BY AARON STELLA We’ve got one last push before the end of our first year in recession, but the Dumpsta Players, those lascivious lint-lickers of the everydrag, have decided to drench you in the year’s drossy tabloid afterbirth beforehand with their Christmas special Jon and Kate + Hate in Outerspace! Fate would have it that the Gosselin’s hyper-fertility would be sullied by their love for the camera and the Benjamins: during a rehearsal with their children at Ponzio’s for “The Regis Philbin Christmas Special”, Jon storms out and into the arms of Octomom, who’s really an alien. At that, the […]
BLAZE ON: Cali Pot Legalization On The Ballot For 2010; Ex-Seattle Police Chief Says ‘Legalize It’
ALTERNET: The Tax & Regulate Cannabis 2010 campaign has just achieved a major victory in its efforts to legalize marijuana for all adults in California — they have gathered the signatures necessary for inclusion on the state’s November ballot. “This is the next step to sane cannabis policies and the end to the hypocrisy and unjust prohibition of cannabis,” pot entrepreneur Richard Lee told me Monday morning. He is the co-proponent and a major sponsor of the Tax Cannabis initiative and the force — and money — behind Oaksterdam, the successful marijuana-friendly section of Oakland. This win means that Californians will be […]
CINEMA: Citizen Vain
ME AND ORSON WELLES (2008, directed by Richard Linklater, 114 minutes, U.S./U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Feeling more like a “hit” than any film the towering director was ever part of, Me And Orson Welles is a breezy nostalgia piece that never feels slight, thanks to the genius of Welles that hangs over the film with a weighty spirit. Brought to life by little-known actor Christian McKay, the film captures Welles at an early career highpoint, bringing a controversial 1937 Shakespeare production to Broadway. This is Welles before headline-grabbing War of the Worlds broadcast and the convention-shattering Citizen Kane; […]
YOU’VE GOT MAIL: 22 Million Bush Administration Emails Miraculously Found Alive And Well
MSNBC: Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days’ worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that filed suit over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system. The two private groups — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive — said Monday they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007. It will be years […]
BEATING THE RAP: The Revolving Door Of Justice
INQUIRER: Just 23 years old, John Gassew has been arrested 44 times, mostly on charges of sticking a gun in people’s faces and robbing them. But in the eyes of the law, Gassew isn’t an armed robber. He’s never been convicted. Despite being called one of the city’s more prolific, and sometimes violent, stickup men by police – they say he bashed a delivery man over the head with a bat, shot at a 13-year-old neighbor, and smashed in the face of a robbery victim – Gassew has been sentenced to jail only once, for a drug charge. The Northeast […]
DEENEY: On Crime And Punishment
BY JEFF DEENEY I’ve been a social worker in the criminal justice system for a little over a year now so I’ve had something of a front row seat to observe the various dysfunctions and outright failures documented in the Inquirer’s series on the courts. The series has done a great job of definitively nailing down a slew of major problems that everyone who has any even small amount of professional contact with the courts has known for a long time. The system is clogged to the point of bursting, and as a result cases get delayed, or dropped, outstanding […]
The Battle To Make RATM’s “Killing In The Name” The Number One Christmas Song In Great Britain
BBC: Rock band Rage Against The Machine is ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry in the race for the Christmas number one, early sales figures suggest. A Facebook group aiming to get the band’s 1992 hit Killing In The Name to the top of the festive chart has attracted more than 750,000 members. But McElderry’s debut The Climb, out on CD on Wednesday, is expected to catch up by the weekend. The Official Charts Company (OCC) said it is “a very exciting battle”. It is understood that there is a 10% margin in sales between the two singles after […]
NOCIALISM: Joe Lieberman’s Pre-Existing Condition
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Senate Democrats on Monday evening dropped a plan to expand Medicare, winning the support of moderates and the reluctant acquiescence of liberals, in another major step toward building enough support to pass a health-care overhaul. The idea of letting people ages 55 to 64 buy into Medicare, announced just last week, had threatened to explode the Democrats’ hopes of getting a bill through the Senate when Sen. Joseph Lieberman came out against it. MORE EZRA KLEIN: Previously, Lieberman had been cool to the idea, saying he wanted to make sure it wouldn’t increase the deficit or harm […]
SPHS Principal Has Impressive Track Record Of FAIL
INQUIRER: South Philadelphia High School’s principal faces harsh criticism over the Dec. 3 attack on Asian students by some of their African American schoolmates. But controversy is nothing new to LaGreta Brown. During nearly a decade in Atlantic City, a tenure that included running the city’s major high school, Brown became involved in numerous disputes with parents, teachers, and staff. Her time there ended in 2008, when she resigned ahead of a school board vote on her dismissal. District administrators are not concerned about Brown’s troubled record in Atlantic City, saying she was exonerated of any wrongdoing. She continues to […]
Philly Man Arrested For Bloomberg Death Threats
NEW YORK TIMES: A man from Philadelphia was arrested Monday on charges that he threatened to kill Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly in several calls made from Manhattan pay phones to 911 over the past seven months, the authorities said. The man, Jeffrey Fisher, 48, traveled to New York from Philadelphia, making 10 calls from pay phones in Manhattan, the authorities said. The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Mr. Fisher on Saturday with 10 counts of making a terrorist threat. He is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail. MORE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: A […]
KILLADELPHIA: Dead Men Tell No Tales
INQUIRER: Martin Thomas looked at the flier and blanched. “Don’t stand next to this man. You might get shot.” The threat was scribbled on a copy of his signed statement to police, implicating a man in a murder. Thomas, then 20, had revealed a buried cache of weapons and named one of the gunmen who killed a man at 22d and Somerset on a summer night. Now, there were his words to detectives, posted on the wall of a Chinese restaurant in North Philadelphia for all to see. Panicked, Thomas fled, flagged down a police car, and told the officers […]