Could second thoughts lead to the second spot?

It must be hard to kick a jones for the political spotlight once you've had a taste.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who took himself out of the 2012 Republican presidential race last month after intense reflection and prayer, pushed the door back open a little bit Wednesday, saying he might be interested in the No. 2 spot if it were offered.

"I haven't closed doors. I found out a long time ago that that's not the smart thing to do," Huckabee told reporters after delivering a lecture at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.

Businessman/reality TV star/hair model Donald Trump also misses the lights. Meeting fellow presidential flirt Sarah Palin for a dinner of pepperoni pizza Tuesday night, Trump says he, too, might reconsider.

Trump, who quit his designs on the GOP nomination last month after his NBC show Celebrity Apprentice was renewed, said he just might run after all. "I could absolutely run as an independent, and maybe I'd be better off," Trump said Wednesday on FOX 5's Good Day New York.

And Palin, who had faded from the national political discussion, put herself squarely back in it with her One Nation bus tour to historic sites, now in its fourth day of nonstop media coverage and speculation that the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee and former half-term Alaska governor might run for president.

Pennsylvania is in the black - no! It's in the red.

Depends on how you calculate it.

The Department of Revenue reported Wednesday that revenues were up 2 percent, or $34 million, at the end of May, pushing the state surplus to $540 million.

But the state still faces a multibillion-dollar deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, based in large part on projections from the loss of federal stimulus money.

Still, the surplus revenue - eight times the amount that Gov. Corbett had projected in his March 8 budget address - now looms large in budget negotiations.

Corbett and House Republicans want to stash the extra cash in the now-depleted Rainy Day Fund. Democratic legislators, in the minority in both chambers, say it's raining now in Pennsylvania. They want to use the money to restore some of the $1.7 billion in cuts to social services and education contained in the $27.3 billion budget approved by the House last week.

That version now awaits Senate action. The new revenue numbers are sure to figure in the bargaining before the July 1 deadline for completing a budget.
- Amy Worden