Feb 14, 2016 4 min read

Editorial voices from newspapers around Pennsylvania as compiled by the Associated Press:

Citizens and organizations give to political campaigns to elect officials to office, presumably believing those officials will carry out their duties in a manner consistent with the law.

The Pennsylvania election code is virtually silent on how such funds may be spent. The only limitation appears to be that campaign funds be spent to influence an election.

That should change.

Some officials seem to have interpreted “influence an election” to mean, “If I’m indicted, my re-election could be influenced.”

The latest Pennsylvania officeholders to spend campaign funds on legal fees are state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane and Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski.

Pawlowski, according to a recent report by Allentown’s Morning Call, has paid more than $80,000 from his campaign account to lawyers representing him in an FBI probe into possible connections between government contracts and campaign contributions.

Although Pawlowski’s transfer of campaign contributions to attorneys is troubling, Kane’s could serve as Exhibit A in the case for outlawing the practice in Pennsylvania.

According to recent reports by the Tribune-Review and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kane, who was charged in August with perjury and other offenses related to a 2009 grand jury investigation, sent $150,000 from her campaign account to defense lawyers. And it paid $130,000 more to Lanny Davis for public relations advice. Davis briefly served as Kane’s spokesman on issues related to the probe that led to her indictment.

It seems reasonable to conclude that Kane’s donors did not anticipate her indictment and the resulting suspension of her law license when they gave to her campaign fund in 2013 and 2014.

It also seems reasonable to demand that the Pennsylvania election code be changed to prohibit spending on legal fees that are not directly related to campaigning for office.

Business leaders and residents continue to voice their support for legislation that would ensure employment and housing protections to gay and transgender individuals.

It’s time our lawmakers do so, too.

It’s hard to believe that in 2016, as law currently stands, it is legal to fire someone or deny them housing or other services because they are gay or transgender. But in Pennsylvania, it is.

We urge lawmakers to pass The Pennsylvania Fairness Act. This legislation would update the state’s Human Relations Act, originally written in 1955, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, age, sex, national origin, disability and – with passage of the Fairness Act – sexual orientation and gender identity, can participate in the state’s economy.

We encourage everyone to support the law that champions community, equal rights and human rights – and makes good business and economic sense, too.

One of the many criticisms Republicans offered about Barack Obama when he first ran for president was his relative inexperience in government. How things have changed in the era of Donald Trump.

In today’s Republican Party, government experience is not only unnecessary; it is a detriment. This is a product of the anti-government cynicism of tea partiers that the Republican establishment gleefully encouraged when it was directed at President Obama and Democrats. Having failed to anticipate the inevitable – that the anti-establishment rancor would turn against ineffectual Republican officials – GOP leaders are now left to rationalize an eventual accommodation with The Donald.

Republican voters would, by making Mr. Trump their presidential choice, not only abandon long-held principles; they would go against basic reason and logic. We expect our teachers to be educated in teaching, our firefighters to know how to put out fires, our brain surgeons to be well-versed in medicine.

Yet, the incredibly complex job of president of the United States, with the economy, world peace and so much else at stake, should be handed to a neophyte who is blissfully proud of his ignorance?

It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous path for American to embark upon in these hazardous times.