Around the politicians, Thursday edition

• State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cappy has seen taken the old adage "Discretion is the better part of valor" to heart and has promised to sit out any pay-raise appeals that might come up his way. Of course, there's room for discussion about whether *any* judge could be impartial in hearings about his/her own pay rates.
  
  
• A new installment of speculations about US Rep. Chakka Fattah's mayoral ambitions. Here his interest is assessed mainly by the degree to which potential opponents are directing their barbs at him, but a bit on how he's responding...
  
  
• US Senate hopeful Robert Casey, Jr., is asking federal election officials to look into a group running a huge ad buy for Senator Rick Santorum without revealing its donor lists (as political organizations are required to do; see prev. here). Clearly this is a grey zone of election regulations, but the appearance that a nonprofit is acting as a PAC deserves a closer look.
  
  
• Proving that not all political ethics lapses come from the eastern half of the state (for the despairing among you), State Rep. Jeff Habay of Alleghany County just went on trial on a striking number of corruption charges.
  
  
• John Baer looks at the two frontrunners in the Republican gubernatorial primary race, Lynn Swann and Bill Scranton, in light of a big political schmooze-fest this weekend that may tip the balance.
  
  
• Finally, the CityPaper's Political Notebook notes that US Rep. Bob Brady has the unenviable job of trying to find a replacement for ousted Supreme Court Justice Nigro. News to me is that whomever Rendell nominates for the spot has to agree not to run for reelection a year from now; that probably eliminates most of the folks you'd want to see doing the job!