A highwater mark for presidential oratory, reasserting the cruciality of openness, transparency, and accountability, not to mention freedom of the press, to a healthy democracy. Striking, really, how contrary these seemingly bedrock American virtues have become to the powers that be.
THE TROUBLE WITH SANTORUM: Not So Much A Column But A Pat On The Back — His Own Back
You know, when you’re a politician, you can throw around this kind of self-serving hyperbole and nobody will call you on it because, frankly, everyone expects you to lie. But when you start writing a column for the newspaper, you can’t just pull shit out of your ass and state it as fact. From paragraph two of Rick Santorum’s Elephant In The Room column in the Inquirer: Along with churches and families, government has played a role in, at first, nurturing – and, more recently, weakening – this social compact. One of my greatest frustrations as a Republican leader was […]
GUNCRAZY: Two Teens Confess To 14 Armed Bar Robberies And Two Gunpoint Carjackings
BY DAVE GAMBACORTA OF THE DAILY NEWS At an age when most boys are focused on prom dates and driver’s licenses, police say two West Philly teens have been busy masterminding a staggering citywide crime wave. The boys — ages 15 and 16 — were arrested on Monday after they confessed to committing 14 bar robberies and two carjackings at gunpoint during the past month, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives. The teens, whose names were not released, were each charged with multiple counts of robbery and related offenses. “They pretended to be patrons but ended up demanding money […]
WORTH REPEATING: A Beautiful Mind
THIS I BELIEVE BY ALBERT EINSTEIN The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious — the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with the awareness of — and glimpse into — the marvelous construction of the existing world together with the steadfast determination to comprehend a […]
MEDIA: Mayor Nutter Butter Meets The Gray Lady
Michael Nutter, who takes office in January, offered plans to declare crime emergencies in Philadelphia’s most violent areas. BY IAN URBINA OF THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: November 23, 2007 PHILADELPHIA — The day after Michael Nutter won a landslide victory to become this city’s next mayor, he put on a charcoal gray suit and drove to his first public event: the funeral of a police officer shot in a brazen daytime robbery. Two nights before he announced his choice for police commissioner, two more officers were shot and wounded. When Mr. Nutter takes office on Jan. 7, he will […]
BEST WISHES: A HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL
And to all a good night! We will see you all on Friday bright and early…
HECKUVA JOB, BROWNIE: Did The Former White House Press Secretary Just Bring His President Down?
THE NATION — Scott McClellan’s admission that he unintentionally made false statements denying the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Bush-Cheney administration’s plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson, along with his revelation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were among those who provided him with the misinformation, sets the former White House press secretary as John Dean to George Bush’s Richard Nixon. It was Dean’s willingness to reveal the details of what described as “a cancer” on the Nixon presidency that served as a critical turning point in the struggle by a previous Congress to […]
CINEMA: Causality Of War
REDACTED (2007, directed by Brian De Palma, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Coming off the highest profile flop of his career, a flat-footed adaptation of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia, Brian De Palma is proving himself still spry at 68, with his camcorder-eye view of the Iraq War, Redacted. It’s an audacious move for De Palma, not just politically (the film has O’Reilly and his ilk frothing madly) but stylistically as well, robbing him of his trademark slow-motion set-pieces, florid musical scores and his gliding tracking shots. With Coppola soon to arrive with his bare-bones return to […]
WORTH REPEATING: Squandering The Peace Dividend
BY JOHN BRUHNS We watched as legislation that had no substantial impact on ending the war was debated. There ARE anti-war resolutions still floating out there that call for a real end to the war, but the groups I worked for wouldn’t spend one dime to promote legislation considered out of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Any genuine anti-war message was filtered through media consultants who provide politically correct “talking points” to veterans for them to carry out a phony message that is beneficial to the campaign. We threatened Republicans with “political extinction” if they didn’t change their votes […]
WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Thanksgiving Prayer
Amen, Bill.
QUESTION EL PARKING AUTHORITY: PPA Goes CYA
DAILY NEWS: A week after the Daily News raised questions about the size of the Philadelphia Parking Authority’s auto fleet, the agency has asked 18 of its mid-level managers to give up the car keys. The Parking Authority issued a news release yesterday, saying that it expects to save $400,000 next year by limiting the number of managers permitted to take company cars home for the night, and by postponing the purchase of 18 new sedans and SUVs. The authority also projected $1 million in savings from a reduction of 10 management jobs through attrition and retirements.Last week, the Daily […]
TECH: Did This Man Just Kill Print?
Books have been very good to Jeff Bezos. When he sought to make his mark in the nascent days of the Web, he chose to open an online store for books, a decision that led to billionaire status for him, dotcom glory for his company and countless hours wasted by authors checking their Amazon sales ratings. But as much as Bezos loves books professionally and personally — he’s a big reader, and his wife is a novelist — he also understands that the surge of technology will engulf all media. “Books are the last bastion of analog,” he says, in […]