The best thing about a political scandal in Pittsburgh city government is that you can always assume another layer of moral vacuity will be uncovered before it runs its course.

Once again, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has been forced to hunch his shoulders and plead "no contest" to having made the kind of hiring decisions usually reserved for doddering old men at the end of their fifth or sixth terms.

If Mr. Ravenstahl is this bad at picking non-indictable help this early in his tenure, what's he going to do when he's a full-blown hack in the autumn of life?

But it probably isn't Mayor Luke's fault that the instrument for his humiliation this week is his press secretary Alecia Sirk and her husband Pat Ford, the executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Because relationships between politicians and the special interests who lobby them operate at such a higher plane on Grant Street, things that look suspicious to the rest of us really aren't.

For instance: Once upon a time, Lamar Advertising Real Estate Manager Jim Vlasach gave some cigars and a few neckties to Mr. Ford and a surround sound system to his wife so that they could celebrate the birth of Christ in style.

Mr. Ford has called Mr. Vlasach his "best friend," so he insists that an exchange of gifts between them isn't a big deal even though his dear friend constantly has business before the city.

Recently -- and we understand it was just a coincidence -- Lamar Advertising was granted a no-bid lease for a 1,200-square-foot electronic billboard on the front of the Grant Street Transportation Center, soon to be the fanciest Greyhound bus station in America.

Mr. Vlasach and Mr. Ford have exchanged Christmas cheer ever since the latter's days as a city zoning administrator.

Meanwhile, the city code is very Grinch-like when it comes to the propriety of bureaucrats and executives in the private sector exchanging gifts. The rule forbids it. Mr. Ford didn't report the gifts, so now he has a lot of 'splainin' to do.

Alas, Ms. Sirk was more than forthcoming about the gifts in a blog she kept before she joined the mayor's office. That's how blogger Bram Reichbaum of The Pittsburgh Comet found out about it.

When Bram started asking questions about the entries, Mr. Ford turned to our colleagues at the Tribune-Review to set the record straight. He was afraid that bloggers, left to their own clever devices, would distort the truth.

Less than 24 hours later, he was on administrative leave with pay pending an ethics probe and his wife was out of a job. I wonder how that strategy worked out for them?

By a macabre coincidence, these events played out the same day a fairly positive piece about Mr. Ravenstahl ran in The Washington Post. The following quote is from Eli Saslow's story:

"[Mr. Ravenstahl's] youthful good looks have helped make him a sort of crossover celebrity -- the Britney Spears of Pittsburgh, his spokeswoman [Ms. Sirk] says -- who faces incessant demands for interviews and appearances unprecedented for a Steel City mayor."

One of my colleagues quipped that long before he knew about a possible sweetheart deal between an advertising firm executive and two members of his administration, Mr. Ravenstahl should have fired Ms. Sirk for the Britney Spears analogy.

Former Coroner Cyril H. Wecht is too much of a gentleman to gloat about getting a jury that was sensible enough to resist convicting him.

By pushing for a second trial, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan is on her way to becoming our Gil Garcetti, the doomed two-term Los Angeles district attorney who failed to get a murder conviction against O.J. Simpson.

I'm sure it stung to have Dr. Wecht's defense rest their case without calling witnesses, but it was a fairly weak case, according to jurors. On top of everything, the case smells politically motivated -- like Republicans in D.C. had drawn a bull's-eye on Cyril's forehead.

If their epic battle were a cartoon, Dr. Wecht would be Bugs Bunny to Ms. Buchanan's Elmer Fudd. How can she win? Cyril Wecht is just too wascally.