Philly Inquirer makes it clear that Kathleen Kane has to go.

From last Thursday’s “Wrong Message”:

The recent release of pornographic and bigoted e-mails sent and received by former Chief Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina put him squarely in the midst of a repugnant culture of disrespect for anyone who isn’t a straight white man. No wonder he fought to prevent their release amid his interminable feud with Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

The e-mails are a reminder that the “old boys’ network” Kane has referred to certainly exists. But that does not make it responsible for all the attorney general’s problems and shouldn’t distract from the fact that Kane has proven herself unfit to serve as the state’s highest law enforcement official. If the e-mails are the smoking gun that was supposed to vindicate her, as she has suggested, she has made yet another miscalculation.

Sleazy e-mails don’t explain why Kane quashed subpoenas targeting her connected Scranton supporters or killed a sting investigation of fellow Democratic politicians from Philadelphia. Nor do they justify her alleged leak of secret grand jury documents to embarrass Fina.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20150903_Wrong_message.html#DhY2CyKHIX3jWHER.99

It’s like I said a month ago, the battle to get rid of Kane was going to be turned by her into a game of political correctness.   From her perspective, Fina and Costanzo’s bad e-mails absolve the fact that Kane is out there abusing the office of attorney general.   So many Democrats have asked her to step aside in the interests of both the party and the state, but what we get is “no no no!  Fina and Costanzo are bad!!”

How does Kathleen Kane actualy think she is going to survive a primary campaign next spring?   She won’t.   The other candidate(s) just have to point out that they aren’t under indictment.   She fails to see that the cloud that is around her is politically damning enough.  It doesn’t really matter whether she thinks she can take the Montgomery County charges to a jury trial and overcome this, i.e. not be found guilty from the jury box..   The bad deeds already mean she can’t survive the ballot box.

Allentown Morning Call had a piece last week about how the Disciplinary Board is trying to yank her law license as a means to disqualify her from doing anything as attorney general.  Yeah, maybe.  But this opens up a whole host of issues about whether the AG’s office would become a political plaything.

In the ideal, the role should be put back to a governor’s appointment, like it had been up until 1980.   This is how it has been in New Jersey under the 1947 Constitution, and no doubt in the unredeeming pre-’47 era as well.   The governor is the chief executive officer, and it’s stupid to have another elected executive branch officer out there who is not accountable to the governor.  You can argue that an auditor or a treasurer needs independence.   But why goes the state’s top lawyer?

Look what happens.