Democrats for Kathleen Kane

Harrisburg's Democrats, the same bunch who insist that the government should run liquor stores but ignore its pension crisis, have performed the unlikely feat of finding an even more absurd cause to rally behind: fellow Democrat Kathleen Kane, Pennsylvania's criminally charged, legally unlicensed, corruption-coddling attorney general.

Kane is an outstanding case of unfitness for office in a commonwealth with plenty of competition in the category. And yet all but one of the state Senate's Democrats united to prolong her chaotic tenure this week, voting against a removal measure that required a two-thirds supermajority. Even the state's top Democrat, Gov. Wolf, has gone all sheepish since calling for Kane's resignation six months ago, having taken no position on the vote.

But we don't have to wonder where Sen. Art Haywood (D., Montgomery) stands. Despite the prominence of the word attorney in the attorney general's title and a constitutional requirement that she belong to the bar, Haywood maintained that Kane "does not need a law license." And as if endless repetition could make nonsense so, his office posted a looping video of Haywood saying, "The Senate has no basis on which to remove the attorney general."

On the contrary, the main question is which basis to choose given so many. The state House's appropriate move toward impeachment should provide a forum for a fuller airing of Kane's myriad shortcomings. Unfortunately, while that lengthy process continues, the state will be saddled with a top law enforcement officer who by all accounts can't be relied on to show up in Harrisburg on any given weekday.

Kane's most disturbing misuse of power was revealed in 2014, when The Inquirer reported that she had dropped an investigation that caught five state representatives and a traffic judge, all Philadelphia Democrats, taking cash from an informant. Despite Kane's unsubstantiated accusation that the sting was tainted by racism, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams has rather easily secured convictions of most of them.

Whether Kane prevented the prosecution out of animosity toward lead prosecutor Frank Fina, sheer incompetence, or partisanship isn't certain. But other cases involving politically sensitive subjects, from the Turnpike Commission to the Hershey Trust to a suspected mob associate, have come similarly to naught on Kane's watch.

It was Kane's alleged effort to smear Fina by leaking confidential grand jury information that brought criminal charges, the license suspension - a wholly unremarkable sanction for a lawyer accused of breaking the law - and the Senate vote. Kane's assertion that the removal attempt was "unconstitutional" was, like many of her claims, the precise opposite of the truth: The process is explicitly enabled by the state constitution.

Kane has likewise been disingenuous in portraying herself as a brave maverick targeted for revealing profane and bigoted official emails that she accidentally discovered on her office's servers. While the emails have raised serious questions about the state's justice system, Kane has long stood as the chief obstacle to their full disclosure.

Kane won election, with The Inquirer's endorsement, partly by promising to be an independent "prosecutor, not a politician." That also turned out to be the opposite of the truth. Kane's disastrous prosecutorial record appears to have been driven by a primal political instinct to protect her own. Her fellow partisans have just returned the favor.