Presenting the Insane Clown Posse

MAYBE THERE'S a reason so many state capitals are located in not-so-major cities. Cities such as Albany and Trenton and Annapolis and Dover, to cite just a few examples, instead of New York and Newark and Baltimore and Wilmington, respectively. And that's just in the Northeast. Hmmm ... Have I left any capital out? Ah, yes, Harrisburg, site of my very own commonwealth's long-running clown show. After the pay-raise fiasco of last year, one can conclude only that Pennsylvania's forefathers wanted to keep prying media eyes out of the state's nefariously run affairs, and so seated the capital not in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, but in the center of nowhere, making government appear remote and insignificant and thus not worth following.

You'd think that after all three branches of the government fumbled the raise issue, the state would start off the new year with extra caution to keep its nose clean. How, then, to explain the last couple of days in the legislature, where Democrats, despite winning a majority in December, were prevented from electing one of their own as Speaker of the House? And how did this happen, you ask? Why, because one of the Democrats, Thomas Caltagirone, had announced he would support the previous Republican speaker, John Perzel, apparently because he, Caltagirone, wasn't going to be given a plum leadership slot in the new term. Terrific reasoning. Way to put the commonwealth's interests before your own. Caltagirone is such a dedicated public servant, reported the Inquirer earlier this week, he

last made statewide headlines in the mid-1990s, when an aide accused him of sexual harassment. The aide said she walked into a room, found him lying naked on a bed, and when she fled, he followed her in a car and threatened her at gunpoint. A state grand jury investigated, but no charges were ever filed. About two years ago, Caltagirone rehired the aide.

With Democrats unable to muster support for top candidate Bill DeWeese, they opted to recruit ... a Republican. With, um, really funky hair, considering he's a politician.

Sigh.

On top of that comes news today that Liquor Control Board chair Jonathan Newman, who somehow turned the completely dreadful, antiquated, and patronage-ridden state store system into a halfway decent place to buy good wine, is stepping down to protest -- rightly -- Governor Rendell's unnecessary and blatantly political appointment of a former state senator to serve as LCB's chief executive officer. In other words, a bureaucrat actually did something good for the state's citizens, turning lemons into lemonade, and was rewarded by being shoved aside so that the Governor could either pay off a political debt or store up some chits for the months to come. Either way, it tastes pretty sour to me.