A fellow state lawmaker has taken aim at Rep. John Lawless, R-Montgomery, and his confrontational style.

Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, has introduced a bill that would make it a crime for elected state officials to threaten citizens.

Josephs drafted the bill in response to Lawless' highly publicized threat against a Penn State student earlier this year.

The student, Bob Pickrell (junior-secondary education) sent Lawless an angry e-mail in response to Lawless' critique of the Sex Faire and other such student events. Pickrell made fun of Lawless' facial deformity, the result of a brain tumor operation, a remark he later apologized for.

Upon reading the e-mail, Lawless phoned Pickrell in his dorm room and threatened to make sure that he never got a teaching job in Pennsylvania.

"It's not a threat, it's a promise," Lawless reiterated in an exchange with President Graham Spanier during Penn State's House Appropriations Committee hearing in February.

The exchange was fodder in the debate between Lawless and Spanier. Lawless read Pickrell's angry e-mail to the committee. Spanier responded with an e-mail Pickrell had sent him about being afraid after Lawless' angry phone call.

Josephs also sits on the appropriations committee.

"If anyone is guilty of bad behavior, it is the lawmaker in using his power as an elected official to wreak revenge," Josephs said in a press release.

Yesterday, Josephs introduced the bill, number 1283, that makes it a second-degree misdemeanor for an elected official to make "a threat to inflict physical or financial harm" to a citizen.

The bill has no other sponsors. If it were to pass, offenders could face 2 years in prison and a fine of $5,000.

Lawless was out of the office yesterday and unavailable to comment.

Pickrell said the measure would protect people like him, who feel powerless under the attack of a state official.

"He did call me a punk on TV. The funny thing was that he said, 'That punk is insulting me.' " Pickrell paused to laugh. "My friends call me punk now."

Ironically, the publicity prompted an administrator in a Pennsylvania school district — Pickrell won't say which one — to call and offer Pickrell a job when he graduates.

Pickrell brought back two glass ornaments from a recent trip to Italy as gifts of thanks to Spanier and Vice President for Administration Jan Jacobs.