Tuesday afternoon, Pat Toomey received the kind of news political candidates only dream of.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, his longtime nemesis and main foe in a 2010 Republican Senate primary, had just become a Democrat, catapulting Toomey into de facto front-runner in a race with national implications.

Suddenly, Toomey was everywhere: TV, radio, the cover of national newspapers, the blogosphere. Most candidates cast as giant-killer would have bragged and thumped their chests.

Not Toomey, who at 47 is embarking on a fifth career.

''I have a remarkable level of support across Pennsylvania and a huge influx of financial support,'' he said matter-of-factly by phone while driving to Philadelphia for television interviews. ''I am confident I will win the Republican nomination.''

From Eleanor Clift:

...Funny, yes, and seriously Machiavellian, claims one GOP source, who attributes Specter's surprise defection to a Biden-Rendell bank shot. Vice President Joe Biden is from Scranton, Pa., and Ed Rendell is governor of Pennsylvania, ties that put them solidly in Specter's orbit. Biden spent the last three decades in the Senate and knows Specter well. They served together on the Judiciary committee back in the day when they along with many others made fools of themselves grilling Anita Hill. The self-interest of the Obama-Biden administration in getting that 60th vote in the Senate is self-evident. It changes the calculus for everything going forward (health care reform, judicial nominations) if Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Then there's Rendell, whose personal ties to Specter are extensive, but who also has a political stake in seeing him hold his seat in Pennsylvania. Rendell once worked for Specter and regards him as something of a mentor; they're friends. For Rendell, a gregarious, ambitious politician, a Senate seat would cap his career as a former mayor and popular two-term governor. Those who know Rendell say he really wants the seat that Specter holds but would not run against his friend.

Federal prosecutors yesterday tried to debunk disgraced former state Sen. Vince Fumo's argument that he should not have to forfeit $4 million to the government.

The feds' court filing said that the defense was dead-wrong in its assertion that the feds' $4 million claim for forfeiture should be dismissed or at least limited to the $2 million amount originally sought in the indictment.

Fumo was found guilty on March 16 of 137 counts of conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice after a five-month trial. (Prosecutors contended at trial that Fumo defrauded the state Senate and two nonprofits of more than $4 million by, among other offenses, using Senate staffers and nonprofit resources for personal or political gain.)

Pennsylvania's cities and towns face a pension crisis as dire as the one facing state government and they need help from the Legislature, a trio of urban mayors said Monday.

''We need to reform and we need to do so now,'' Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said at a news conference.

''We in local government are tightening our belts and doing more with less. This issue has been creeping up on us and will continue to creep up on us.''

Ravenstahl, along with Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski and Reading's Tom McMahon, sketched out a plan that includes consolidating the state's 3,100 pension systems.

Grasping at straws...

Vince Fumo's lawyers are asking a federal judge to acquit the disgraced former state senator or give him a new trial.

Fumo was convicted by a federal jury on March 16 of 137 counts of conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice and related tax offenses.

Jurors found that Fumo had used Senate aides to do personal and political tasks for him on the taxpayers' dime. They also found that Fumo had tapped a nonprofit organization he founded, Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, for personal and political use and that he had taken free cruises on yachts owned by the Independence Seaport Museum.

But in a court filing yesterday, Fumo attorney Peter Goldberger said evidence presented during the five-month trial was "insufficient for any reasonable jury" to convict Fumo or co-defendant Ruth Arnao. (She was convicted on 45 similar counts.)

The state House has narrowly defeated the latest attempt to force Pennsylvania drivers to put down their cell phones while behind the wheel.

After three-plus hours of often raucous debate, the chamber voted 100-95 Wednesday against an amendment that would have required drivers to replace hand-held cell phones with hands-free devices.

Later, the House voted to impose an additional $50 fine on those caught driving carelessly if they also were using a hand-held cell phone or were text-messaging.

Attorney Paul Wright of Seattle-based Prison Legal News was stunned when he filed a right-to-know request with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and was told the department didn't have the information he sought.

Wright wanted records on lawsuit settlements. The department responded that it isn't required to create records.

"I call it the 'Right to Know Nothing Law,' " Wright said of Pennsylvania's open records statute.

Pennsylvania's updated law was supposed to start an era of transparency Jan. 1, but it has raised troubling issues along the way.

