My first business of today is to capture on my computer’s hard-drive two articles published in the December 10, 2006, edition of The Morning Call Girl, whore to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and the commonwealth’s legislature.

Legislators include former state senator Joe Conti of Bucks County, who declined to seek re-election after the outraged public’s searing fire-and-brimstone wrath showered down on the legislature’s perfidious Pearl Harbor-style sneak attack.

At two o’clock in the morning on July 7, 2005, it voted itself and the state’s judes, including supreme court justices, and pointy-headed, briefcase-carrying bureaucrats, an obscene pay raise.

Another legislator voting for this sacrilege, a vote that like Conti’s led him to decide against a run for re-election in 2006, was T.J. Rooney, the subject of the first of the two Call Girl articles referred to earlier.

“John” T.J. shows up in the Call Girl article titled, “Rooney stands by vote on pay raise,” a powder-puff piece of fluff flattering to the state’s Democratic Committee chairman written by Call Girl procurer John I. Micek.

Directly below T.J. appears the second article, “Awash in flood protection,” by Micek’s fellow procurer Steve Esack. Esack poses the title of his piece as a question, meant to seduce the reader to think that the restoration of four inoperable flood-control pumps designed and installed by the U.S. Corp of Engineers in 1964 on the banks of the Lehigh River and Lehigh Canal are impracticable and no longer necessary.

The two articles appear on page B1 of the local section. Spreading the Call Girl’s pages until reaching the last one of the section, B11, appears an article by procurer Harley Rissmiller that’s a little less flattering of the “Johns,” these in Phillipsburg, New Jersey.

The title of this piece is, “P’burg officials raise possible suit as issue.” Rissmiller reports that Phillipsburg attorney-developer Mike Perrucci of Woodmont Properties,of Parsippany, New Jersey, is threatening to sue Preferred Real Estate Investments, owner and developer of the 388-acre former Ingersoll-Rand tract off Memorial Parkway.

Under the original plan, Phillipburg was to buy the parcel on Route 22 and Roseberry Street from I-R, using federal loans and grants, and Woodmont was to develop it.

The plan changed when Preferred bough the tract from Ingersoll in 2004 and agreed to develop the entire tract in conjunction with the town (another “public-private partnership). The federal money, $4.7 million, was switched from land purchase to infrastructure development for an access road through the property connecting Route 22 and Center Street (a replay of the Commerce Center Boulevard traversing the former Bethlehem Steel Corporation tract in South Bethlehem, terminating in a cul-de-sac at the parcel of Steel property purchase by Majestic Realty of Los Angeles, owner of the Siverton Casino in Las Vegas, with this exception: The funds for the Ingersoll project are federal. Standing in stark contrast, the money, $13.1 million, for the BethWorks Commerce Boulevard in South Bethlehem came from the illegal $111 million floated by Northampton County’s illegitimate General Purpose Authority.)

When the plan changed, Woodmont agreed to step out of the picture. In exchange for all the work that Woodmont had done on the deal until that time, particularly in helping to secure federal funds, Preferred agreed to sell Woodmont 10 acres of the tract for $1. The property has yet to change hands.

Phillipsburg Council says it’s not sure what happened!

The December 10, 2006, edition of The Morning Call Girl explains why the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board meeting in Harrisburg the next day under the chairmanship of Rendell-appointed Thomas “Tad” Decker refused to allow comments from the public in a brazen violation of the commonwealth’s Open Public Meetings Statute or Sunshine Law.

Eight citizens were arrested for attempting to exercise their inalienable First Amendment right at the hearing. They did not include our family friend Meridith Warner, who traveled that day to Harrisburg from her and husband’s newly purchased home in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood, the site for one of the city’s proposed casinos.

The arrests validate the title of my previous post, titled “Civil War.”

The title seems to me particularly appropriate since on of the proposed casino sites is Gettysburg, the battlefield that inspired Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.

On that note, I urge readers to continue courageous in this battle against the casino owners and operators.