who have already cleared committee votes in the Senate. Another jurist, Robert Colville, is also ready to step up to the federal bench.

But now there are questions as to whether they are too moderate for President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to appoint right-wing judges to the bench.

This is a ridiculous and harmful state-of-affairs, and the Senate should be ashamed of itself. They need to do their jobs and fill these district court vacancies with all possible haste.

Cheer

The process for expelling a state legislator who either pleads or is found guilty of an expulsion-worthy offense should be short and sweet. And that’s exactly the process lawmakers moved to implement on Tuesday, when members of the state House voted to change the rules and streamline the expulsion process for members convicted of certain crimes.

The changes mean that if a House member is convicted or pleads guilty to a crime that makes them constitutionally ineligible to serve, then the House Ethics Committee can request an expulsion vote that would be held the very next day. Previously the rules stated that the chamber had to wait until a legislator was sentenced before ordering their expulsion.

The rule changes come after Democrat Leslie Acosta of Philadelphia ran a game on voters last year — running unopposed for reelection even as she quietly pleaded guilty to participating in an embezzlement scheme at a mental health clinic where she worked before taking office. Acosta won a second term before the public realized what was going on, and she eventually announced she would resign amid calls for her to step down.

These rule changes are a good way to help prevent similarly shameless scams from playing out in the future.