Here's hoping. This story disgusted me, and that's tough, considering I'm a jaded SOB.

A state senator on Monday advocated that juveniles be required to have a lawyer in court in the aftermath of hundreds of youth convictions being thrown out because of judicial corruption in northeastern Pennsylvania.

The proposal is one of several planned by Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne, to shore up the rights of juveniles and redress the wrongs suffered by the victims of two judges who pleaded guilty to taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from youth detention centers.

''These kids certainly did not get the kind of treatment I would want for my child, as well as everybody else's child,'' Baker said.

In a stunning turn of events late Friday, a Philadelphia Common Pleas court judge disqualified Seth Williams, the leading candidate for Philadelphia District Attorney, on the ground that he "failed to report the receipt of expenses in excess of $10,000 from his campaign," as required financial disclosure forms filed with the city. In a related ballot challenge, Common Pleas Court Judge Allan Tereshko ruled that candidate Michael Turner has sufficient valid signatures on his nominating petitions to remain on the ballot. Before the ruling, there were five Democrats and one Republican on the ballot for the May 19 primary election.

In a written statement, the Williams campaign said it would appeal Tereshko's decision.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said yesterday that it would give a judge the discretion to overturn the cases of as many as 1,200 juveniles sentenced by a Luzerne County judge who admitted taking payments from detention centers to which he sentenced some of them.

Calling the unanimous order a first step toward restoring public confidence in the justice system, the court said it applies to first-time offenders convicted of minor crimes who appeared without counsel before Luzerne County Juvenile Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. between 2003 and 2008.

"Today's order is not intended to be a quick fix," Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille said in a statement. "It's going to take some time, but the Supreme Court is committed to righting whatever wrong was perpetrated on Luzerne's juveniles and their families."

In a report to the court filed March 13, Berks County Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim said his investigation uncovered "routine deprivation of children's constitutional rights to appear before an impartial tribunal and have an opportunity to be heard."

Today's charges grow out of the operation of the Beaver Initiative for Growth, a Veon-organized economic development program that was funded through state grants.

In June of last year, the Post-Gazette reported that BIG was the subject of a state investigation by the attorney general and quoted one former director as saying he left after becoming uncomfortable with how state development grant monies were handled by Mr. Veon's staff.

"Money was just sort of seen as a kind of arbitrary commodity that could be shifted and flowed wherever needed, regardless of what kind of stipulations were put on it," said John Gallo, who Mr. Veon hired to run BIG between 1999 and 2003, when Mr. Gallo resigned, sensing an impending disaster.

Gene Stilp wanted the state Ethics Commission to investigate whether House leaders used $290,000 in state money for political polls. Instead, Mr. Stilp is the one who wound up under investigation.

While the commission dismissed his complaint against former state House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, it fined Mr. Stilp $500 last year for publicly discussing his filing with newspaper reporters.

Aiming to ensure that doesn't happen again to him or anyone else, Mr. Stilp Friday filed suit against the commission in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg. He claims the commission's regulation unconstitutionally violates his right to free speech.

"It's very, very chilling. It makes people afraid to file a complaint," said Mr. Stilp, founder of the activist group Taxpayers and Ratepayers United.

Ethics regulations prohibit filers from discussing active complaints, with a few exceptions.

Mr. Stilp distributed news releases to reporters before filing his complaint, but did not discuss the complaint once it was before the commission.

An Amish farmer in Cambria County was ordered Tuesday to spend 90 days in jail for refusing to bring a pair of outhouses into compliance with state sewage laws.

Andy Swartzentruber of Ebensburg cites his conservative religious beliefs for refusing to abide by a court order to make the privies used by schoolchildren compliant and pay a fine. He was led away by a sheriff's deputy after Cambria County Common Pleas Judge Norman Krumenacker upheld a contempt of court ruling.

Krumenacker said he had no choice but to sentence Swartzentruber to jail and pay a $1,000 fine. He ordered the Amish school and outhouse padlocked.

Good riddance. We've been waiting for this scumbag to go to jail since KP opened five years ago.

HE WAS a political powerhouse in Harrisburg who boasted of securing $8 billion in state largesse for Philadelphia.

He had about 90 state-paid aides and contractors at his beck and call to do his personal and political bidding.

He paid a private eye with state money to spy on his political enemies and tapped a tax-exempt nonprofit he founded to finance a lawsuit against a powerful Senate rival.

But today, former state Sen. Vince Fumo stands as a disgraced pol after a federal jury of 10 women and two men yesterday found him guilty on 137 counts of conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice and related offenses.

Former State Sen. Vincent Fumo was convicted of all 137 counts against him today as his marathon federal corruption trial ended in a stunning victory for prosecutors.

The jury also found co-defendant Ruth Arnao guilty of all 45 counts against her.

After a 30-minute hearing this afternoon, U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter agreed to let Fumo and Arnao remain free pending sentencing although he ordered them to post bail of $2 million and $500,000, respectively, by Wednesday.

"STAY TUNED for a big announcement on Monday everyone!"

So wrote a blogging juror who's been deliberating for five days in the public corruption trial of former state Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, in a comment posted Friday on his Facebook Internet profile.

The posting by Juror No. 5 - Eric Wuest of suburban College-ville - raised questions:

Is a verdict imminent? Did Wuest have third-party discussions about the trial as a result of his postings on Facebook and Twitter social networking Internet accounts during the 15-week trial and the ensuing deliberations?

Last night, Fumo defense attorneys NiaLena Caravasos and Peter Goldberger filed an emergency motion seeking an immediate suspension of deliberations so the judge could conduct "a delicate, but probing inquiry" of the juror Wuest's actions.

"Depending on the results, the lawyers wrote, "one or more jurors ought to be removed and possibly replaced."

State Superior Court Judge Jack Panella will apparently run unopposed for the Democratic nomination for state Supreme Court this spring.

Panella's expected opponent, Philadelphia Judge Teresa Sarmina, said Monday she has decided to put party unity ahead of her own ambitions and withdrew from the race.

''I just re-evaluated where I was,'' she said. ''And for the betterment of the party, I decided to withdraw for another day.''

Panella, of Palmer Township, netted the state Democratic Party's official endorsement at a meeting in suburban Harrisburg in January. At that meeting Sarmina announced she planned to run without the party's endorsement and mount a primary challenge.

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Prosecutors say Judges Michael T. Conahan, and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., above, took kickbacks to send teenagers to detention centers.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

"I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare," said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. "All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing."