Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell called Republican challenger Lynn Swann a "hypocrite" Monday for politically backing legislators who supported last year's pay raise.

But any weight tbe incumbent Democrat's political punch might have carried was blunted even before he threw it. That's because hours earlier Rendell told reporters at a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg, "I believe it was a mistake to sign it."

Oh what a difference a year makes, right?

But you don't even need that much time to see that Rendell's hypocrisy knows few limits.

Read why in my Daily Rant.

Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ralph Cappy had the audacity today to defend last week's state Supreme Court ruling restoring his and 1,000 other judges' raises by saying the extra money is needed to retain quality justices.

In a speech to Philadelphia business leaders, Cappy said the $14 million the raises wil cost taxpayers "isn't a significant amount of money to try to ensure the quality of the judiciary. We are losing our best judges ... and we're not replacing them with the same quality."

Cappy's comments came one day after Jim Matthews, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, accused some in the judiciary of playing politics with their decisions based on how much money a defense attorney contributes to campaigns.

Matthews claimed the practice has been going on in Philly for 50 years.

I do think Cappy's right about one thing - new judges are not the same quality of those they're replacing, they're better.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.

Today will go down as a dark day in Pennsylvania history, and I'm not talking about the weather. It will be known forever as the day thieves wearing black robes robbed state taxpayers blind.

That's because the state Supreme Court finally issued a 5-1 ruling today justifying their own illegal raises - and those of 1,000 other judges and magistrates across Pennsylvania - even though the law granting those pay hikes was overwhelmingly repealed last year by the Legislature.

Justice Ron Castille, who authored the 100-page majority opinion, noted that the "pecuniary interest implicated here would ordinarily require a judge to disqualify himself or herself from the matter."

But the injustices gave themselves the pay raise anyway. Read why in my Daily Rant.

Somebody better tell Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Bob Jubelirer he lost in the May primary because he's still raising money for his campaign war chest.

Now, I could understand this if the Friends of Bob Jubelirer, the Republican's political committee, ran up a debt while he lost to a political newcomer, especially after Jubelirer apologized to his constituents for being one of the primary pushers of last year's now-repealed legislative pay raise.

But Bob's campaign was $85,780 in the black after the primary, state records show.

So why did the once-politically astute Jubelirer hold a $500-a-head golf tournament/fundraiser at the Scotch Valley Country Club in Hollidaysburg on Monday - on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, of all days?

Read why in my Daily Rant.

The drive to create the nation's largest electric company by merging Exelon Corp., the parent of PECO, and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. is now less likely to happen because New Jersey regulators have refused to approve it.

All I can say is, thank you New Jersey!

Thanks especially to public advocate Ronald Chen, for doing due diligence and not buckling to the company's demand that the merger, which would create a monopoly on electric power generation for the Eastern U.S., go through.

That's something Pennsylvania regulators didn't do before granting their approval last year.

Although a decade of deregulation was supposed to yield more competition and lower prices, Pennsylvanians are paying more than ever before and would have been at Exelon-PSEG's mercy.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.

It looks like slot machine gambling in Pennsylvania has finally become a political issue - only two years too late.

Republican state Senators now want to prevent the Gaming Control Board from starting to issue any of the 14 slot machine parlor licenses next month as planned until after the Legislature has a chance to fix the 2004 law legalizing them.

Finally. It's about damn time.

If you ask me, the fix was in two-years-ago when lawmakers passed that law in the middle of the night during the July 4th holiday weekend without any public comment, rather than risk putting the controversial issue to a statewide referendum.

Not only was this lemon of a law written by lobbyists and passed illegally, it contained a provision that bypassed the state's Ethics Law and allowed legislators to own up to 1 percent of a slots parlor.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.

A proposal to shrink Pennsylvania's 253 legislative districts down to 151 drew some praise Tuesday at a hearing in Pittsburgh, where lawmakers and gubernatorial hopeful Lynn Swann said it would make the state more cost efficient.

