Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania:

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JUSTICE EAKIN MADE THE RIGHT MOVE WITH SUPREME COURT RESIGNATION, March 15

It’s not often we congratulate someone who’s done something wrong.

But state Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin did the right thing by resigning his seat on Tuesday.

And for that much, thanks.

For the six months of back-and-forth that Pennsylvanians had to endure courtesy of Eakin’s involvement in the so-called “Porngate” scandal?

Well, not so much.

Eakin, a Republican, follows into retirement former Justice Seamus McCaffery, a Democrat who was implicated in the widespread sharing of pornographic, racist and sexist emails by members of the statewide judiciary and the legal profession.

The emails that ended Eakin’s career on the bench were brought to light as a result of embattled Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s investigation of her predecessors’ handling of the Jerry Sandusky child-sex scandal.

If there has been one salutary effect of Kane’s tragic fall (she faces criminal charges in Montgomery County) it is at least that her actions exposed the frat house culture of Pennsylvania’s legal profession.

As PennLive’s Charles Thompson reports Eakin’s quiet exit from the court, announced by his attorney, William Costopoulos, brings to an end his “public argument that a man who privately laughs at racial, ethnic and sexual humor can fairly judge essential legal issues pertaining to civil rights and fairness in the criminal justice system.”

We hope also that it has brought to an end the culture of scandal surrounding Pennsylvania highest court. From an electioneering conviction to Porngate it can safely be said that Pennsylvanians have had to put up with a lot from an institution that should be beyond reproach.

Chief Justice Thomas Saylor and the newly elected members of the high court have already begun to do the hard work of repairing the court’s public reputation.

But there is a part for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the Republican-controlled General Assembly to play as well.

With Eakin’s resignation, the seven-member court has been reduced to six members.

It will be up to Wolf to appoint a replacement and for the Senate to confirm that person.

As Pennsylvania’s hyper-extended budget debate has made clear, Wolf and the Legislature have proven woefully incapable of agreeing on much of anything. And with an election ahead, the temptation of further gridlock is great.

But when it comes to appointing Eakin’s replacement, they should that resist that temptation and keep in mind that voters have little confidence in their ability to do the right thing.

Moving quickly to fill Eakin’s vacancy would be a good first step toward fixing that.

- Pennlive

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U.N. WATCH: TEMERITOUS TWEET, March 13

Despite Palestinians’ violence against Israelis in the occupied West Bank, the United Nations’ so-called humanitarian aid organization continues to fan the flames of hatred. This time it’s with a despicable tweet from the branch’s U.S. communications director.

Laila Mokhiber, with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), recently tweeted her endorsement of “Israeli Apartheid Week,” according to the monitoring group U.N. Watch. Organized by “grassroots solidarity groups,” the observance is intended to “raise awareness” of Israel’s “apartheid policies” over Palestinians. Not that Palestinian violence needs any prompting.

The tweet came after Ms. Mokhiber and her colleagues had met in Washington with UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krahenbuhl, U.N. Watch reported. Once the tweet was flagged, Mokhiber reportedly locked her Twitter account then shut it down.

And no wonder, too, when Washington pumps an estimated $400 million annually into this supposedly “objective” agency that consistently demeans Israel, all of which incites more violence.

Since October, Palestinians have used guns, knives and cars to attack West Bank Israelis, killing at least 28. Among the contributing factors of late have been social media.

Mokhiber’s communique should have prompted a denouncement tweet with the hashtag #NotAPennyMore4UNRWA from the U.S. ambassador’s office.

- The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

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COVER-UP ONLY SERVES TO MAKE CRIMES WORSE, March 13

President Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up experience was regarded back then as a stern warning to all holding positions of responsibility going forward - that there was no guarantee that any cover-up would remain under wraps forever.

Back then, that warning seemed to apply only to government, but it’s a warning that two former bishops of the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese should have heeded.

In Nixon’s case, physical evidence in the form of the Watergate tapes proved Nixon’s damning knowledge about the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at Washington’s Watergate complex, as well as his efforts to conceal that knowledge.

The physical evidence proving the existence and magnitude of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese’s priest-sex-abuse scandal and the decades-long cover-up tied to it are the handwritten notes of former Bishops James Hogan and Joseph Adamec.

Both wrongly assumed that those notes never would get beyond the diocese’s secret archives. Both never envisioned a grand jury subpoena for information contained in those archives.

However, beyond that information, there were the hundreds of people with knowledge about the abuse, including those who were abuse victims, the two bishops believed would be silenced forever.

It’s important that current Bishop Mark Bartchak be as expeditious as possible in regard to his pledge for diocesan transparency - a pledge made in the wake of state Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s release of a state grand jury report on March 1 detailing the horrific scandal.

There are some parishioners and non-Catholics alike who already believe that he has been dragging his feet since he voiced his promise at a news conference.

Rightly or wrongly, some parishioners have lost confidence in the bishop, although it must be stated that Bartchak inherited the scandal when he was placed in charge of the diocese in 2011.

He wasn’t responsible for it.

But now there is the troubling new disclosure that three Cambria County judges, while serving previously as Cambria district attorney, did nothing to publicly expose evidence of horrific abuse that had occurred - or that still might have been occurring - against children by priests serving at churches in the county.

The new allegations suggest that those judges - two of whom continue to serve while one is retired - actually were complicit in the cover-up by acceding to the two disgraced bishops’ wishes to keep the abuse under wraps.

Like Nixon, those judges fell victim to the errant belief that the cover-up never would come back to haunt them.

Ditto the Penn State officials accused of covering up Jerry Sandusky’s heinous crimes, which forever stained the university’s reputation.

