CRAVEN LIAR ACCIDENTALLY MAKES A GOOD POINT

Lord knows we don't agree with craven liar H. William DeWeese too often, but his rant to the Philadelphia Inquirer makes an excellent point we've trying to get across for nearly two years.

It is, as DeWeese whines, "a factual inaccuracy - and a sad testament to the standing of the Fourth Estate - to say that former Republican attorney general (and now Gov.) Tom Corbett charged [DeWeese] in connection with legislative bonuses. The record shows he clearly did not."

DeWeese, of course, would have you believe the fantasy that Corbett didn't charge him in connection with bonuses because DeWeese ("U R welcome") wasn't culpable. That is, of course, not true.

The "sad testament to the standing of the Fourth Estate" is not only that it keeps repeating the lie that DeWeese was charged in connection with bonuses, but that no one has bothered to investigate why the obviously culpable DeWeese was not so charged.

Keep in mind that the incriminating "U R welcome" email - along with dozens of other incriminating emails and documents - were not turned over until after months of legal wrangling with Corbett's office. It was only after DeWeese lost his bids both to exclude evidence seized under a search warrant and to quash subpoenas of House staffers that DeWeese finally negotiated to turn over to Corbett documents and emails that DeWeese himself selected.

Despite the evidence to be found among the documents DeWeese and his attorneys selected, even after DeWeese's chief of staff, Mike Manzo, testified in open court that DeWeese knew about the bonuses, and despite the testimony of DeWeese's executive assistant, Kat Manucci, that DeWeese approved awarding bonuses for political work, Corbett still declined to charge DeWeese with bonus-related crimes - as DeWeese himself wants us all to know.

He just maybe doesn't want us to know why.

DeWeese claims in his Inquirer rant that he cooperated with Corbett's investigation for "35 months" - a blatant and obvious lie. Counting backward from his early December 2009 indictment (on non-bonus-related charges) to the earliest possible moment his "negotiation" with Corbett could have occurred, in late October of 2007, gives us only 25 months. Again, no one ever bothers to contradict DeWeese when he claims he cooperated with Corbett since "Day One," as if all those months of legal obstructionism never happened.

Finally, DeWeese claims that "Corbett surely knew that I would be one of his premier antagonists on the House floor," but from the moment of DeWeese's late-October or early-November 2007 "negotiation" with Corbett until shortly before DeWeese's December 2009 indictment (on non-bonus-related charges), DeWeese never uttered a single word of antagonism against Corbett, on the House floor or anywhere else. On the contrary, he told KDKA in February 2008, "I have no doubt that this investigation will be fair." He called the day his colleague Mike Veon and several staffers were indicted "one of the best f***ing days of my life."

Ultimately, DeWeese's quest for the media to make a distinction between bonus-related charges and others is probably futile. Brad Bumsted over at the Tribune-Review keeps insisting "ten people were convicted in connection with a $1.4 million bonus scam among House Democrats," when he knows full well that two of those people were actually acquitted (that would be the opposite of convicted) of all bonus-related charges and one of them never even was charged with any bonus offenses. There were 322 charges filed against the original 12 "Bonusgate" defendants, and only 99 of them had anything to do with bonuses. (And, only 50 - less than 16% - resulted in convictions.)

However, if DeWeese wants to maintain the illusion that he's not culpable with regard to bonuses, we can't imagine why he'd want closer scrutiny of the distinction.