The governor invited a tough examination by essentially pursuing what’s been described as a backroom deal — in other words, without legislative oversight or even input. And without public awareness. He then consummated an agreement with the one and only bidder to make an offer.

The lack of transparency produced deserved criticism. And making the chore of selling the plan all the more difficult is the fact that the Lottery is undeniably successful.

That’s not to say privatization isn’t a good thing. We don’t doubt that getting the Lottery out of the government’s hands could make it even more successful. Our concern is the secretive route the governor went and also that he’d turn the operation over to a foreign company.

So we’re not disappointed that Kane nixed the contract. However, we were disappointed in Kane’s high-profile rejection of the deal.

Rather than handle the issue in a routine way, Kane called a press conference to announce her decision — and then refused to take any questions form the press.

The theatrics followed by Kane’s failing to take questions raises legitimate criticism that she handled the issue in a political way. Corbett noted that in his years as attorney general, he never held a press conference to announce the rejection of a state contract. Acting pre-emptively to rebuff expected criticism, Kane had noted in her announcement that the lawyers who formulated the decision were the same lawyers who earlier worked for Corbett.

Politics aside, the rejection paves the way for the governor to handle his proposal to privatize the Lottery the right way: with legislative input and plenty of public awareness. This time, let’s have a debate before signing a contract.

— The (Doylestown) Intelligencer

NEW PATERNO REPORT LOOKS BACKWARDS

A report commissioned by the late Joe Paterno’s family claims that Pennsylvania State University’s report about the Jerry Sandusky scandal was “speculative and seriously flawed.”

It’s tempting to view the two reports as similar enterprises — independent investigations seeking the truth about how Sandusky got away with sexually abusing young boys for 14 years before he was caught, prosecuted and convicted. Our political leaders can’t agree on a common set of facts about any contentious issue. Sandusky, of course, is ultimately to blame for his crimes, but why shouldn’t there be two alternate views about who bears a share of responsibility for letting him escape detection for so long?

It’s a false choice to give these two reports equal weight. The reports were prepared with different aims. Paterno’s family paid their experts in a quest to rehabilitate the reputation of the legendary coach. Penn State’s board of trustees hired Louis Freeh, former head of the FBI, and his investigators to conduct an independent examination of the Sandusky case at a cost of $6.5 million. The university wanted to learn what had gone wrong at the institutional level and sought recommendations to prevent such a travesty in the future.

The Freeh report concluded that Paterno; Graham Spanier, former president of Penn State; Gary Schultz, former vice president; and Tim Curley, former athletic director, covered up for Sandusky after they learned that the ex-assistant coach had touched an 11-year-old boy in a shower in May 1998. Freeh’s report used a trail of e-mails to determine that Paterno and the other three administrators were aware of the shower incident but did nothing to instigate an investigation of Sandusky.

The Paterno family’s report says that the Freeh report doesn’t prove there was a deliberate cover-up about Sandusky. Critics of the Paterno family report counter that because Penn State officials failed to act in May 1998, Sandusky continued his crimes. When Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse in June, one charge included the sexual assault of a boy in a shower at Penn State on May 3, 1998.

Since Freeh’s report was issued in July, Penn State has changed the way sexual abuse complaints are reported and has trained campus police on how to respond to child sexual abuse. The Paterno family’s report isn’t about making changes for the future; it’s about trying to return to the past, when Paterno was revered for winning football games and admired for his personal integrity.

Washington Post reporter Sally Jenkins interviewed Paterno shortly before he died. He told Jenkins he was not a victim. “I’ve had a wonderful experience here at Penn State. I don’t want to walk away from this thing bitter. I want to be helpful,” he told Jenkins. The Paterno family report is not helpful. It diverts attention away from the real issues: how to help Sandusky’s victims heal and how to prevent other children from being sexually abused.

—Erie Times-News

THE RIGHT CALL ON VOTER ID

Forget the candidates, Pennsylvania voters who won’t be required to show photo ID at the polls during the May 21 primary, came out the real winners this week.

That’s because lawyers on both sides of a constitutional challenge to the state’s notorious Voter Identification Law agreed that the ill-conceived statute would not be enforced as voters pick nominees for judicial and municipal offices.

“At this point we just don’t see the (need) to litigate the issue,” Senior Deputy Attorney General Patrick Cawley told the Associated Press.

That’s putting the cart well before the horse. The litigation, let alone the statute, shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The law’s Republican authors were never able to prove that the problem that the statute was intended to prevent — voter impersonation — existed at the pandemic levels needed to justify the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters who just happened to be Democrats.

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, exposed the naked political motivations behind the law when he admitted last June before a gathering state Republicans that it would “allow” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to win the state.

Turzai’s televised remarks, which were played on an endless loop on cable news shows, had the unintended consequence of energizing Democrats lulled into a false sense of security by President Barack Obama’s poll numbers in the state.

And as a Commonwealth Court case so amply demonstrated last year, state officials bungled implementation of the law from start to finish.

Among the flaws exposed in Judge Robert E. Simpson’s courtroom was the shoddy training for front-line PennDOT employees charged with issuing acceptable identification. More than one witness testified to the difficulty of obtaining ID from the agency’s motor-licensing centers.