On the upside, public interest is heightened, said Terry Mutchler, director of the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, who is swamped with inquiries and appeals from denials. Mutchler said citizens, not journalists, have led the way, filing more than 90 percent of the nearly 300 pending appeals.

Pennsylvania's state government may not be open and accountable enough as it handles federal stimulus money, the state's fiscal watchdog warned in a letter to federal officials that The Associated Press obtained Monday.

Auditor General Jack Wagner's letter to a U.S. Government Accountability Office administrator warned that internal controls are so weak that information about how stimulus funds are spent will be unreliable without oversight from an independent audit agency.

"We are extremely concerned about the potential for a lack of statewide government transparency and accountability in the use of these vitally important funds," Wagner wrote to Phillip R. Herr, the federal agency's director of physical infrastructure issues.

Wagner listed Medicaid, low-income heating aid and weatherization assistance as examples of federally funded programs administered by the state that have "significant internal control weaknesses." He said a significant issue was the limited scope of information provided for the audits his own office has performed.

An investigative grand jury will form next month in Pittsburgh, and some officials believe it might gradually shift its focus toward possible corruption in the gambling industry.

Attorney General Tom Corbett is empaneling the grand jury to focus on public corruption and organized crime, and possibly environmental crimes and insurance fraud, spokesman Kevin Harley said Friday.

He would not comment about gambling, but other officials said they believe the licensing and development of casinos in Pennsylvania will become the grand jury's focus.

A grand jury that expired and will be replaced with this one heard testimony related to casinos. When a grand jury convenes, prosecutors summarize for the jurors unfinished business from the previous jury, Harley said.

From KDKA via Jon Delano:

Four years ago, when Democratic candidates like Bob O'Connor, Michael Lamb, and Bill Peduto ran for office -- there were at least five televised debates and 12 joint appearances.
 
This year, voters may be lucky to see Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Carmen Robinson, and Patrick Dowd together at all -- early on, Dowd called for nine debates.

"The mayor said he wanted three, and we acquiesced, and now he's saying he wants two, that he doesn't have time in the next 30 days to reschedule a debate that was obviously rightly postponed I think," Dowd said today.

Two debates were originally scheduled while minds were still focused on the fallen police officers.

The state House is gearing up for a fight over a bill that would ban discrimination against gays, lesbians and the transgendered.

And even as its architect scrambles to build support among skeptical lawmakers, opponents are readying a mountain of amendments they hope will sink the proposal.

Caught in the middle are Pennsylvania's gay and lesbian residents, who say they're just looking for the same protections as everyone else.

''I have friends who are moving to places like Colorado'' because they've heard people there are more progressive, said Alex Reber, 23, who is gay and lives with his partner in Harrisburg.

The announcement nobody's been holding their breath for:

Conservative former congressman Pat Toomey made it official yesterday, signing on for a rematch with moderate Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2010 Republican Senate primary.

Starting with a talk-radio interview in Allentown and a video on his new campaign Web site, Toomey said he was running to stop the "bailouts and the spending stampede" and because Specter had consistently supported "increased government spending and a liberal agenda on social, labor, immigration and national security policies."

Also, see the transcript of Josh Drobnyk's interview with Toomey.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pennsylvania homeowners outside of Philadelphia will for the second year receive at least $200 in property-tax reductions from slot-machine gambling revenue, Gov. Rendell said yesterday.

Speaking at a news conference in Pittsburgh, Rendell said that despite the recession, the amount of gambling revenue available for tax relief has remained stable, because the state's casino venues have proved to be competitive with neighboring states', including New Jersey.

He said the troubled economy makes property-tax rebates even more important to struggling homeowners this year.

"The national recession makes our property-tax relief law more valuable than ever for senior citizens on a fixed income and for families who may be suffering due to a layoff or a cut in working hours," said Rendell. "And property-tax relief will also benefit our small businesses, since the $770 million that Pennsylvanians will save this year is money that will be reinvested in the local economy."

From the Washington Post:

Sen. Arlen Specter's support for President Obama's stimulus package has recharged a political rivalry, setting up what could be a divisive rematch between one of the GOP's leading moderates and a powerful conservative activist.

Pat Toomey, head of the anti-tax Club for Growth, stepped down from the post Monday, the first move in what his aides say is an almost-certain run against Specter in next year's Republican Senate primary. In the 2004 primary, Specter defeated Toomey by 17,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast.

