Rendell

Gov. Rendell talked Saturday about a little-known aspect of the 9/11 tragedy: how Muslim workers at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center, would use a stairwell between the 106th and 107th floors for their daily prayers. The closest mosque was more than 100 floors down and four blocks away, so that impromptu prayer space had to do, he said. That stairwell disappeared along with both towers in the disaster. And the restaurant workers were among the estimated 60 Muslims in the buildings who died that day, Rendell said.

The dust had not yet settled on the federal stimulus debate when Gov. Rendell said yesterday that Pennsylvania had escaped disaster. In fact, Rendell said, the state will get almost the full $5 billion he was seeking in budget aid over three years. "No major damage was done to us," Rendell told reporters in an early- evening conference call. "It's almost a wash. " The House of Representatives could vote on the bill as early as today. Details of the package worked out by the House and the Senate were trickling out when Rendell said that despite reductions in state discretionary funding, Pennsylvania was able to salvage money from elsewhere in the stimulus package to fill the gaps.

Maybe Gov. Rendell should stop more often at the familiar shop he knows as "dunky doughnuts. " At least it would force him to slow down. Even at the risk of expanding Rendell's waistline, a doughnut run would be a moment to reflect on the governor's schedule of rush, rush, rush. That's rush, as in screaming along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in his state car at speeds of more than 100 miles per hour, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. On more than a few occasions, the newspaper reported Monday, state troopers clocked Rendell's car at those dangerous speeds.

Development of the Philadelphia-Camden waterfront should not be crippled by political turf wars, Gov. Rendell said yesterday as he became the first governor to chair the board of the powerful Delaware River Port Authority. He said he was naming himself to the board to break an impasse between Pennsylvania and New Jersey commissioners that erupted in November over the future of Paul Drayton, the authority's chief executive officer. The fight threatened progress on projects such as Independence Harbor, a proposed bistate marketing campaign designed to link both waterfronts, Rendell said.

FORGET FAST Eddie. This time, he's Ready Eddie. Ready to take on the challenge of finally doing right by all of Pennsylvania's children by making over the way Pennsylvania funds public education. Ready to take on the challenge of changing Pennsylvania's long-standing "stand pat-ism," as Daily News columnist John Baer calls it. Ready to think and govern outside the box and make state government active again in addressing the needs of its people.

A pessimistic Gov. Rendell, who previously predicted a $1.6 billion deficit in the current state budget, said yesterday that he expected the shortfall to be about $100 million deeper. And though details of President-elect Barack Obama's proposed stimulus plan for the states are not expected for another week, Rendell said it simply would not do for the states to receive a significantly lesser bailout than the one ranging from $850 billion to $1 trillion for the nation's financial and other troubled institutions.

Gov. Rendell's endorsement here of Hillary Rodham Clinton for president yesterday wasn't about Philadelphia or Pennsylvania. It was about New Jersey and Delaware. Those two states, large parts of which know Rendell through Philadelphia media outlets, are among the 22 voting on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. And the Clinton brain trust figured that having Rendell's support now - and perhaps his presence in South Jersey and Delaware at times during the next 12 days - might give a boost to her quest for the Democratic nomination.

Former Mayor Ed Rendell, now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, dove into a pool of politically scalding hot water last night when he went on national TV just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and stated flatly that Al Gore should concede. The comments on MSNBC's "Hardball" by Rendell - who wants to run for Pennsylvania governor in 2002 - drew a blistering rebuke from a top aide to Gore, his deputy spokesman Mark Fabiani. "We've come to expect that from Rendell," Fabiani told the New York Times in today's editions.

Gov. Rendell suggested last year to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the billionaire should buy The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, according to an account just published in a national magazine. In its Aug. 24 issue, the New Yorker said Rendell broached the idea of Bloomberg's owning the newspapers during a July 2008 flight from New Orleans to Minneapolis in the mayor's jet. "We discussed a few things, and I tried to convince him to come down and buy The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News," Rendell was quoted as saying in the profile of Bloomberg.

Whether Gov. Rendell was too proud or he had a $38,000 blind spot, he should have returned a fugitive's campaign donations before it reached this embarrassing point. Rendell finally announced Thursday that he had joined the swelling ranks of Democratic officials who have washed their hands of contributions from financier Norman Hsu. The businessman has donated more than $600,000 to Democratic candidates since 2003, despite being wanted for grand theft in California. Hsu failed to appear in court Wednesday for a bail hearing on the 1991 case; authorities recaptured him Thursday night in Colorado.