The composite picture in Pennsylvania at the moment raises the question, how much quaintness can we stand?

		Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).

The answer might be, "Endless amounts," if the only issue on the table were preserving whatever is unique about our way of life in Pennsylvania, or if we were not in economic competition with the rest of the United States.

But neither is the reality. First of all, it would be difficult to define with any precision what it is that is unique and special about life in modern Pennsylvania, that is indisputably worth preserving as part of our identity.

It is also manifestly the case that we are, in fact, in bitter competition with the rest of the United States, even with the rest of the world, in a struggle to preserve not only our perhaps peculiar and unique way of life and mores, but also to put bread on the table and gas in the tank.

In the light of that truth, what is it, exactly, that we are trying to do with some of our current bizarre shenanigans, all of which, in my view, show us in an unfavorable light?

The first is the effort currently under way in federal court in Harrisburg to put the Dover area of Pennsylvania on the map as the site of the new, formerly Tennessee-based, Scopes monkey trial, a replacement for that dismal 1925 phenomenon as the epitome of American primitivism and ignorance. Pennsylvania people are seeking to reject not only science but America's traditional good sense in not waging internal religious warfare.

On the one hand, some could argue that it is acceptable, even constructive, to see Pennsylvanians fighting among themselves, thereby validating freedom, saying things such as a statement attributed to a Dover school board member quoted in The New York Times of Sept. 28: "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?" This, in defense of teaching so-called "intelligent design" in the schools. On the other hand, if one were a potential investor or a manufacturer trying to decide where to locate one's business, how would that approach to educating future, potential employees look in terms of the future skill base of Pennsylvania?

Then let's swing to Pittsburgh, to Allegheny County, where -- as in the rest of the country -- people wish to present to the rest of the country, to the rest of the world, a picture of a soundly based judicial system, laws that are obeyed and contracts that can be enforced if necessary. There we see Allegheny County Sheriff Pete DeFazio, who at least claims to play an important role in law enforcement in the most economically important county of this end of the state. Mr. DeFazio, in a federal perjury trial that bears on whether his staff forced people to contribute illegally to his personal political campaign -- for which we even have a quaint term, macing -- took the Fifth Amendment. "I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may incriminate myself." That's the sheriff, the one with all the nice, new cars with the lights on top: good grief.

So far nothing has happened to Mr. DeFazio for what his having taken the Fifth suggests he might have done. He has not resigned. He is still on the ballot, in effect uncontested, in the next elections. U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan is said to be on safari in Africa, the reason given for the fact that she hasn't gone after him yet.

The Democratic Party hasn't taken steps to divest itself of him in defense of giving at least the impression of integrity. It remains inert in the face of Mr. DeFazio, justifying the rumor that -- at least in Allegheny County -- the party is considering a decision to change its party mascot from the donkey to the ivory-billed woodpecker, the bird in the Arkansas swamps that no one is sure still exists.

It is also the case that the Pennsylvania Legislature is also really embarrassing, and out of sync with a modern state. It voted itself an enormous raise, after a regular annual raise, in the middle of the night, and now its members are doing everything to resist public pressure to give the money back. Now, one could say, "Oh, they're just rascals. Everyone knows that state legislators are crooks and a bad joke," and try to laugh it off.

But again, if you are someone looking to establish a business or move one to Pennsylvania, or if you are even just a college student about to graduate, wondering whether to stay or go, might it not just cross your mind that to settle in Pennsylvania would be to subject oneself to the tender mercies of legislators like this bunch, who keep the state Liquor Control Board monopoly and the Johnstown flood tax in spite of logic or economics, and who do things like give themselves an enormous raise for no reason other than that they have calculated that they can get away with it, and then refuse to give it back in the face of taxpayer rage?

Another area where we lag miserably is the current drive in a number of states to pursue an active program of stem-cell research. The federal government under the Bush administration is too afraid of its political base to take anything other than a very limited approach to that subject. Showing, however, the strength of a union that is made up of 50 different states, certain states are moving ahead firmly to support such programs.

California, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Minnesota and 40 countries support research in stem-cell biology. Guess what state doesn't?

It is hard to imagine, given both the humanitarian importance of progress on cancer, leukemia and heart disease, and the research capacity advantage that southwestern Pennsylvania already has in that area -- medical science is perhaps the new steel for us -- that the state of Pennsylvania does exactly nothing for research in that area. And, it is perfectly clear once more that the reason it doesn't is the backwardness of enough of Pennsylvania's Legislature to prevent it from taking a modern approach to this issue.

So, not only does Pennsylvania not contribute to human progress in that area through new forms of health care that can be provided the population as stem-cell research proceeds, we also give up a great opportunity to be in the front row of what will clearly become an increasingly profitable area of research, prevention and treatment.

All of this in the name of the quaintness or the uniqueness of Pennsylvania? Or, all of this in the name of catering to the least informed of our population.