Early Returns pokes Fitzgerald with its Golden Quill

... by publishing a January e-mail from the County Exec candidate to Marcellus Shale industry doyenne Katie Klaber. Excerpted:

It is critical for my viability in eyes of the politucal [sic] world to have money in the bank and have it early. City Councilman Doug Shield's wife, Bridgit, is making calls to the energized moratoriom [sic] crowd for Mark Flaherty by telling them that Mark Flaherty will support a moratorium. The next Chief Executive of Allegheny County will either be me or Mark Flaherty. If you want the leader of this region to be someone who is clueless about natural gas and your industry, continue to sit on your hands that is exactly what will happen. (P-G Early Returns, Tim McNulty)

McNulty strikes again. What are we going to do with him? He's like a little devil who fits perfectly on the shoulders of less widely-read, derivative bloggers.

For the record, Mark Patrick Flaherty's proposed public-private partnership with the drilling industry sounds unnecessarily risky to the Comet all the same. In an ideal world, I'd prefer the County to go into the drilling business on its own land on its own terms all by itself, do all the hiring (locally), and keep all the profits. However I seem to recall something about public entities being barred from competing with private industry -- at least in certain circumstances.

EDITORIAL: Bottom line, it's starting to sound like Allegheny County might just as easily survive whether we elect Rich or Mark. With the former, you get some better adherence to traditional Democratic party values, especially in terms of social issues. (I do profess to disdain "single-issue voting", but when push comes to shove I do tend to use reproductive choice as a litmus test on whether public officials trust and respect me.) On the other hand, Flaherty has employed more reasonable rhetoric on issues from property tax assessments to wariness of drilling, and generally has been the cooler cucumber, which I find reassuring. Finally there is the issue of whether having a Mayor of Pittsburgh and an Allegheny County Executive who are more naturally simpatico with one another will result in practical, ideologically neutral, day-to day benefits.

Tell you what -- and this golden rule will serve for all Comet endorsements this year, so cut, paste, print and iron on your t-shirts for Election Day. We endorse all incumbents without exception, and in cases where there is no incumbent, we endorse the candidate with the tried-and-true legacy last name. If you reside in Magisterial District 05-2-35, you'd better write in Nathan Firestone for another term against his will, or else draft Brittany Caliguiri. Although we look forward to working with whomever wins, unless they are a Republican.

Trib is Succinct, Eloquent on Topic of Liberty

Can I just use this as my Blog for Equality Day post?

Lance: To state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe. The Cranberry Republican wants to codify discrimination by amending the Pennsylvania Constitution to deny legal "marriage" to same-sex couples. And the proposed wording of his amendment goes a step further, appearing to not even recognize any other "legal union." But constitutions are not for denying rights; they're for enumerating them. This is poor form, the antithesis of liberty, and the effort should be rejected. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Editorial Board)

This is what progress looks like.

But we do this dance with Metcalfe every year, and it is time for the cohorts of liberty to take to the offensive instead. There is a civil right enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution known as equal protection under the law. How then does Pennsylvania get away with not recognizing civil unions? If the Commonwealth is in charge of a regime of matrimonial incentives furthering familial stability, it better pony up and get on the business side of the bendy arc of history by passing HB 708 sponsored by Philadelphia's Mark Cohen.

It also makes me wonder. Have two Pennsylvania partners of the same gender ever applied for a marriage license in modern times? Upon being turned away, have they ever just tried suing?

Ricky Burgess and Rachel Maddow on Homewood, Gun Violence and the NRA's Influence.

You have to admit, this is something you just don't see every day:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Makes me think of this:

Police Chief Nate Harper yesterday asked for the public's patience as the city's Office of Municipal Investigations investigates, while members of the city's Fraternal Order of Police praised Officers Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak as the city's most effective at getting guns off the streets. (P-G, Gurman and Lord, 1/27/10)

Police leaders honored Officers Michael Saldutte, Richard Ewing and David Sisak with eight citations for their work in 2009, including rescuing trapped motorists from a June flood, taking illegal guns off the street and helping to identify a man who was snatching purses from elderly women in Bloomfield. (Trib, Jill King Greenwood, 3/20/10)

The trio were patrolling in what police call a "99 car," assigned to aggressively rid the city's rough spots of drugs and guns. In that capacity, they were known as some of the police bureau's most skilled officers, leading the bureau in firearms arrests. (P-G, Sadie Gurman)

So we have a torrent of unregistered firearms making their way into some poor and neglected communities due in large measure to our refusal to enact any sort of policies to counteract the illegal deadly weapons trade -- quick and easy violence ensues for about a generation, increasingly being the surest perceived path to respect for many -- a terrified populace sends specially trained officers into these neighborhoods with orders to "aggressively" get the guns off the streets, ranking and rewarding them for how many they can collect annually -- I guess I can only say that I hope the Police Department doesn't somehow wind up selling these collected guns at gun shows after they're done with them as evidence? This is what I meant in the last post by suggesting it's possible these three officers can't intelligibly be tried as criminals by The People, their own co-conspirators -- though the absence of any findings of misconduct whatsoever would be a little hard to understand. There's almost assuredly a bit of wounded pride and fearful litigiousness clouding matters right now.