It was also shown that state officials would be unable to get proper ID into the hands of voters who needed it in time for last November’s general election.

So as voters head into the polls in May, the status quo that existed during last November’s election will prevail: They will be asked to show photo identification, but will not be barred from voting if they do not have it.

It’s a ridiculous charade that one hopes will end with a judge’s finding that the law, like Turzai’s remarks, should be consigned to the dustbin of history.

— The Patriot-News

MUST WINTER STORMS HAVE THEIR OWN NAMES?

The creeping acceptance of a mercenary scheme to name winter storms is not among the most important things in the news, or even the weather. But like an ill wind, it carries an unmistakable whiff of chaos and dissipation.

The system for naming hurricanes and tropical storms was developed over decades to facilitate communications about weather patterns that can endanger large swaths of the planet. Storms must reach sustained winds of at least 40 m.p.h. before they earn a name from one of several rotating lists established by an international committee of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization in Geneva. Officials even have a deliberate procedure to retire the names of the most damaging storms once a year.

And then we have the Weather Channel’s so-called system for naming certain winter storms, which looks to have been developed by the marketing staff in a fluorescent-lit meeting room somewhere deep within its offices off an Atlanta-area highway interchange.

The channel’s comically vague explanation of its process says it will assess “several variables” before naming “noteworthy” storms — including whether they affect rush hour. The alleged benefits presented by the network include ease of “hashtagging” on Twitter.

This isn’t much of a bid for gravitas, and the Weather Channel’s choice of storm names doesn’t help. A good portion of its list — including Gandolf, Khan, Rocky, and Yogi — consists of names closely associated with characters from science fiction, popular movies, and cartoons.

The Weather Channel announced its unilateral venture back in the fall, whereupon the National Weather Service warned its meteorologists not to dignify the network’s first winter storm designation, “Athena,” with a mention.

Unfortunately, though, the gimmick started to gain traction with the nor’easter that dumped snow on New York and New England this month. Public officials and others, particularly on social media, began joining the channel’s hype machine in calling the storm “Nemo,” a name irrevocably bound to an animated clownfish. (Sorry, Jules Verne.)

At least the new regime replaces the channel’s previous, ad hoc efforts to name snowstorms — e.g., “Snowtober” — which were even worse. But it’s still a depressing attempt to disguise empty hype as empirical analysis.

How long can it be before this pseudoscientific system mutates to encompass even more unremarkable weather patterns? We might as well brace ourselves for Heat Wave LeBron or Stiff Breeze Bieber.

— The Philadelphia Inquirer

GRAPPLING WITH LOSS OF WRESTLING FROM OLYMPIC GAMES

We are not international purveyors of athletic competitions, so we don’t pretend to know the minds or responsibilities of members of the executive board of the International Olympic Committee.

But we know what we don’t like. And we don’t like the announcement yesterday that the board has recommended dropping wrestling as a sport from the 2020 Olympic Games.

Wrestling? We can well imagine the rampage our late newsroom colleague and longtime wrestling supporter and writer, Dan Sernoffsky, would be having to say about now. Actually, he’d probably be writing this piece filled with far greater outrage than we can muster.

We’ll carry the (Olympic) torch for him as well as we’re able.

Wrestling was a part of the ancient Olympic Games. The ones that occurred when Greece was still worshipping Zeus and Hera. While original events focused on running, it wasn’t long before martial sports – like boxing and wrestling – became part of the mix.

Any event that had a place in the ancient Olympic Games would seem to us to have the ultimate grandfather clause for being included in our modern games, in perpetuity.

We’ll make an exception for chariot racing, but otherwise, if the events were contested and dedicated to the honor of the ancient gods, it hardly seems right that anyone has the authority to put such an event on the shelf.

No, wrestling belongs in the Olympic Games. It belonged in ancient times; belonged since the re-creation of the Olympic games first contested — in Athens, logically and rightfully — in 1896; and continuing long beyond 2020.

There are seven other events that are going to be fighting for their lives for inclusion in the games beyond 2020.

Those sports are baseball/softball, karate, roller sports, sport climbing, squash, wakeboarding and wushu.

Wait, what?

We have problems with the inclusion of a couple other events on that list. Karate is also a martial art with an ancient history and modern applications. It’s not a European art, but that doesn’t detract from its significance. It’s the kind of event, had the original games been contested in Japan instead of Greece, that would have been included. It, too, should be allowed to hold place in the games.

Wushu (and we admit we had to look it up) is a Chinese martial art. See our argument regarding karate above.

But wakeboarding? Wakeboarding? And sport climbing? Really?

They don’t quite strike us as having millennia of significance to any particular world culture. They don’t strike us as having martial applications that would make sense as a basis for competition. We’re sure they have their fans, and we humans will make a competition out of anything, but we can’t fathom agreeing with an argument that such events belong in the Olympics, especially if they supplant things like wrestling.

Wrestling. There is hardly a more basic individual competition that can be conceived, other than running. The ancient Greeks knew that. That’s why both events came to be a part of their games.

The organizers of the modern Olympics knew that from the start.

Today’s IOC executive board has apparently forgotten it. Somebody needs a semi-gentle half-nelson to spur either memory or better sense. We’re sure there are some volunteers — many of them world-class wrestlers — who’d take us up on the idea.

— Lebanon Daily News