Via the Washington Blade, an interesting item about our junior senator here in PA (and for this week, at least, I do mean here in PA. BTW, Specter’s conservative primary challenger, Pat Toomey, apparently has an in-state address right here in the same village as my parents. It’s not a big village, trust me. Kind of weird). It’s from The Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh:

Article I of the U.S. Constitution says, “No person shall be a Senator … who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.” Rick Santorum last won election in November 2000, when he owned the house at 111 Stephens Lane in Penn Hills plus a house in Virginia. Where he was an “inhabitant” at the time only he can say.



He faces re-election in 2006, but if that election were held today, the two-term Republican would be hard-pressed to convince voters that he inhabits a house on Stephens Lane. Sure, he and his wife pay taxes on the house. They also use the address for voter registration, but so do two other people. When a Post-Gazette reporter visited the house last Friday, a young man came to the door and declined to comment. He wasn’t Rick Santorum.



It gets worse. The two-bedroom house that the Santorum children called home for education purposes and that gives Mr. and Mrs. Santorum the right to vote in Pennsylvania lacks an occupancy permit. And the property tax break from the homestead exemption claimed by the Santorums on the Penn Hills house is allowed under law only if the dwelling is their “permanent home.”



It’s a strange case of political turnabout. In his initial House race against Rep. Doug Walgren in 1990, challenger Santorum attacked the incumbent from Mt. Lebanon for buying a house and raising his children in McLean, Va. Now Rick Santorum of Leesburg, Va., is saying that he is and he isn’t a resident of Pennsylvania.

It’s hard not to sympathize with elected officials who feel torn between being with their families and staying in Washington to do their jobs. Maybe Santorum has changed his mind and wouldn’t use the same tactics against someone like Walgren if he were elected today. But rules are rules, and it doesn’t seem unfair for Santorum’s family to be obligated actually to reside in the state he represents. And in practical terms, Pennsylvania is as close to DC as you can get without being in Maryland or Virginia; he’d be much easier to feel really sorry for if he were from Montana.



22 November 01:47 EST

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