Even though the race is a year away, Specter has taken the rare step of running attack ads against Toomey, attempting to link his work as a trader on Wall Street in the 1980s and 1990s with the current economic crisis.

Both men say the stimulus will be a chief issue. Specter, one of three Republicans who voted for the stimulus, is campaigning throughout the state to hold his job and appeared Monday at a police station in Darby just outside Philadelphia. Officers there praised him for backing the $787 billion stimulus bill, which will provide the department $220,000 in funding to buy equipment.

Philadelphia's Public Defender today petitioned the courts to dismiss charges or grant new trial to another 26 persons convicted on drug charges - all allegedly arrested based on false information by veteran narcotics Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and his paid confidential informant.

Together with 24 petitions filed on April 3 and three last Wednesday, today's filings will bring to 53 the number of people whose convictions could ultimately be dismissed.

As with the earlier petitions, the filings in Common Pleas Court today bring contend that the cases - most of which resulted in guilty pleas - are tainted by allegations by Cujdik's former paid informant, Ventura "Benny" Martinez. Martinez, in a Feb. 9 interview with the Daily News, said he and Cujdik often falsified information to convince judges to sign search and arrest warrants for drug suspects.

The Rendell administration appears to be going out of its way to block public access to government documents. At least that is the impression left on the state's new open-records czar.

Terry Mutchler, executive director of Pennsylvania's Office of Public Records, has written to Gov. Rendell questioning whether top administration officials share the view that government should be open and transparent.

In the three-page letter, obtained by The Inquirer, Mutchler revealed a list of her concerns over how the administration has dealt with her and her staff - as well as individual records requests - since she was tapped to lead the open-records office in June.

According to her letter, the situation has gotten so bad that lawyers in Rendell's office have put representatives of every state agency on notice not to even take her calls. Everything has to be in writing, the lawyers insist.

Former Philadelphia Inquirer editorial writer Doug Pike announced his candidacy for Congress Wednesday, pursuing a seat that Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach has held since the district was drawn in 2002.

Pike, a 14-year veteran of the newspaper's editorial board, is the first Democrat out of the gate in the 6th District, which has been competitive in each of the four races Gerlach has won.

The son of Otis Pike, a former nine-term congressman from New York, Doug Pike came out swinging.

''I'm not a career politician. I won't play political games,'' he said in a statement. ''I'm running for Congress to bring a renewed focus on the needs of everyday citizens and to replace a partisan career politician who has failed the people time and again.''

Federal investigators on Wednesday sought help finding anyone who has been asked or required to provide money or anything else of value in order to obtain a job in a northeastern Pennsylvania public school.

The FBI made the request in what it said is a criminal investigation into the hiring of teachers and other school employees.

''We have heard allegations that it is a practice that may be going on in multiple areas, so we want to make sure that anybody who thinks that they have information that's related to this, that they should feel free to provide it to us,'' said FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver, a Philadelphia-based special agent.

The news release was issued one day after Wilkes-Barre Area School District Superintendent Jeffrey Namey testified before a federal grand jury in Scranton and a week after federal agents obtained records from the district and the Wilkes-Barre Area Career and Technical Center.

There were police officers from nearby towns and far-away cities. Combat veterans and young children. Family members and strangers, gathered in a line that seemed to grow endlessly, even as daylight slipped into darkness.

Through a chilly day and night, thousands of mourners had 20 hours to file past the bodies of three slain Pittsburgh police officers, and to try, however impossibly, to come to terms with their deaths.

"Every day when you leave for work, you lie to your family and say 'I'm going to be all right.' But you never really know," said Carmen Robinson, a former sergeant for one of the officers, Eric G. Kelly.

We've just opened our Twitter account as keystonepol. (We'll start using it today!). Who else from the PA political scene is on Twitter??

Former Mayor John F. Street said yesterday that he had struck no agreement with the Eagles to substantially reduce the team's $8 million debt to the city during private negotiations years ago that led to the building of Lincoln Financial Field.

"I didn't cut a secret deal. There was no deal. We didn't make a deal. . . . And if I had agreed to a deal, I would have put it in writing," Street said last night during a rare City Hall appearance.

"The one thing I did commit to," he continued, "is we would absolutely make a reasonable effort to come to a fair settlement and hopefully without litigation. It didn't happen."