Slimy PA republican (state legislator) gets jail time. It is about time.

[AlinPA]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07121/782409-54.stm

[Red Zelda]

1. This slime should never come back.

I know him. He's vile.

[Hersheygirl]

2. Thanks for posting this.

Being on the other side of the state, we don't get much news around here from that area. The reason being it is so red around here and one wouldn't want to upset the apple cart, so to speak.

[Divernan]

3. This guy was the GOP's golden boy when first elected; they called him "Mr. Governor"

I am painfully familiar with his history- he represented my district and was in the high school marching band with one of my kids. And I worked in the State Legislature while he was there. The GOP gave him prime committee assignments and did EVERYTHING they could think of - like lots of high profile hearings in his district, to build him up.

His initial mistake was treating his staff like shit and then firing a few - they were then looking for something to turn him in to the Ethics Commission.
That "something" was that he used his legislative staff, offices and supplies for his campaign. That is against the rules, but a lot of legislators in BOTH parties play pretty loose with that rule. And a lot of staff mutter about turning the legislators in to the Ethics Commission - but don't do it because the staff know they'd never get hired again for a govt. job. Then Habay went off the deep end going after his enemies and trying to get public sympathy - like mailing himself some baking powder in an envelope and accusing his disgruntled ex-staff of doing it.

But he probably knows where enough skeletons are buried to get a posh lobbying job through his GOP connections, once he serves his very mild sentence. Too bad for him he got Lester Nauhaus (former chief public defender for Dem. Allegheny County) as judge. Not that Lester's any saint - the women who worked for him in the PD's office called him Lester the Molester.

[AlinPA]

4. One of the people who worked for Habay is Jeff Coleman's wife (Coleman was a R legislator from

around Indiana-Armstrong Counties). Coleman is from either Bob Jones U. or Liberty and is now a big lobbyist for a right wing Christian group in Harrisburg. Part of the story is that she used Habay's computer to do some work for her husband when Coleman was running. That crowd are rabid fundamentalists. When Coleman's heir Dave Reed (R), a two bit politician was running they brought up a busload of those students and they were running around crazed in Indiana planting signs and singing praises to God for Reed. Reed won.