Editorial Calls Dwight Evan's Attack On AG Corbett "LOONY"!

Colin McNickle, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's director of editorial pages, writes a scathing editorial about Dwight Evan's attack on AG Corbett over the lawsuit on healthcare.

Dwight Evans, the chairman of the Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee, is threatening to cut the Legislature's appropriation to the office of state Attorney General Tom Corbett.

Mr. Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat, is peeved that Mr. Corbett, a Shaler Republican seeking the GOP's gubernatorial nomination, joined attorneys general of more than a dozen states to challenge the constitutionality of ObamaCare.

Evans has the audacity to call Corbett's participation in the lawsuit against the constitutionality of certain provisions in the federal healthcare bill rammed down the people's throat as a "political stunt".

He wants people to believe his own press conference was for the good of the people and not a political stunt. It was such a shallow attempt at leadership no wonder Harrisburg is in such a disarray.

"(H)e will pay for it in his department," Evans said at a news conference.

No, Dwight, we will pay for it in increased premiums and unfunded mandates raising taxes.

That said, Evans' base argument is loony, given what Corbett's lawsuit seeks to accomplish.

Evans cites "the state's fragile economic situation," which he says already has affected Corbett's office. "I do not believe it is prudent to spend taxpayer dollars on such a suit."

So, does he believe it's "prudent" to encumber an already strapped state with hundreds of millions of dollars -- perhaps even $1 billion -- of unfunded mandates?

The primary basis of the AGs' lawsuit is that ObamaCare violates the Commerce Clause. As the lawsuit states, "It has never been held that the Commerce Clause ... can be used to require citizens to buy goods and services. To depart from that history to permit the national government to require the purchase of goods and services would deprive the Commerce Clause of any effective limits."

Hey, maybe Evans is hoping to use the Commerce Clause to force people to shop at those government-subsidized grocery stores of which he's so fond to ensure their "success." While being well intentioned, they are a horribly inefficient allocation of resources in any economic climate.

Protecting taxpayers, as the Corbett et al. lawsuit seeks to do, is not playing politics. Defending the Constitution is no stunt. But attempting to kill such a lawsuit with bombastic threats of budget cuts and bogus rationales is. Dwight Evans should know better. More's the pity that he does not.

Advocating what is right is not politics. Threatening several hundred employees with a "whip" is appalling behavior but not untypical of the same behavior that begat Bonusgate.