Tag: pennsylvania

Pedro Cortes – the man who didn’t stop Kermit Gosnell – wants his old job back.

Hi! Are you pro-life, Pennsylvanian, and didn’t vote for Tom Corbett in the last election?

Yes to all three?

Well, then: you fornicated the canine.  Big time.

New Gov. Tom Wolf has appointed veteran bureaucrat Pedro Cortés as acting secretary of the commonwealth—a top member of the governor’s cabinet and head of the Department of State—pending permanent approval by the Republican-controlled state Senate. This is Cortés’s second stint in this position; his first, from 2003 to 2010 under Gov. Ed Rendell, coincided with the grossest period of negligence in the department’s history of lax enforcement of state abortion and medical regulations.

Continue reading Pedro Cortes – the man who didn’t stop Kermit Gosnell – wants his old job back.

Oh, look. Pennsylvania Democrats want Voter ID for THEIR stuff.

Do as they say, not as they do:

voter-id

Gotta wonder why they think it’s OK for them to have verification, but not the rest of us. Then again: I’ve had lunch in that hotel. It’s a very nice, and rather pricey, venue: presumably the Democratic party bigwigs that picked it don’t want just anybody sneaking in and raiding the buffet table. Or… perhaps the Democratic party really does believe its own agitprop that minorities don’t have picture IDs as a matter of course? No, wait, their own token minority members would probably be seen as ‘reliable’ enough to be allowed ID.  I guess we’re just going to have to go with “the Democrats are defending the cake trolley” interpretation.

Via

Pennsylvania Treasurer Rob McCord (D) abruptly resigns, plea-bargains.

You almost have to feel sorry for new Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf (D). The man’s just moved into Harrisburg, gotten his voice mail straightened out, starting to get a feel for the morning commute, and then WHAMM! – his (Democratic) Attorney General (Kathleen Kane) is on the verge of being indicted for perjury and his (Democratic) Treasurer (Rob McCord) is resigning, not to mention preparing to plead out on extortion charges:

State Treasurer Rob McCord, a former Democratic candidate for governor, gave up his post today and apologized to the citizens of Pennsylvania, his government staff and family for threatening two campaign contributors with the loss of state business if they did not give to his campaign.

Note that I said ‘almost.’  Although, to be marginally fair: both Attorney General and Treasurer are elected positions in Pennsylvania. Tom Wolf can probably make a plausible enough case for saying that he didn’t know anything about either scandal, because he just got here and this is the first that he’s really hearing about it. Whether that’ll work on the electorate has yet to be determined. As to whether Treasurer McCord’s sudden fall from grace will induce AG Kane to jump, or perhaps be pushed? – You should probably check with somebody who knows Pennsylvanian state politics better than I do. All I know is that the Democrats are rapidly running out of competent statewide candidates and officials in that state…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Recommendation for indicting AG Kathleen Kane (D, PA) made public

Well, it’s official: “A grand jury has recommended that Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane face charges of perjury and abusing the authority of her office, according to court documents made public Wednesday… The panel investigated allegations that someone in Kane’s office leaked secret grand jury material to retaliate against her critics. Whether to charge Kane remains in the hands of Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman.” I say ‘official’ because it was only a rumor a few weeks ago; but now we know that a grand jury wants to see the Democratic Attorney General for Pennsylvania be put on trial for felony perjury.

What happens next? Well, AG Kane is currently being defiant about the whole thing: we’ll see how that holds up against an actual indictment – or whether the PA political system will accept a resignation in lieu of indictment.  Either way, Pennsylvania Democrats just lost one of their better future prospects.  And ain’t that a shame.

Moe Lane

PS: Perjury is how they get you.  Every. Single. Time.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (D) *may* be indicted soon.

To be fair: it hasn’t actually happened yet. And an indictment isn’t a conviction. Still… oopsie?

The special prosecutor and grand jury investigating allegations that Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane leaked secret information to a newspaper have found evidence of wrongdoing and recommended that she be criminally charged, according to numerous people familiar with the decision. […] The panel concluded that Kane violated grand-jury secrecy rules by leaking investigative material in a bid to embarrass political enemies, sources said.

Continue reading Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (D) *may* be indicted soon.

Wait, is Tom Wolf (D CAND, Pennsylvania-GOV) in trouble?