I agree with the premise, but disagree on the downsizing.

Sure it sounds good now, but do you really expect the remaining lawmakers will lower our taxes? The state had a near $1 billion surplus last year and I know I didn't get a rebate check. Instead, renters like me got a tax hike.

All this means is we'll have 102 less yahoos deciding how to divvy up the $500 million the Legislature spends annually on itself.

Instead, I propose we do precisely the opposite. Let's add seats - say about 12.4 million of them.

Any reduction in the size of the Legislature would take an amendment to the state constitution - a time consuming and difficult process. If you're going to open up that can of worms anyway, let's give Pennsylvanians more say in their government - not less.

For a few ideas, read my Daily Rant.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell signed the tax "reform" bill he wanted into law today, which I'm officially redubbing the Wage Earners' Tax since it actually increases taxes on anybody working here.

As I've said previously, the new law is really an election year ploy so some legislators and Rendell can say they gave $1 billion in tax relief to Pennsylvanians while justifying jamming slot machine gambling down our throats.

In truth, the $200 tax break the average homeowner may eventually receive from the state's share of slots quarters has likely already been offset by huge increases passed this summer by their local school districts.

And as I've said, the state has nearly a $1 billion surplus this year, so why did our lawmakers feel it was necessary to give local school districts the power to tax us even more?

Once that becomes clear, be prepared for the Legislature to pass a law legalizing table games, ostensibly so they can provide even more "help" to homeowners.

Read more in my Daily Rant.

What's old may be new again, but Carl E. Singley for mayor?

Please, no.

I remember Carl from my college days at Temple University. He was the dean of the law school in 1987. I was a journalism undergrad working as a reporter/editor for the Temple News.

I got him fired, or so the folks who gave me a Hearst Award - the college equivalent of a Pulitzer - thought.

Actually, Carl did a pretty good job of that all by himself.

If Singley didn't like a law student, for whatever reason, he put a letter in that student's file saying he or she should not be allowed to sit for the bar exam after spending thousands to attend the school and earning their degrees.

He also feuded with several members of the faculty, famously blocking one injured professor's car with his own simply because she had the audicity to defy him and park in a handicap spot despite his order against it.

Most importantly, the law students hated him.

Singley thought it was a black-white thing.

Read more in my Daily Rant.

That was the rhetorical and almost ludicrous question Michael Race posed Sunday in The Citizens Voice of Wilkes-Barre.

Rhetorical in that while House Speaker John Perzel called last year's legislative pay raise "indefensible" during a press conference last week, he never actually apologized for pushing it through.

Nor has he stopped the state from paying more than $1 million to private lawyers to defend lawsuits filed because of the now-repealed raises.

Perzel "never renounced his own remarks about lawmakers supposedly deserving a 16 percent boost in their base pay," Race wrote. "Instead, he expressed regret over the grief the issue - and his comments about it - has caused his colleagues."

That includes the 17 incumbent lawmakers - including the state's top two Republican senators - who were thrown out of office in last month's primary largely because of the pay raise issue.

And the lingering public resentment still being expressed in a poll released Thursday by Quinnipiac University. It showed respondents were evenly split on whether they would vote against their own legislators just because they voted for the pay raise.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.

Pennsylvania's House of Representatives rammed through a lobbyist disclosure bill, 190-1, Thursday that was almost word-for-word the same one Speaker John Perzel proposed two weeks ago - but even more watered down.

To make matters worse, the measure was passed using the same controversial - some say unconstitutional - method House leaders used to pass the law legalizing slot machines in 2004 and to give lawmakers a now-repealed pay raise last year.

An existing bill was gutted after it had already been approved once and put into committee, then brought back to the floor and passed a second time with its wording substantially changed.

But unlike the slots law and the pay raises, which used unrelated bills as their guise, Perzel's lobbyist "reform" bill, H.B. 2753, actually used a competing plan's House number, H.B. 700, as its own. And the legislator who wrote the old version acted as if it was still his bill.

