Ever wonder why Pennsyltucky hates Philly so much and is slowly—but surely!—tightening the cash faucet with each drying, dying day? It’s because of things like this: The top four public employee earners in the state, according to a recently-released study (there have been a lot of them, lately) notes Arlene Ackerman has made the most in a year, at $348,140; then, Sam Gulino, Philadelphia medical examiner, at $239,200; then Mayor Michael Nutter, at $198,658; and, finally, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, at $195,000.

Know how the Inky blew the lid off a story about Robert W. Patterson, an assistant to Welfare Secretary Gary Alexander, being a total sperm creep and writing about how welfare is a terrible idea, created by Lyndon Johnson, a president who should have been thanking God for the Vietnam War? Yeah, now the Corbett Admin. is refusing to release any of its other employees’ resumes. I’m looking.

Hey, here’s a wonderful story involving horse slaughter, and…that’s really it. Horse trainer Kelsey Lefever of Chester County sold as many as 120 horses to a Canadian slaughterhouse through a middleman, who bought them for the meat. And is now being prosecuted for it. “Needs more horse, Carl.”

SOPA/PIPA stuff:

We all should have known that PA Sen. Bob Casey was a co-sponsor of the Protect Internet Privacy Act in the Senate. But not too many of us did. So here’s what went down yesterday, after that information “went viral”:

Initially, in light of the pieces of legislation (PIPA, SOPA), sites like Wikipedia, Boing Boing and Phawker (what?) went dark out of protest, and you plain old couldn’t read them at all. It was truly terrible and made me realize how lucky humans are, that God created the Internet when he created the world, 5,000 years ago. We never would have made it, otherwise.

Then, Republican lawmakers started dropping out of their co-sponsorship spots on the bills, like flies. At least 15 said, “screw this, the Internet wins” [not a direct quote] and became instant web meme heroes. Did you see the picture of Sen. Jim DeMint’s super cute puppy? Democrats, on the other hand, mostly held their ground, for a change (you’re doing it wrong!). After all, it’s Democrat donors, like movie studios, who want these bills to go through.

Sen. Pat Toomey later released a statement, calling the act “flawed”: “Piracy of intellectual property is a legitimate concern that should be addressed. However, the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Internet Piracy Act are flawed, and I cannot support them in their current form. I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues on this issue and finding a better legislative approach for tackling online piracy,” Sen. Toomey said.

As BrendanCalling noted in this blog’s comments section yesterday, “I never thought I’d be saying this, but THANK YOU PAT TOOMEY.” Totally.

Then Steve Welch, a Republican running for the Republican Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, slammed Sen. Bob Casey for his business-as-usual silent support of the legislation. “Senator Casey has no clue how damaging this type of legislation could be and how it would affect people in the real world.  This is just another example of how Senator Casey sees the federal government as the solution.  He only knows how to grow government, since he has spent his life in government.”

Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos.com, an influential liberal/Democrat blog, went on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (still a thing, apparently) to cream Democrats for their “incredibly stupid…tone deaf” dealings on this issue. “You’re basically seeing a generation of web savvy, web-immersed people who are obsessed with protecting what they see as their very birthright. They’re watching Republicans come out and see the light on this issue while Democrats continue to cling to the Hollywood studios.”

Santorum stuff:

Good thing we Americans want our results as soon as possible, all the time, especially in politics, and there’s nothing to say we can’t have them, because Because. What’s that, you say? It turns out the rush to judgment a couple weeks back may have been just that? Ha! There’s a report out right now saying that former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum probably won the Iowa caucus. I know what you’re thinking: “Screw it! Santorum got a bounce after that.” Yeah, but Romney’s electability is based on the former fact that he’s the only candidate to have ever won both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, jerk.