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But at least the scandal allows us to provide continuing reports on Miss Rain Day, the Greene County beauty queen who secured a spot on the payroll after a sexual liaison with Michael Manzo, then chief of staff to House Democratic leader Bill DeWeese.
Secured is the word, because Miss Rain Day, aka Angela Bertugli, is still on the House payroll, four years later, according to a report by Dennis Owens of ABC27, a Harrisburg TV station.
Bertugli first did a stint in Pittsburgh in a no-work job that Manzo invented - running the "Pittsburgh field office" for the House Democrats from Allegheny County, with a dingy office above a South Side cigar store.
Now she's earning $45,344 a year in Harrisburg as a legislative research analyst - continuing even as she attends Widener University School of Law, which has a Harrisburg campus several miles from the Capitol.
Bertugli's current supervisor is Jennifer Brubaker - one of the House staff members suspended without pay last week after Corbett leveled charges against her.
DeWeese's spokesman, Tom Andrews, said that since the middle of last year Bertugli has been working eight-hour days in the legislative research bureau, a support office for 65 House Democrats who do not have researchers of their own.
She'll keep her job, Andrews said, because DeWeese wanted staff members to cooperate with Corbett's probe and tell the truth.
Calls and messages left for Bertugli herself were not returned.
Which left us wondering: How does one become Miss Rain Day, and when do we celebrate?
Turns out, Greene County selects a new ribbon-wearer every year, to preside at Rain Day ceremonies in Waynesburg, the county seat, on July 29. The holiday was created after a local farmer claimed that it always rained on his birthday, and town fathers began keeping track: they claim that July 29 has seen rain for 109 of the past 132 years.
Big screen for the big house
The Philadelphia prison system may be suffering from too many prisoners and not enough guards, but when it comes to appliances, its resources are first-class.
Former Prisons Commissioner Leon King spent $3,172 of your tax dollars on a 50-inch plasma flat-panel TV screen that fit nicely into his conference room.
The Nutter administration learned of the purchase - a 2005 Panasonic - earlier this year. It already had been a source of irritation for the correctional officers.
"We had a meeting in the room and when we saw the TV, I said to myself, 'We can't afford overtime, but you have that TV up there?' " said Lorenzo North, president of the correctional-officers union.
King, who now serves as director of legislation for Councilman Frank Rizzo, said that the screen was strictly for PowerPoint presentations, not for watching television.
"I never watched TV and I never knew anyone to watch TV on it," he said. "I don't remember how much money the screen was, but we needed a screen. . . . We had lots of meetings up in the conference room, where we reviewed information regarding staffing. Every time we used the [old] equipment . . . we couldn't see or hear."
Louis Giorla took over as prisons commissioner in March and immediately had the screen removed. The deputy mayor for public safety, Everett Gillison, said it will be used in his conference room, at the Municipal Services Building.
McCain: Not my line
Let's play Jeopardy!
Here's your answer: Chuck Hinton, Ben McGee, Lloyd Voss and Ken Kortas, the 1967 Pittsburgh Steelers defensive line.
The question: What names did downed pilot John McCain give to his North Vietnamese torturers when they asked him to name his crewmates?
Say what? McCain had memorized the obscure defensive line of a rotten 4-9-1 football team?
Well, that's what he told Pittsburgh's KDKA-TV last week. The blogosphere immediately exploded with allegations of pandering. In his 1999 book, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain wrote that he had recited the Green Bay Packers D-line to his captors.
That makes sense. The 1967 Packers (McCain was shot down Oct. 27, 1967) were the defending Super Bowl champs. And that front four - Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Lionel Aldridge, Ron Kostelnik - was a helluva line.
Jon Delano, the western Pennsylvania political analyst who was interviewing McCain when he made the gaffe, doesn't think it was intentional, calling it an "innocent slip."
A McCain campaign spokesman called it a "memory lapse."
We accept that. But if he comes to Philadelphia and recites the names of the 1967 Eagles defensive line, he gets no mercy.
A Nutter vacation
Mayor Nutter is reportedly leaving City Hall for the next two weeks, although he's mum on where he's headed.
"I'm going to be taking some private family time," Nutter said yesterday.
But wherever that family time will be, Nutter said he'll be in touch with the office.
"My BlackBerries go where I go," Nutter said.
Any guesses on where the mayor is off to? Aruba? Mexico? Cape May?
Colleague Stu Bykofsky reported in 2005 that Nutter owned a two-week time-share at the Marriott in Hilton Head, S.C. *
Staff writers Catherine Lucey, John Baer, Gar Joseph, Dave Davies and Bob Warner contributed to this report.
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