For the record, I watched the above clips with Comet Senior Political Analyst Morton Reichbaum, and his only critique of the discussion was, "How could they have talked about guns and killings for that long and not talked about drugs?"

Police Accountability: A Plea for Patience

It was all right here months ago:

But David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh professor who specializes in law-enforcement issues, says that even if the Justice Department declines to prosecute, local officials should act independently.

Federal investigators must meet a higher burden of proof, he notes. While a district attorney might prosecute on evidence of assault, for example, the FBI must "prove all of that, plus that [the crime] was done to violate federal civil rights."

"What you would not want to see is the federal investigation close ... and then the state and local [authorities] say, 'If they can't, we can't,'" Harris adds. "If that would happen, there would be questions to be asked." (CP, Chris Young)

Recall exactly what US Attorney David Hickton took pains to explain on Wednesday. Recognize that the Office of Municipal Investigations (OMI) already announced it was standing down a day later.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has said he would wait until federal authorities were finished before deciding what he would do. His spokesman, Mike Manko, said he would have no comment until the office contacts the U.S. attorney's office next week and receives reports from OMI. (Trib, Margaret Harding)

Good that he is taking a deliberate, serious approach. His is the correct arena for this dispute right now.

One must fight to remember that the impossibility of a federal civil rights case does not mean the City could not have engaged in some systemic civil injustice -- nor that the officers necessarily were innocent of any sort of conceivable professional misconduct, regardless of whether we take Jordan Miles at his every word. Yes, OMI took a pass even on issuing what many would consider to be slaps on the wrist -- perhaps out of recognition that these men have already been transmogrified into regional pariahs, perhaps out of fear of jeopardizing other litigation. But the public rally today appears to be timely and appropriate in terms of its plea to the DA's office.

After that, we'll see.

We have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that those police officers we train, prime and send into the likelihood of sudden, brutal, racially-charged confrontation cannot intelligibly be charged as criminals. Not by their co-conspirators at any rate. Yet even at the end of that day, there need be no dearth of teachable and accountability moments -- just not of the type some of us dream about.

*-UPDATE: The "Alliance for Police Accountability" is taking their brief directly to the Chief of Police, as well as to OMI.

The Band: Guns N' Roses

The vintage: The 1990 compilation Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal and later the 1991 album Use Your Illusion II.^

Koch gets Kraus on Campaign Ethics Issue **

Councilman Bruce Kraus, campaigning now to defend his South Side seat, accepted contributions over the legal limits he helped to enact -- but seems to have found a way around that, even having months ago declared his intentions in doing so to the County Elections Board.

Rebuffed by the elections department, the Koch camp is filing an ethics complaint against Kraus and may file a Common Pleas Court complaint, as the ordinance also allows, campaign manager Tim Brinton said. (P-G Early Returns, Tim McNulty)

Kraus's campaign manager is quoted as arguing that the code is silent on this matter of what we will now call "Paying-it-Forward".

*-UPDATE: Looks like Kraus isn't the only one. Two other Council incumbents are in that boat, reports the CP Slag Heap's Chris Potter.

**-UPDATE II: Perhaps more. It will take some time to settle the "good faith confusion".

*-FOOTNOTE: Was I being political? Judge for yourself -- author disclaimers in comment #7.

**-UPDATE III: Kraus sends out a response (although now it looks like it was a response to far more).

Negotiated Settlement: Billboard Coming Down

Time to cash in or tear up those betting stubs:

Scenic Pittsburgh Executive Director Mike Dawida said in a statement that the unfinished billboard will be removed before Sept. 1. (Trib, Bill Vidonic)

It's a wonder anymore what all the fuss was about.

Also, the city placed a moratorium on electronic billboards until regulations are drafted and approved by council. Those regulations are still being pondered by the city`s planning commission. (ibid)

Those regulations have been proceeding very slowly, even by relative standards -- but hey, mo' moratorium, mo' less problems.