At least regarding the sitting judges, it’s reasonable to wonder what the future might hold for them.

Meanwhile, additional names have been emerging in news coverage regarding the scandal.

Further, it’s logical to ponder whether new investigations will be triggered by the reported 150 calls that have been received by a new priest-sexual-abuse hotline established in the wake of Kane’s release of the grand jury document.

Although current statutes of limitations are preventing prosecution of those priests still living who are identified in the report, there is no statute of limitations covering warnings from mistakes made in the past, such as what disgraced Nixon and Penn State.

Hogan and Adamec obviously once believed their diocesan service was above being put under public and legal microscopes.

It’s now clear how wrong they were.

- The (Altoona) Mirror

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OBAMA LIED AND WE BOUGHT IT, March 16

An estimated 470,000 people who did not provide proof of citizenship have somehow been granted Obamacare subsidies by the government; estimated cost: $750 million.

Our congressman, Lou Barletta, is livid. You should be, too.

According to President Obama, this was not supposed to happen. Back on Sept. 9, 2009, while pleading for passage of health-care legislation to a joint session of Congress, the president said that foes of his plan were accusing him of planning to insure illegal immigrants.

“This, too, is false,” he declared. “The reforms… I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

At which point, according to a transcript, someone in the House chamber shouted a two-word accusation: “You lie.”

Not true, the president rejoined.

But, as it turns out, the accuser was right.

In a report made public last month, Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, presented evidence that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid gave assistance in the form tax credits to Obamacare enrollees without first verifying their citizenship or lawful presence in the U.S.

The report also showed that the IRS lacks a plan to recoup the improperly awarded funds.

Yesterday, Barletta put Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, on the congressional griddle. She didn’t stand up to the heat.

“These tax credits are solely intended to be used to purchase health insurance by U.S. citizens and those lawfully residing here,” the Republican said. “Instead, they were improperly distributed, and the federal government will likely never see a cent returned.”

Noting that he’s been trying to fight illegal immigration for more than a decade, the former Hazleton mayor said, “I find it extremely troubling that at a time when our national debt is 19 trillion dollars and counting, the federal government continues to throw money away with no regard for the consequences.

“I would have a hard time explaining to families from my district - many of whom are still struggling to put food on the table - as to why they should be helping to pay for the health expenses of someone who broke the law to get here and has no right to those federal dollars,” Barletta continued.

He then asked Burwell, “Whose decision was it to prioritize illegal immigrants over American citizens?”

She didn’t answer the question. Instead, she said that, under the health care law, the subsidies were granted and the recipients were given 90 days to produce the required citizenship documents.

Burwell said the job of recovering the money from any illegal immigrants is now a problem for the IRS. She said she trusts that illegal immigrants will cooperate by returning the money to American taxpayers.

“Why did we not go back to those people after we gave them the tax credits to get the money back, the tax credits that could have been used for someone else?” Barletta pressed. “Please explain to me how the administration is going to make up to my constituents and ensure that three-quarters of a billion dollars is returned to the American taxpayer.”

Burwell again pointed to the IRS, saying “… for any of these individuals, what will happen is they will owe those in taxes, in terms of reconciling.”

“We can count on that money coming back, 750 million .,” Barletta interjected.

“What will happen is, when they go in, this will be reconciled through the IRS process,” Burwell said.

After the hearing, Barletta was still incredulous.

“This is the gang that spends Obamacare money first and asks questions later,” he said. “Our national debt is spiraling out of control by the minute, and the administration keeps sending good money after bad.”

Many pundits say that the Democrats are locking up the Hispanic vote for generations to come. What’s seldom pointed out is that they’re paying for that loyalty with the public’s money.

- Bloomsburg Press Enterprise

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CITIZENS DIE AS POLITICIANS BOW TO NRA, March 11

On the same day that two gunmen killed five people and critically injured three others in Wilkinsburg, Allegheny County, the state Supreme Court conducted a hearing on one of many idiotic Pennsylvania gun laws that serve the interests of the gun lobby rather than public safety.

In Wilkinsburg the gunmen conducted a planned ambush. One fired into a crowd of people at a backyard party, anticipating that they would flee to the house. When they did so, the second killer fired into the group as it backed up at the kitchen door, using a semiautomatic assault-style rife to fire at least 25 shots in less than a minute. One of the victims was pregnant, so under Pennsylvania law, the killers will be charged with six counts of murder when they are caught.

Hours earlier at the Supreme Court, justices heard arguments in a case that illustrates how craven lawmakers have helped to convert parts of the commonwealth into free-fire zones.

In 2014 state lawmakers representing gun activists introduced a bill that was so bad it could not survive on its own merits. It granted legal standing to gun activists from anywhere to sue municipal governments that enact gun-control measures in the interest of public safety.

Prior to the bill, dozens of Pennsylvania municipalities had enacted ordinances requiring the reporting of lost or stolen guns and limiting sales to one gun per person per month, to prevent the sale of weapons to criminals. Several of those local laws had been upheld in state courts, which ruled that the gun activists who sued against them did not have legal standing.

The bill’s sponsors waited until the waning moments of the 2014 legislative session and attached it to an unrelated bill regarding penalties for scrap metal theft. Doing so spared the narrow-interest legislation the trouble of hearings and debates - you know, democracy.

It plainly violates the state constitution to combine unrelated bills, so the Commonwealth Court overturned the law last year. That prompted the appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Wilkinsburg killers used the military-style weapon for its designed purpose - killing people. Unless Pennsylvania lawmakers stop pandering to the gun lobby and get serious about helping Pennsylvania communities improve public safety, the law itself will continue to be an accessory to murder.

-Scranton Times-Tribune

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