This is a little surprising:

It looks as though “I Won’t Say If I Voted For President Obama-itis” has spread from Democratic senate candidates to those in the gubernatorial ranks.

Pennsylvania Dem gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf refused to answer if he voted for President Obama when confronted by a tracker Thursday afternoon, according to a video released on the Tom Corbett For Governor YouTube page, Wolf’s GOP opponent.

Honestly, it’s a little surprising.

Moe Lane

PS: Tom Corbett for Governor.

Pennsylvania AG Kathleen Kane’s (D) on-again, off-again blame-the-victim tactics in rape lawsuit.

NAME! THAT! PARTY!!!!!

Here are the facts, which are not in dispute: in 2013 a woman employed as a typist at Pennsylvania’s Rockview State Prison was brutally raped by Omar Best, a man with a long and vicious history of previous violent assault and rape convictions. After Best’s conviction – he’s serving a life sentence for this, because apparently we just can’t hang serial rapists anymore and then go home to our dinners – the victim proceeded to sue everyone involved, both individually and collectively. There’s considerable evidence that PA’s Department of Corrections, both individually and collectively, put the victim at extreme risks, over her explicit objections; so you’d think that the state would settle, right?

Well… turns out that the Attorney General’s office is an elected position, and the Democrat who runs it – Kathleen Kane – runs an interesting kind of shop out there. Oh, and before we go any further: I’m telling you that Kane is a Democrat because, apparently, nobody else will.  Anyway, on Tuesday it came out that the AG’s office decided to base its defense of the DoC on the novel strategy of blaming the victim for getting raped: Continue reading Pennsylvania AG Kathleen Kane’s (D) on-again, off-again blame-the-victim tactics in rape lawsuit.

Allyson ‘I love Obamacare!’ Schwartz went down in flames in the Pennsylvania DEM-GOV primary.

It’s not even particularly close, at this point. Politico has already called it for her opponent.  Who will have to decide now if he should dare run on supporting Obamacare.

…Spoiler warning: NO.

Pennsylvania AG Kathleen Kane (D) threatens to sue newspaper for committing… journalism.

I was going to do a background paragraph on the story, but the first line of this article makes it redundant: “State Attorney General Kathleen Kane has hired one of the most feared litigators in the region, Richard A. Sprague, to represent her in possible defamation suits arising from accounts of her decision to end an undercover investigation that taped at least five Philadelphia Democrats accepting cash or gifts.” Basically, AG Kane shut down the sting operation after being elected in 2012: there is a big brouhaha over whether this was politically motivated.  Well, actually, no: there is a big brouhaha over whether people can prove that shutting down the investigation was politically motivated.  AG Kane is certainly acting like somebody who is nervous about a subpoena.

Yeah, I know: a heck of a thing to say about a state Attorney General. Mind you, as Hot Air points out, this escalated quickly from racism accusations to threatening lawsuits, which is the real reason why people are raising their eyebrows. The problem here is that apparently they’ve got hard evidence that people took bribes: relatively modest ones, but bribes nonetheless. That is not acceptable behavior for politicians. Neither is shutting down an investigation that has this kind of evidence.  Kathleen Kane has a good deal to answer for, including precisely why she is trying so hard to shut down this story…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: The paper is certainly treating this… “During the meeting, Sprague suggested that The Inquirer may have been used by the sources of its stories – “wittingly or unwittingly” as a “weapon” to attack Kane to defend themselves from potential charges of wrongdoing in the management of the probe.” …as a personal threat against them. So would I, frankly.

PPS: Tom Corbett may be, by the way, the luckiest governor in the US right now.  Assuming that he has the mother-wit to come down upon this story like a hammer from orbit.

PJ Tatler: American Bridge PAC now stalking Republicans through high schools.

Let me set the scene: Republican Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-08) was in his district on Thursday, doing general Congressmen stuff: in this particular case, he was making an appearance at a local high school [political] science club.  Basic, not-particularly-[partisan]-political constituent outreach, in other words. Rep. Fitzpatrick was off doing the unglamorous civics thing, which is a large part of any Representative’s job.

But apparently the progressive PAC American Bridge feels that it’s their job to break into high schools while they’re in session and then go stalk Congressmen: Continue reading PJ Tatler: American Bridge PAC now stalking Republicans through high schools.