Free Republic

Man, Ed Rendell is so screwed -- literally. I don't normally listen to Opie & Anthony looking for breaking news, but astonishingly that's what I just got. A few minutes ago, the cast of the show on Sirius XM radio were interviewing Kristin Davis -- not the one from Sex and the City, the former Manhattan Madam who spent four months in Rikers in connection with the Eliot Spitzer hooker scandal from last year. There's been quite a bit of speculation that her operation at one time serviced another high-profile governor, besides Spitzer, and up until now she's been largely...

The state House voted 49-150 this afternoon to defeat the Senate's $27.1 billion budget proposal, which sends the budget discussions to a House-Senate conference committee. No plan was announced for the committee to start work. Its meetings must be held in public. Many expect closed-door negotiations between legislative leaders and Gov. Ed Rendell to continue while the committee does its work. The state has been without a budget since July 1.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is spending $60,000 of its stimulus money on $2,000 road signs to highlight projects funded by the massive economic recovery package. The large green signs mark about 30 of what PennDOT calls ''higher visibility projects'' statewide. Each denotes the project is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and features the act's logo. Nationwide, several million dollars are being spent producing the signs. PennDOT spokesman Steve Chizmar said Pennsylvania elected to take a ''middle-of-the-road'' approach to the federal government's strong encouragement that the signs be put at every project site around the state, choosing...

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Gov. Ed Rendell outlined a $29 billion budget Wednesday that would expand spending on education, prisons and health coverage while drawing from federal aid and state surpluses, increasing some taxes and cutting other programs. The plan, a 2.5 percent increase from what was originally approved for the 2008-09 budget, also would withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars from the state's "rainy day" contingency fund without draining it completely. It does not call for increasing any broad-based tax. "The budget I propose requires considerable sacrifice and pain, so that we can close the deficit and put our fiscal...

It's the top story in Pennsylvania. Twelve Democrat state leaders facing corruption charges in a massive scandal dubbed "Bonusgate." If it were twelve Republican state leaders, I guarantee you would have heard all about it by now. Via the Philly Daily News: A SORDID TANGLE of corruption, cash and sex rocked the Statehouse yesterday in a political scandal that left one current and one former legislator and 10 current and former staff members facing criminal charges. Among the accusations leveled by two state grand juries: Former top legislative staffer Mike Manzo got his lover, a twenty-something former rural beauty queen,...

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Pennsylvania became the fifth U.S. state to seek universal health coverage for its citizens on Wednesday when it unveiled a plan to provide medical insurance for some three-quarters of a million residents who currently have none. Along with other states including Massachusetts and California, Pennsylvania is joining a growing movement among U.S. states to tackle the problem of residents without health care insurance, which according to some estimates number as many as 46 million Americans or about 15 percent of the population. The problem of uninsured medical costs, often left to be covered at taxpayer expense,...

Is (Pennsylvania) Governor Rendell Secretly Planning A Vice Presidential Run?

Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta and Gov. Ed Rendell traded barbs over a new city ordinance that cracks down on illegal immigrants, with Rendell saying during a Thursday stop in Scranton that it had been drafted by “mean-spirited” politicians who “feed off hate and divisiveness.” Barletta disagreed, saying the ordinance simply upholds the law. The only mean-spirited remarks that Barletta said he could recall were made by two members of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs, who publicly called Hazleton a “Nazi city” and said that Latinos would never assimilate into American culture. The Associated Press and The (Scranton) Times-Tribune...