I was going to do a background paragraph on the story, but the first line of this article makes it redundant: “State Attorney General Kathleen Kane has hired one of the most feared litigators in the region, Richard A. Sprague, to represent her in possible defamation suits arising from accounts of her decision to end an undercover investigation that taped at least five Philadelphia Democrats accepting cash or gifts.” Basically, AG Kane shut down the sting operation after being elected in 2012: there is a big brouhaha over whether this was politically motivated. Well, actually, no: there is a big brouhaha over whether people can prove that shutting down the investigation was politically motivated. AG Kane is certainly acting like somebody who is nervous about a subpoena.

Yeah, I know: a heck of a thing to say about a state Attorney General. Mind you, as Hot Air points out, this escalated quickly from racism accusations to threatening lawsuits, which is the real reason why people are raising their eyebrows. The problem here is that apparently they’ve got hard evidence that people took bribes: relatively modest ones, but bribes nonetheless. That is not acceptable behavior for politicians. Neither is shutting down an investigation that has this kind of evidence. Kathleen Kane has a good deal to answer for, including precisely why she is trying so hard to shut down this story…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: The paper is certainly treating this… “During the meeting, Sprague suggested that The Inquirer may have been used by the sources of its stories – “wittingly or unwittingly” as a “weapon” to attack Kane to defend themselves from potential charges of wrongdoing in the management of the probe.” …as a personal threat against them. So would I, frankly.

PPS: Tom Corbett may be, by the way, the luckiest governor in the US right now. Assuming that he has the mother-wit to come down upon this story like a hammer from orbit.