The first headline below comes from LNP reprint of the Inquirer article. The second is the actual heading from the Inquirer
“Senate panel will weigh Kane’s fate”
“Battle Joined Over Kane’s Future”
It takes the LNP / Inquirer eight paragraphs before they even mention Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s defense and then only in a passing manner, and that is on the flip page:
LNP / PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: …”The Senate is moving forward under an obscure provision that, unlike the more well-known impeachment process, does not require any action by the state House.
Under the procedure now being pursued – and which Kane is fighting – the panel would vote at the end of the month on a report about the impact of the suspension.”
The rest of the 22 paragraphs ignore Kane’s defense.
Now here is a news article covering the Senate Hearing appearing in the Lehigh Valley Morning call, starting with the first paragraph and then continuing with with the fourth paragraph appearing on the first page.
“Kathleen Kane, Pa. Senate battle over her job”
“HARRISBURG — Staff loyal to Attorney General Kathleen Kane refused to accept a Senate subpoena for agency records that back up Kane’s claim she can stay in office without a law license, according to the Senate Republican’s top lawyer…
The state constitution says a law license is mandatory for the job. Kane maintains she doesn’t need one, saying 98 percent of her job is administrative and administerial in nature. Top lawyers in her office and across Pennsylvania disagree.
In her letter, Kane pointed to Article 4 of the constitution that says the governor can remove “appointed” officials at will. The Commonwealth Attorneys Act of 1980 made the attorney general an elected position, Kane said, rendering that provision moot. As an elected official, Kane said, she can only be removed under Article 6 if she is senile or mentally incompetent.
There is no evidence to her knowledge that she has become senile or mentally incompetent to hold office, Kane wrote.
” ‘It is also true I do not personally engage in the practice of law as attorney general to such a degree in the normal course of duties that the public safety is in jeopardy,’ Kane wrote.
The Morning Call article is representative of reports not only by Bill Keisling at News Lanc but in other media throughout the state.
To what can we attribute the Inquirer and LNP ignoring the important new developments and reporting only one side of the story?
The Philadelphia Inquirer / Phladelphia Daily News, same ownership and sharing staff, is the party which turned over a so called leak of grand jury information that it claims was provided by its source, Kathleen Kane. The exposing of a source, let alone accusing them, is virtually without precedent in journalism.
Then LNP editorial board, presumably led by the Chair who is a member and an attorney, soon thereafter began its ongoing attacks on Kane.
What can be the motivation for LNP leaping to the support of the Philadelphia papers?
Could it be that the only likely newspaper in the state to investigate LNP’s wrong doings in Lancaster County is the Inquirer? LNP’s chair certainly doesn’t want to anger the Inquirer’s editors.
Today’s USA Today article reports on only the most recent studies showing Pennsylvania government among the most corrupt in the nation. It could not remain that way without the Pennsylvania media looking the other way.
Here in Lancaster where we have suffered from the Convention Center/ Marriott Hotel Project which enriched LNP’s stockholders and are now about to see taxpayers deprived of tens of million dollars by LNP stockholders’ half equitable ownership of the Marriott, the beneficial ties between media and government become all the more clear. Recall how a provision was snuck into a law on another subject to qualify a downtown convention center that otherwise was prevented due to the presence of the nearby Host convention facilities?
One hand washes the other. Perhaps it is time that readers of LNP should wash themselves of LNP. More on this later.
I cancelled my subscription months ago, and will never renew while the current ownership, management and editorial staff stay in place. Mere words cannot adequately express my total disgust at how LNP has disrespected this community and continues to do so. They have absolutely no journalistic or business morals at all.
Smucker has thrown his hat in the ring to succeed Pitts. Smucker = CRIZ and CRIZ is a scam on the taxpayers of Lancaster City/county. Everyone must know this!
EDITOR: Is this an argument to boot him upstairs where he can do less damage?
This paper is crap. It’s a Tea Party pile of loose grounds with little substantion. A rumor mill at a bus stop where buses just don’t stop anymore.
LNP is seriously worried that someone, sometime will take a hard, thorough and honest investigation into the shenanigans the LNP/PSP and all their in-step cronies have done to the honest, hard-working, ethical taxpayers of this county. An investigation that will have teeth to it; and that will have repercussions effectively all that were ethically, morally and perhaps criminally derelict.
LNP wants so much for any type of such potential investigation to just quietly go away.