I’ve been a big supporter of Kathleen Kane. The kind of charges leveled against her are small beer stuff, and it is obvious she poked the hornets’ nest of the old boys and riled them up. They should take their porn pics and jokes and go to their rooms.
So why am I irritated with Ms. Kane? Way back on July 25 I wrote about a decision by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel that Pennsylvania law restricted minor parties from organizing and speaking.
Libertarians and Greens are required to gather as many as 10 times the number of signatures as Democrats and Republicans, and if the petitions are challenged, the third party candidates must pay the legal fees, which can run over $100,000.
This is blatantly discriminatory. Judge Stengel did democracy a favor by invalidating the law. The Philadelphia Inquirer urged the state not to appeal. On August 21 Attorney General Kane announced that her office would appeal the decision anyway. She evidently wants the discriminatory law to stand.
Incidentally, here is how bad things are in Pennsylvania. On August 18 a state trial court removed the Green Party nominee for Philadelphia Commissioner from the November 3 ballot, using the same process for checking signatures that had been declared unconstitutional in federal court in July.
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