My thanks to Sunday columnist Christine Flowers, who again invited me to join her on her Sunday night gabfest on The Big Talker, WPHT-1210 AM. We talked about Pennsylvania's attorney general, or former attorney general Kathleen Kane.
I have to admit that I was a bit taken aback the day after her conviction on two counts of perjury and seven other counts of abusing her public office, when Kane told a reporter she had "no regrets."
In fact, it led me to write this editorial.
I was not the only one fairly stunned at Kane's reaction. Ernie Preate knows a little bit about where Kane is right now - and where she might be headed.
In case you don't remember, Kane is not the first attorney general to be convicted of criminal wrongdoing. Preate went down back in 1995 in connection with campaign contributions. He went to jail. He emerged a better person and rebuilt his life, once again practicing law.
Preate simply can't believe Kane's blithe attitude when it comes to her conviction.
He pointed out that it would likely serve her well to start singing a different tune. Kane will be sentenced in October by Montgomery County Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy.
Preate says a sense of humility, and of acknowledging your wrongdoing, is the key to a lenient sentencing.
We'll see if Kane can manage to pull that off. If she does, it will be the first thing she has gotten right in a long time.
It's still hard to believe how fast Kane rocketed to fame, and how quickly she fell, for the most part because of a purely personal vendetta against a rival prosecutor she believed was responsible for a less than flattering news article about her.
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