Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Tribune-review

I think they're just playing with my head this time. This is just too easy.

Take a look at today's "Sunday Pops." It ends with this:
Rocco Landesman, president of the taxpayer teat-suckling National Endowment for the Arts, says "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." Given that the president handpicked Mr. Landesman, can a revival of the term "bootlicker" be far behind?
First let's start off saying that they're spinning the quote into something it isn't. Here's a far more reliable source (Fox "News") with the fuller quotation:

Putting the president in the pantheon with such pencil-pushing powerhouses as the man who was, literally, the Czar of all Czars, Landesman said that since Obama "actually writes his own books," he's the most powerful man to be a true writer in the 2,000 years since Caesar strode the narrow earth.

Read it here and here.

Curious thing, that first column begins with this:

A political activist who was behind the famous Willie Horton advertisement that left Gov. Michael Dukakis' candidacy for president floundering and was among the first to sound the alarm on the need for Bill Clinton's impeachment says the United States is collapsing around its citizens right now, but there is a defense.

"Make no mistake. We're now in the middle of a bloodless coup – the takeover of an entire nation by the hate-America crowd – a cold-blooded gang that despises America's prosperity, our standing in the world, our trust in God and our generosity and goodness,"

From The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's "Whispers" column:
Gamblin' Gov. Ed Rendell failed to disclose a day of good fortune at the Harrah's Chester Casino & Racetrack last year to the state Ethics Commission.

Rendell last week was forced to update his financial disclosure forms after neglecting to note his $2,000 in slot machine winnings, The Associated Press reported.

The commission regards gambling winnings as income, and any winnings of more than $1,300 annually must be disclosed.

Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said the omission was unintentional and attributed it to a "clerical oversight." It quickly was corrected, as matters such as this usually are, after the pesky media began asking questions about it.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered Allegheny County to reassess the value of all property in the county.

That decision will cost the county approximately $40 million, according to The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and that's just the beginning.

Not only will taxpayers have to cough up an extra $40 million (a 20-percent property tax increase right off the bat), but once the reassessment is done, many homeowners face the prospect of paying more in property taxes.

This is the legacy of 30 years of failure by the Pennsylvania Legislature to address the state's onerous property tax system. This is the failure of Gov. Ed Rendell to deal with property taxes over the past 6 years year.