Remember that officer in Utah who handcuffed the nurse who refused to draw blood from an unconscious patient? CNN reports that he has been fired. Keep reading for more news. Judicial elections, redistricting, judicial selection, Attorney General budget cuts, and other matters going on in Raleigh. Rather than try to summarize all the different developments it notes, I’ll let this WRAL article speak for itself: Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed legislation Monday that would have canceled next year's judicial primary elections, saying he saw it as a precursor to a Republican push to appoint judges instead of having the public elect them. . . . Leaders for the General Assembly's Republican majority said they needed a time cushion to continue working on a planned overhaul of voting districts for trial court judges statewide. The plan, House Bill 717, passed the House last week but has not been heard in the Senate. Cooper called canceling the primaries a "first step toward a constitutional amendment that will rig the system so that the legislature picks everybody's judges." Something like that has been discussed in the Senate, which has seemed cool to the House's plan to redraw districts for judges. Changing the constitution to allow appointments instead of elections would require a statewide voter referendum. The article also notes that “Cooper signed a separate bill, Senate Bill 582, making a number of changes to the state budget,” including a provision “forbid[ding] Attorney General Josh Stein from pushing criminal appeals work off on local district attorneys, [...]
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