Perzel feigned ignorance and pretended to be a good loser.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.

I have long decried the fact that Pennsylvania's Legislature is the only governmental body in the state exempt from the Sunshine or Open Meetings law.

That means the state lawmakers, who wrote that law, can debate the public's business behind closed doors in party-based caucuses.

But did you also know that they're pretty much exempt from the state's Open Records law too, by making their public records request process purposely prohibitive in order to deter the prying public?

This from a government body that spends $500 million annually on itself.

My buddy, Bob Bauder of the Beaver County Times, learned that firsthand recently when he tried to look up the office expenses of several lawmakers from his area.

Bob found that a citizen would pay hundreds of dollars and spend months, literally in a closet, trying to get expense reports for all of the state's 203 House members.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.

Despite mounting evidence that more helmetless motorcycle riders are now dying, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell stands by his 2003 repeal of the law requiring them to wear protective headgear in traffic.

"I know you'll be surprised hearing this from a Democrat, but I generally believe that government shouldn't get involved in things of personal choice," Rendell told Pittsburgh TV reporters last week after the crash involving Steelers' Super Bowl quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

His Republican opponent in the November election doesn't think so.

Former Steelers star Lynn Swann would sign a bill to restore the helmet law if he is elected and the Legislature passes it, but is not advocating such a move, said Swann spokeswoman Melissa Walters.

Clear lines can also be drawn between the gubernatorial hopefuls when it comes to the idea of a statewide indoor smoking ban and using money from slot machines to finance education.

In a state that never seems to put such controversial questions on a ballot referendum for the public to decide, the governor is often the final say on such matters.

Read more in my Home Turf blog on phillyBurbs.com.

I would have loved to have been in the Capital Newsroom when Pennsylvania House Speaker John Perzel hastily called a press conference today to back off his statements last week to a television station about last year's legislative pay raise.

Perzel must have been pounded the last four days after he said Thursday in a rare interview on WITF-TV's "Smart Talk" program that he supported the pay hike - which called for raises of 16- to 54-percent - because he claimed 30 state lawmakers have bad credit and Philly tattoo artists make more than legislators.

I can only think pressure is really mounting behind closed doors for him to be ousted as speaker.

Without so much as a pretense, Perzel called the press conference to say, "I understand that some of my statements defending the pay raise have been used against my members and, with that, I do not agree. It is not proper given the variety of viewpoints of our members that they are publicly penalized for my opinions.

"... I am here to make it very clear that I understand the people of our Commonwealth have spoken - the pay raise was wrong," Perzel said. "It has been repealed in accordance with the will of the people. I stand here today to acknowledge that I have been defending something that the people have determined to be indefensible."

Yet that didn't stop him and other state leaders from paying 16 private lawyers more than $1 million in tax money to defend the raises against five lawsuits, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.

The same tax reform bill Pennsylvania House Republicans tabled a month ago, saying it didn't do enough to help property taxpayers, passed tonight by a 137-61 margin, and was sent to Gov. Ed Rendell.

House Bill 39 only guarantees that three-quarters of the $1 billion in expected revenue from the state's share of 63,000 slot machines at 14 parlor across the state will be used by the 501 school districts to reduce property taxes.

By Rendell's own estimate, it will save the average homeowner $200, but increase taxes by a lot more than that on working renters. The rest of the slots money will be used to expand a rent rebate program for seniors making less than $35,000.

The bill requires the districts to place a referendum on the primary ballot next year asking voters within their borders if they favor a 1 percent earned income tax or personal income tax, with its proceeds being used for further reducing property taxes.

If approved, the district would then be limited to future tax increases based on the increase in the average of the statewide average weekly wage and the employment cost index.

While the bill may finally set some limits on what school boards can spend and what teachers' unions can ask for, it slams workers who cannot afford to buy homes by shifting the burden onto them.

A better move would have been to use the near-$1 billion the state overtaxed residents this year to pay school district costs and lower property taxes.

Read more about it in my Daily Rant.