Vince Fumo

WHEN VINCE FUMO entered a Philadelphia courtroom yesterday for resentencing, he looked every bit the aging con he is. His hair, more white than gray, was disheveled, and he had grown a beard. A facial tic seemed more pronounced than it was two years ago. He wore prison green jumpers with blue sneakers. He had gained 10 pounds since being incarcerated 26 months ago. For much of yesterday's proceedings, Fumo sat at the defense table, his head hung, at times looking almost devoid of hope.

ANYONE happen to catch Vince Fumo dumping his Tetley in the Schuylkill the other day? You know, his own personal Philly Tea Party? The outgoing state senator thinks the commonwealth is oppressive, racist and sexist, and it wouldn't surprise me if he started his own personal crusade to secede, starting when Fumo implied, with all the subtlety of Jeremiah Wright, that his Harrisburg colleagues would pass a slavery bill if given the chance....

VINCE FUMO is retiring from the Pennsylvania state Senate at the end of the year. We need Marc Antony for this one. It would take Shakespeare's version of the Roman general to help us decide whether to "bury" Fumo in deserved criticism for his deal-making and arrogance - or to praise the legendary power broker for bringing what he claims to be $8 billion to the city of Philadelphia in the course of his 30 years in Harrisburg. Now at its end, Fumo's career is a cautionary tale of the corrosive properties of arrogance and hubris, which turned his unmatched political clout into the cloud of federal corruption charges that now hangs over him. It was the "cloud" of the 139-count indictment - and not his recent heart attack - that Fumo blamed yesterday for his exit from the race for renomination.

Federal prosecutors alleged in a 281-page brief submitted yesterday to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that a federal judge made "numerous errors" when he handed down "unduly lenient" sentences for former state Sen. Vince Fumo and onetime aide Ruth Arnao. The feds want the appellate court to send the prison sentences and restitution orders back to district court for resentencing. Fumo, 67, and Arnao, 53, were convicted in March 2009 of conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice and related offenses, and sentenced to prison terms of 55 months, and a year and a day, respectively.

There's no need to fear, Vince Fumo is here! (Apologies to Underdog.) Police in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., credit the Pennsylvania state senator with foiling a purse-snatching last Saturday on fashionable Las Olas Boulevard. Chasing down a woman who had grabbed an elderly customer's purse in a pharmacy parking lot, Fumo planted himself in the path of the thief's getaway car and yanked open a door, according to the police report. Other witnesses also swarmed the gray BMW sedan before the purse was tossed on the pavement, and the car sped away.

Two Democrats named Vince are among the city's hardest-working full-time practicing politicians, building political organizations and learning to live on the hot seat. This primary season, the West Philly Vince is on the firing line, backing a candidate amid a firestorm of controversy. Judgment Day is Tuesday, the primary election. The other Vince is Vince Fumo, state senator from South Philadelphia. His powerful organization boasts several judge seats, three City Council seats, his own state Senate seat and a few state representatives seats.

It's good to see state Attorney General Tom Corbett finally take some action to shut down the nonprofit at the center of the fraud case against former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo. But Corbett is a little late to the party. Former U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan indicted Fumo more than two years ago. Also indicted in February 2007 was Ruth Arnao, the former executive director of the nonprofit, Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods. Meehan's indictment detailed how Fumo and Arnao used funds and employees from Citizens Alliance to their benefit.

It was an uncomfortable moment between former friends and comrades in battle, Vince Fumo and Dick Sprague. They ran into each other at developer Peter DePaul's annual Christmas party, a must-attend event for the region's power elite. Egged on by a new girlfriend who wanted to meet Sprague, Fumo reluctantly walked over to the ?ber-lawyer and stuck out his hand. "I'm not going to shake your hand," Sprague replied. The frosty encounter last December, relayed by a witness and confirmed by several people close to Fumo, was a public demonstration of something that the state's political and legal insiders had been chattering about for months: Fumo and Sprague were on the rocks.

The speaker introducing the guest of honor went on and on about how brilliant the guest was, how he could have been anything - a surgeon, maybe - but became a politician so he could help more people. People like his listeners there in the Queen Village kitchen. "You got the wrong guy," State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo said, scuffing the floor with his toe. He looked like an awkward, lonely kid on the playground. "I should quit while I'm ahead," he said. "I'm basically a shy guy. " Yet the man who blushed at District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham's praise during his 2004 reelection campaign gives bobblehead dolls of himself to women he dates.

