INQUIRER: State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.) suffered a heart attack Sunday night, his spokesman Gary Tuma said.Fumo was eating dinner at his Spring Garden home at around 7 p.m. when he began experiencing chest pains and shortness of breath. He traveled by ambulance to Hahnemann University Hospital, where doctors determined he was suffering a heart attack … DEVELOPING … UPDATE: The senator was taken by ambulance to Hahnemann University Hospital, where doctors said he had a myocardial infarction and a blocked right coronary artery. Doctors did an emergency angioplasty and inserted a metal stent to restore normal blood […]
TELECOM IMMUNITY: What Are They So Afraid Of?
[via MOCK, PAPER, SCISSOR] GLENN GREENWALD: In his Press Conference yesterday, Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush candidly explained why he was so eager to have Congress grant amnesty to telecoms: Allowing the lawsuits to proceed could aid our enemies, because the litigation process could lead to the disclosure of information about how we conduct surveillance. The bit about Helping the Enemies is purely false, just standard Bush fear-mongering. Federal courts receive and rule on highly classified information with great regularity without any public “disclosure.” FISA (in 50 USC 1806(f)) specifically provides that secret information can be submitted to the Judge without […]
DJIVAN GASPARYAN: Eshkhemed
WIKIPEDIA: Djivan Gasparyan is an Armenian musician and composer. He plays the duduk, an Armenian double reed woodwind instrument related to the orchestral oboe. Djivan Gasparyan is widely known as the “Master” of Duduk. MORE CNN: Armenian President Robert Kocharian declared a state of emergency Saturday night after a day of clashes between police and protesters, a spokeswoman for the Armenian Foreign Ministry said. The protesters claim last month’s presidential election was rigged. The clashes began when authorities used force to clear Freedom Square of thousands of demonstrators who had camped there for the past 10 days, according to a […]
HIGH ROLLER: Q&A With Mob-Rocker Michael Imperioli, AKA Chris-tuh-fuh From The Sopranos
BY AMY Z. QUINN Life is, in fact, pretty sweet right now for Michael Imperioli. He’s the darkly handsome 41-year-old New York actor best known for playing Italian-American guys who meet untimely-yet-unsurprising ends, like that stutterin’ prick Spider from Goodfellas and everybody’s favorite cousin, Chrissy Moltisanti, on The Sopranos. As an actor, Imperioli has done stage work, TV (everything from Mitch Albom’s For One More Day to “The Simpsons” to “Law & Order”) and movies (including one of my own favorites, Household Saints). He and his wife, Victoria, have two kids; the couple are co-artistic directors of Studio Dante, a […]
JACK NICHOLSON: Hillary Endorsement
Wow, turns out every Jack Nicholson movie going back to China Town contains some thinly-veiled Pro-Hillary meme. And they say truth is stranger than fiction.
CINEMA: Michel Ma Belle
BE KIND REWIND (2007, directed by Michel Gondry, 101 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Named after the greatest poem ever mass-produced on a sticker (although I always preferred “Bee Kind Rewind,” with the bumble bee), Michel Gondry’s latest twee ode to hand-crafted production design shows that the French haven’t completely lost their love for their imperious little brother across the ocean. Only a Frenchman would see Passaic, New Jersey as the perfect site for a movie-lovers fantasy, a multi-ethnic post-industrial land of possibility, like Popeye’s old home of Sweet Haven. Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) is the proprietor of […]
PAPERBOY: ‘Beer & Sports’ Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and […]
ONION NEWS: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Winner Of 2008 Presidential Election
This would be so much funnier if it weren’t so true.
SCOTUS: Sympathy For The Devil
WASHINGTON POST: Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company — but that’s not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion — roughly three weeks’ worth of profits — for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history. “So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?” Roberts asked in court. The lawyer […]
POLICE STATE: Good Morning America, How Are You?
WALL STREET JOURNAL: The almost-constant growth of the U.S. prison population during the past 30 years has pushed the number of people behind bars past a new threshold, according to a study released yesterday.With more than 2.3 million people in local jails and state and federal prisons, more than 1% of the U.S. adult population is locked up, according to the Pew Center on the States. The rate is the highest in the world, and the statistics are starker for some groups. More than 11% of the nation’s African-American men ages 20 to 34 are behind bars, the study said. […]
TOXIC SHOCK: Deadly Ricin Found In Vegas Motel
LAS VEGAS SUN: Ricin, a deadly toxin, was discovered in a room at a weekly motel off Valley View Boulevard and Flamingo Road this afternoon. Hotel employees thought the substance looked suspicious and called police, who responded with the Clark County Fire Department. Presumptive testing quickly revealed the substance was ricin and police shut down the property. Ricin is derived from castor beans and can be deadly in small quantities, said Metro Sergeant Joseph Lombardo, head of the department’s Homeland security unit. It is used in cancer research, but is illegal to produce for any other reason. Ricin [pictured, right] […]
TODAY I SAW: Dawg Day Afternoon
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a collarless gray brindled pit bull giving lazy chase to another stray on 72nd Street, across from the Paschall Homes. The shaggy dog leading the pit bull jogged past the crumbling houses on Yocum Street, looking back over its shoulder, causing the pit to playfully hop up on his hind legs for a step or two when it did. The proliferation of feral dogs around the Paschall Homes lends irony to the statement spray painted on the facing low-rise brick wall dotted by plywood-covered windows on Greenway Avenue that reads, “Welcome 2 the Zoo.” […]