In 2007, the Inquirer hired Rick Santorum to write a bimonthly column. The former senator, earning $1,750 a pop, was accused of making things up in his very first piece. A couple years later, the Inky was lambasted again, this time for handing John Yoo, the author of George W. Bush's infamous "torture memos," a similar gig. Neither hire, however, was as journalistically problematic as Philly.com's recent decision to offer Tom Corbett a regular unpaid column on the site's, er, eclectic, "New Voices" section. Like Santorum and Yoo, Corbett is a conservative political figure. Unlike them, he's still serving in government. In Pennsylvania. In the Governor's mansion. Put another way, he doesn't lack a bully pulpit. Barack Obama, for instance, issues a weekly video address that his staff uploads to YouTube and publishes on the White House website. When you're a chief executive, as Corbett is, that's the sort of thing you can do. It's gratuitous, in other words, for one of the widest-read news sites in the state to offer generous word space to the state's most powerful public official.