With State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo not seeking reelection, his allies have been lining up behind the candidacy of Center City lawyer Larry Farnese in the Democratic primary. And for the campaigns of Farnese's opponents - union leader John J. Dougherty and activist Anne Dicker - that is enough to suggest Fumo is seeking to still exert influence through a surrogate. Fumo has not publicly indicated any preference in the race for the high-profile First District, but it is no secret that the animosities between him and Dougherty run deep and that Dicker has been a staunch critic.

RUTH ARNAO, a longtime aide to Vince Fumo and later executive director of a nonprofit he founded, was "scared to death" she might be sent back to prison, her attorney said yesterday after her resentencing in federal court. She need not have worried about that. But U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter did stick her with half the tab - $783,264 - to repay now-defunct Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods for the fraud she and Fumo committed. Arnao, 55, was sentenced to a year and a day in July 2009 for 45 counts of conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice, and Buckwalter resentenced her yesterday to the same amount of time.

HUBRIS and omnipotence and unconscionable decision-making by men in power. Penn State is not the only place where it happens. It took place last week in Philadelphia in the inexcusable resentencing of Vince Fumo by U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter. You may have missed it because of the Penn State scandal. But in all my days of watching and covering courts (which includes winning a Pulitzer Prize for a two-year investigation of the Philadelphia court system)

ON TOP of the six months he tacked onto Vince Fumo's 55-month sentence, Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter also ordered the former state senator to perform 10 hours of community service a week for three years after his release. Given Fumo's propensity for playing by his own rules, we thought we'd suggest some eye-for-an-eye options: 1 Don a reflective vest and sweep litter along Passyunk Avenue, the one-time stomping grounds of his former pet charity, Citizens Alliance, which he looted.

FEDERAL prosecutors spent untold hours poring over emails Vince Fumo sent from behind bars in an effort to convince a federal judge that Fumo was "wholly undeserving" of leniency. The effort came up short. U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter resentenced the disgraced former state senator yesterday to 61 months in prison - a mere six months longer than he originally sentenced him in July 2009 - and well below the advisory guideline sentence of 17 1/2 to 22 years prosecutors had sought.

WHEN VINCE FUMO entered a Philadelphia courtroom yesterday for resentencing, he looked every bit the aging con he is. His hair, more white than gray, was disheveled, and he had grown a beard. A facial tic seemed more pronounced than it was two years ago. He wore prison green jumpers with blue sneakers. He had gained 10 pounds since being incarcerated 26 months ago. For much of yesterday's proceedings, Fumo sat at the defense table, his head hung, at times looking almost devoid of hope.

WE HOPE that former state Sen. Vince Fumo , back in Philly today for resentencing on his federal corruption conviction, isn't reading Clout. Because John Dougherty , Fumo's longtime foe, had himself a very nice Election Day yesterday. That might wound Fumo as badly as prosecutors seeking to add years to his prison sentence. Dougherty wasn't on the ballot, running for any public office. He gave up on that sort of thing after losing a 2008 bid for Fumo's newly vacant Senate seat.

THE NEW curfew law will be enormously better for the police. My brother is a Philadelphia police sergeant, and he says the mayhem with the kids is late at night. The curfew will have less kids on the street and the cops can contain them better. With flash mobs, the stores should have a security system so when a large group comes in and begins grabbing things, the owner can push a button that locks the doors, then he can call 9-1-1. George Walton Upper Darby, Pa. The new curfew law is a bogus attempt by City Council to act as though they care about the citizens of this city.

Call it the many moods of Vince Fumo. In an e-mail war with federal prosecutors, the defense lawyers for former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo released their own selection Friday of Fumo's electronic messages from prison. The defense team said the messages show him to be a different and far more attractive man, or least a more sympathetic one, than the vengeful figure sketched out by prosecutors in their Fumo e-mail dump. In the new round of e-mails, Fumo worries about his weight and his mortality.

Vince Fumo's attorneys blasted federal prosecutors Friday in a court filing for "Orwellian" behavior when they published excerpts from Fumo's emails last week. While acknowledging the feds had the legal right to do so - and inmates are aware their communications may be monitored - the defense accused prosecutors of "intrusive surveillance" and criticized its "eleventh-hour use" less than two weeks before Fumo's resentencing on Wednesday. Prosecutors said in court papers on Oct. 28 that a trove of emails sent by Fumo between April and October showed he was "wholly unrepentant, virulently hostile toward the prosecutors ... and itching to write a book and exact revenge" on those who opposed him. But the defense said yesterday the feds' portrayal was "skewed" and based on cherry-picking emails to support their case that Fumo was a "conniving megalomaniac anxious to return to a life of crime ... while enjoying the restfulness" of life behind bars.