Pennsylvania

HARRISBURG - Attorneys representing the state and two newspapers argued in federal court over whether the constitutional rights of witnesses to an execution are violated if they are unable to view the entire process. The Inquirer and the Harrisburg Patriot-News filed suit against the commonwealth last month in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in an effort to allow witnesses to see the lethal injection process from the moment the condemned enters the chamber to the moment he or she is pronounced dead.

Pat Robertson, who resigned his ministry last week to run for president, is bringing his newly secular campaign tomorrow to Pennsylvania, where his newly secular flock is ready to receive him. His supporters have scheduled a luncheon at the Philadelphia airport, a fund-raising dinner in Lancaster County, and, on Friday, a breakfast with ministers in Lancaster and an afternoon fund-raising luncheon in Erie. The Philadelphia stop, expected to draw between 200 and 300 supporters who will pay $12.50 for lunch, is being billed by its local organizer as a "Chat with Pat. " "This is so people can see that Pat is as normal as everyone else," said Ken Donelson, producer of the radio show Grand Old Gospel Hour.

Pennsylvania has overtaken Atlantic City as the No. 2 U.S. gaming market after Las Vegas. In 2012, Pennsylvania took in $3.16 billion from both slots and table-games revenue, according to figures released Wednesday by the state Gaming Control Board. Last week, the Shore resort reported $3.05 billion in casino revenue for 2012. All the signs were pointing to a knockdown. Pennsylvania had grossed $3.1 billion in total gaming revenue in 2011 - and that was before the opening of Valley Forge Casino Resort in March.

As the leading legal organizations readily admit, it certainly won't hurt Pennsylvania's 48,000 lawyers to brush up on legal ethics and professionalism once a year. By requiring such training for the first time, the state Supreme Court isn't accusing any lawyers of seeking to bribe judges, threaten witnesses, filch their clients' funds or even cross against the light. It's just recognizing that there is a general sense that the profession has gotten so crowded and cutthroat that a refresher course in decorum and ethics may well be in order.

IF WE could give Pennsylvania's 50 senators and 203 members of the House of Representatives a holiday gift, it would be a dry 120-page report from the Brookings Institution on the economic state of the commonwealth. They may not thank us for this generosity. But you might. For maybe - just maybe - this report will force our back-to-the-past Legislature to finally confront the true state of the state. The report, Back to Prosperity: a Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania, presents a comprehensive - even exhausting - picture of the commonwealth's strengths, weaknesses, promises and missed opportunities.

IN WASHINGTON, Congress has under development a federal bill seeking states' reciprocity rules for granting the individual's "right to carry" sidearm guns. In Pennsylvania, any resident who, by legal scrutiny, has forfeited his right to carry concealed sidearm weapons could go to some other state, pass a less-strenuous background check followed by lesser firearm regulations and then return to Pennsylvania's cities legally armed and dangerous. All the while, nationally, city populations are under siege with the growing menace of lethal weapons.

Recurring budget woes aside, California has an economy against which all other states are compared. The state is a magnet for technology talent and an incubator, production line, and even slaughterhouse for industry-changing ideas and products. At $1.7 trillion, its economy is the biggest of the 50 states. So everyone knows that California is the elephant. But who is the mouse? Well, it's not Rhode Island, the smallest state. Its real gross domestic product was $43.2 billion in 2009, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis . Or tiny Delaware, which had real GDP of $54.9 billion last year.

Tom Corbett is governor of Pennsylvania Would you sign a blank patient consent form before an operation? No. Would you build a house without a full blueprint? No. Building a state-based health exchange without the necessary information is not any different. The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided that all states must have a health insurance exchange operational by Oct. 1, 2013, in order for consumers to purchase insurance by 2014. Over the last two years, my administration has been studying the implications of building such an exchange in Pennsylvania.

For University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann, bringing more than 50,000 personal Holocaust testimonials to campus is a personal milestone. The video testimonials were compiled by the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation Institute, founded by the director Steven Spielberg in 1994 to collect and preserve the testimony of survivors. Gutmann's father fled Nazi Germany in 1934 and eventually settled in the United States, where she was born. She first talked to Spielberg about the possibility of bringing the collection to Penn about a year ago. "I have spent some hours listening to them, and for me, personally it's just incredibly moving and important," Gutmann said in an interview.

HATE THE government? Well, here's a shock: There are some things government does well - yes, even in Pennsylvania. Sure, there's too much government, the Legislature's too big and the state's famous for scandal and stupid policies. But this same government, Legislature and some of its policies create and maintain some things of value. After surveying dozens of folks in and out of government and elective office familiar with state workings, here are five things Pennsylvania does well.