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Tony Auth archives | tauth@phillynews.com

Charges may help end some judicial elections: An Allegheny County grand jury’s indictment Friday of state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin represents a new low for Pennsylvania’s highest court, but it could prove to be a valuable driving force for reforming the state’s discredited system of electing its appellate judges. Melvin, 56, says she will fight the criminal charges that she misused her taxpayer-funded staff while serving as a Superior Court judge by having it do political campaign work in her 2009 pursuit of a state Supreme Court seat.
JPMorgan fiasco shows regulation isn’t working: During JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s quarterly earnings conference call last month, Chief Financial Officer Douglas Braunstein seemed to assure listeners that they shouldn’t worry, because regulators knew everything the company was doing. “We are very comfortable with our positions as they are held today, and I would add that all of those positions are fully transparent to the regulators,” Braunstein said on April 13. “They review them, have access to them at any point in time,” and “get the information on those positions on a regular and recurring basis as part of our normalized reporting.”
Letters to the Editor: I am somewhat shocked that The Inquirer would have an extensive front-page article on sneaking into events (“Pay for a ticket? That’s so un-Philly,” Sunday).
Colleges can do more to cut costs: A truck dispensing free ice cream drives around a beautifully appointed 140-acre setting. Motorists take advantage of a valet service that will park their cars for them.
Obama has a card to play on super-PACs: President Obama’s failure to fix the broken Federal Election Commission has helped turn the campaign trail into the Wild West, where the biggest guns shoot any which way they want. Government contractors have been prohibited for decades from contributing to federal political campaigns, but that hasn’t stopped a super-PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney from actively soliciting about $1 million in donations from them.
How entitlements can perpetuate youth unemployment: Persistently high postrecession unemployment is ravaging the economic prospects of younger workers, delaying their skill development and eroding their work ethic.Some pundits have argued for more government spending on job training and infrastructure to speed the recovery of the economy and labor market. But blaming the recession alone is misguided.
Letters to the Editor: It’s all about fairness While the editorial “Fairness must be Nutter’s goal” (Sunday) praises my courage for taking on property-assessment reform, it also asserts that I “avoided” real change until after I’d been “safely reelected.” Even a cursory look at Inquirer news stories over the last two years shows the absurdity of such an assertion.
I’ll leave fitness to the old folks: You couldn’t call me a gym rat, but for the past several decades, I’ve frequented fitness centers enough to stay in decent shape. Now in my early 60s, I don’t have a stomach that suggests I’m in my second trimester, and I can take a flight of stairs without bursting a blood vessel or huffing like a SEPTA train squatting at the station. I can even outdo guys half my age, provided they’ve just had ACL surgery. For me, working out had always been as automatic as brushing my teeth. Over the past couple of years, however, I’ve lost my appetite for exercise and have cut back significantly. Bring on the cavities.
Lugar's departure sign of D.C. paralysis: Dick Polman: What happened to Dick Lugar last week is a sign of the polarization crippling Washington.
The 76ers battle for our very soul: By Len Davidson Today marks the resumption of the historic battle of Soul vs. Bureaucracy, also known as Good vs. Evil or Sixers vs. Celtics.
Principal doing better, but not the schools: Inquirer editorial: Vindication has finally come to a former Camden principal who was dismissed after blowing the whistle on rigged test scores.
Romney’s bullying gets another pass: The media have given Mitt Romney a pass he doesn’t deserve on his response to a report that he bullied other students at his Michigan boarding school. Romney was fortunate in that the bullying story broke in the wake of President Obama’s declaration of support for same-sex marriage, which the media concluded was the bigger political story and more worthy of follow-up and commentary. The Washington Post broke the story of Romney’s bullying of a younger student who later came out as gay. According to classmates, including some who joined in the attack, Romney announced his intention to deal with the student’s long, bleached hair with a pair of scissors. He then led a group of attackers who pinned the student down so that Romney could cut his hair as he cried and shouted for help.
Letters to the Editor: Missy Stein stated that the reason fund-raising was down this year for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure was because of the “Planned Parenthood debacle” (“Apologizing for Komen’s errors,” Friday). She is only partly correct. The reason that I and many of my friends have not donated to Komen this year is because of its support of Planned Parenthood.
Another man wrongly executed: With nearly 300 people across the nation exonerated after being sentenced to death, the risk of executing an innocent person is a reality in the 33 states, including Pennsylvania, where capital punishment remains legal. That risk alone should be enough to persuade responsible elected officials to scrap the death penalty — as Connecticut did in April, following the lead of Illinois, New Mexico, and New Jersey.
The first female president: The current issue of Newsweek has a photo of President Obama with a rainbow halo superimposed over his head and the title “The First Gay President.” Nonsense. Obama is the first female president.