Kane fights back and ignites wider debate on Pa. politics
After months of punishing headlines, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane has struck back hard. She took another swipe at a familiar target: the so-called old boys' network. In doing so, she proved the merit of a well-worn political adage: when in trouble, change the subject.
After months of punishing headlines, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane has struck back hard.
She took another swipe at a familiar target: the so-called old boys' network. In doing so, she proved the merit of a well-worn political adage: when in trouble, change the subject.
On Oct. 1, the day she was charged with a fresh count of perjury, Kane accused a Supreme Court justice of exchanging emails that included "racial, misogynistic pornography."
On Thursday, the day the suspension of her law license took effect, she made public 48 crude emails of Justice J. Michael Eakin's. They were full of juvenile jokes and pictures of naked women.
Kane publicly and sharply questioned whether Eakin was given a pass by the high court, the Judicial Conduct Board, and even her own chief deputy when all three reviewed the justice's emails last year.
It's not clear whether any of it will help Kane. Her critics say the porn furor is irrelevant to her pending criminal trial on charges she illegally leaked confidential information and later lied about it to a grand jury.
And on Friday, the state Senate took the first steps to possibly force her from office.
Still, there is no doubt that Kane has ignited a roiling debate rooted in one of her core contentions: that Pennsylvania politics is dominated by an old male guard that protects its own.
Christopher Borick, a political analyst at Muhlenberg College, said Kane had cast a harsh light on a cozy and sophomoric judicial culture and tapped into public anger at the powerful.
"I don't think her getting leverage on these things necessarily helps her. But it certainly hurts others," he said.
"What she's done is point out that this whole judicial disciplinary system does not work," said Bryn Mawr lawyer Mark Schwartz, normally a sharp critic of Kane.
By making public the offensive emails, Kane marshaled evidence to suggest that both the Supreme Court and the state's Judicial Conduct Board whitewashed misconduct by Eakin.
Last year, the judicial panel called his troubling emails only "mildly pornographic." The court's expert called his messages "unremarkable."
Kane called these judgments into question Thursday when she gave reporters copies of Eakin emails that included an image of an obese couple having sex and of an overweight naked women on all fours made up to resemble a pig.
Moreover, other Eakin emails - either made public by Kane or leaked to the media - included jokes mocking gays, lesbians, African Americans, Latinos, battered women, Muslims, drunken coeds, and nuns.
In all but a handful of cases, Eakin was the recipient of the emails, not the sender. Among 48 emails that Kane made public last week, he was the sender of only three, none of which contained nudity.
Eakin, 66, has been an appeals judge for 20 years and is among the Republican majority on the Supreme Court. He has apologized and said the messages "do not reflect my character or beliefs."
To critics, Kane is the epitome of the imperfect messenger in raising an alarm about the disturbing emails.
Why, detractors ask, was she silent until this month about Eakin's messages, even though her office turned up his troubling emails year ago?
Why did she target Eakin only after he joined his colleagues on the court in voting to suspend her law license?
Why has there been so much confusion - requiring clarifying statements from Kane's office - about whether or when she made every email available to those who reviewed them?
In an interview Friday, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille said Kane, the Judicial Conduct Board, and the Supreme Court all had mishandled the email controversy.
He said the high court should have one of the statewide grand jury judges appoint a special prosecutor to critically examine the exchanges of porn among judges and other officials - and to examine how Kane, the court, and judicial board had dealt with the issue.
"These are serious charges being leveled back and forth. And it has devolved to who did what to whom and when," he said. "Somebody's got to get to the bottom of it."
Scandal over the exchange of porn on state time and on state computers first erupted last fall after Kane announced that her office, before her election, had for years been a hub for the exchange of X-rated material.
At the time, Kane named just eight men - all former top staffers in her office - as having participated in the exchange. She did not name any of the dozens of prosectors, detectives, criminal defense lawyers, and others who were in on the email chains.
The furor peaked last fall when Justice Seamus McCaffery, a Democrat from Philadelphia, retired after apologizing for his involvement in exchanges of pornography.
At that time, the Supreme Court hired a former Commonwealth Court judge to serve as its special counsel to see whether other justices had been involved in improper exchanges.
Kane insists that the counsel, Robert L. Byer, and the Judicial Conduct Board examined the same set of emails. Yet, confusingly, Byer reported only one with "offensive sexual content," while the judicial panel found 50 that were "mildly pornographic."
After a two-month inquiry, the Judicial Conduct Board voted to clear Eakin.
Under the state constitution, the panel is made up of 12 appointees of the governor and the Supreme Court - a mix of judges, lawyers, and laypeople - and is equally split between Republicans and Democrats.
Its members have been mostly men. The panel that cleared Eakin was made up of nine men and three women.
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