DN editorial: Kane's gone, but other scandals are on the horizon

PETTY. VINDICTIVE. Paranoid. Politically naïve. Dismissive of the wisdom of advisers.

We're not talking about Donald Trump. We're talking about former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, whose career ended Tuesday with her resignation - although it really ended Monday when a jury found her guilty of two counts of perjury and seven counts of abusing the powers of her office.

When elected by a landslide in 2012, Kane, the first Democrat elected as state AG, was seen as a promising up-and-comer. In the end, the best decision she made as AG was resigning her office.

We'd like to say the whole sad circus is over, one that began when prosecutor Frank Fina, who had worked at the AG's office until Kane's arrival, blew the whistle on her refusal to pursue an investigation into state lawmakers who accepted bribes and cash gifts. She attempted to return the favor by leaking a grand-jury testimony designed to implicate Fina in an investigation he was conducting into civil-rights activist J. Wyatt Mondesire. That action was illegal. Then she lied about it.

The Kane saga, though, is only one ring of a sordid three-ring circus. As we all know, Kane started the Porngate circus when her office discovered pornographic email exchanges on state servers. That discovery claimed the careers of two state Supreme Court justices and others, and implicated a number of current and former staffers - including Fina. He and two other prosecutors implicated in the sending or receiving of lewd, vile and explicit images and emails went on to work for Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. Williams belatedly sent Fina and his pals to "sensitivity training" as a wrist-slap for their sins. In June, Fina quietly resigned.

Still alive: the kind of misogynistic, entrenched power structure in the state that fosters an atmosphere where it is OK to demean women and minorities - a large percent of whom our justice system is supposed to protect.

Still can't get enough? As Kane was hearing a jury declare her guilty on Monday, Williams reported a series of cash and gifts totaling over $160,000 that he previously forgot to file, as required by law. Those gifts include free home repairs, cash gifts of $1,500 and $10,000 from friends, and free airfaire and lodgings. His lawyer says Williams wasn't paying attention to reporting requirements, and thought some of the gifts didn't have to be declared because they came from close friends.

Is it really that hard for an elected official whose job it is to uphold the law to keep on the right side of the legal line? That line appears to us to be pretty bold and unambiguous, especially since - irony of ironies - the corruption cases Williams successfully took on after Kane dropped the investigations involved state lawmakers receiving gifts of cash and other items. And the total amount of those gifts doesn't come close to the gifts Williams failed to report.

If you're getting so many cash gifts that you can't keep up with proper reporting, it's time to start refusing all gifts.

This is one circus ring that seems to have come full circle.