BY JEFF DEENEY The most recent assault on institutional incompetence at DHS by the press comes this time from the Daily News in the form of a case study of sexual abuse against children placed into foster care by the agency. This information shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with how DHS resorted to removing children from homes en masse after scandal broke in 2007 about social workers, supervisors and even directors asleep at the wheel while children died on the agency’s watch. In a previous editorial I argued that increasing removals was an extremely unwise approach to […]
CINEMA: Children Of The Korn
THE WHITE RIBBON (2008, directed by Michael Haneke, 144 minutes, Germany) The school teacher’s narration at the opening of Michael Haneke’s high-art horror film The White Ribbon frames the story as a haunted memory. That perfectly describes how the winner last year’s Palme d’Or nestles in the memory a week after its viewing. The White Ribbon‘s deliberate rhythms and austere black and white images (courtesy of cinematographer Christian Berger) imprint themselves in the mind like a series of ancient daguerreotypes, evoking the fine arts while simultaneously resembling an Ingmar Bergman rebooting of the Children of the Corn franchise. The film’s […]
OLD CITY SHOOTER: The Defendent Is Presumed Innocent Until Proven Guilty In The Court Of Facebook
INQUIRER: Friends of Gerald Ung, the Temple University law student charged with shooting a Villanova University graduate six times in Old City last weekend, said yesterday that he is friendly, smart, and the opposite of a troublemaker. “Gerald is not a gun-happy, overstressed law student waiting to go postal,” one friend, Ernest Apaga, said in an e-mail. “He is extraordinarily gregarious and dynamic, and there is no doubt in my mind that his friends and professors at Temple are scurrying to figure out how to get him the proper legal counseling and funding he’ll need.” The man who was shot, […]
SUPREME COURT: The Defenders Of The Oligarchy
HUFFINGTON POST: By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday rolled back restrictions on corporate spending on federal campaigns. The decision could unleash a torrent of corporate-funded attack ads in upcoming campaigns. WASHINGTON POST: The Supreme Court has opened the door to a new era of big and possibly shadowy election spending, rolled back anti-corruption laws and emboldened critics of fundraising limits to press on. In the middle of it all will be voters, trying to figure out who’s telling the truth. The court’s ruling Thursday lets corporate America start advertising candidates much as they market products and tell […]
COCKFIGHTING: Can’t We All Get Along?
INQUIRER: A North Philadelphia man was arrested last night after SPCA agents raided his home and allegedly found evidence of a cockfighting operation. Agents from the Pennsylvania SPCA confiscated 25 birds and a fighting ring from the basement of a house in the 2200 block of Orkney Street, said George Bengal, PSPCA chief of law enforcement. MORE
LOVE CHILD BLUES: Edwards Admits Paternity
CQ POLITICS: In a statement timed to preempt a new book by a former aide, John Edwards admitted paternity of a daughter with former mistress Rielle Hunter, despite his previous denials. MORE SALON: The former senator and presidential candidate admitted today that he is the father of former girlfriend Rielle Hunter’s daughter Quinn. The National Enquirer, which broke the story of the affair, had previously reported that Edwards was Quinn Hunter’s father. But even though he admitted to the relationship in the summer of 2008, Edwards had denied paternity until now. He’d also initially staged a fairly elaborate cover-up in […]
THE NEW PANIC: Plane Diverted To Philly After Jewish Teen Straps Prayer Device To Head
INQUIRER: A teenager strapping Jewish religious ritual prayer boxes to his head and arm caused a scare on a plane from New York to Kentucky this morning, prompting the pilot to land in Philadelphia, officials said. Authorities determined there was no threat and the 17-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister, who live in White Plains, N.Y., were not held. Flight 3079, a U.S. Airways Express operated by Chautauaqa Airlines, was en route from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Louisville about 8:15 a.m. when a flight attendant saw the youth putting on his tefillin, police said. Tefillin are leather boxes containing […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN 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 steer […]
BREAKING: Cindy McCain Does A Good Deed
HUFFINGTON POST: On Wednesday, the NOH8 campaign protesting California’s Proposition 8 announced a new high-profile Republican supporter: John McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain. NOH8 is a photo project in which subjects are photographed wearing white, against a white background, with their mouths taped shut and “NOH8” painted on their faces. MORE FRESH AIR: In California, lawyers are two weeks into a landmark federal court case challenging California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in that state. Margaret Talbot has been blogging about the trial for The New Yorker‘s Web site, and she has written about it in this week’s issue of […]
TONITE: No Sleep ‘Til Persepolis
FREE LIBRARY: Join us for an exciting performance by Udi Bar David, Philadelphia Orchestra cellist and Director of Intercultural Journeys, and Kazem Davoudian, Iranian composer and santur virtuoso. Also appearing will be daf and tonbak musician Kave Mazhari. The evening will feature a special greeting from author Marjane Satrapi and will conclude with a screening of her acclaimed film adaptation of The Complete Persepolis. This event will take place in The Montgomery Auditorium. MORE RELATED: The One Book, One Philadelphia Selection Committee has chosen Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis as the featured selection for 2010. Originally published in France in […]
Vampire Weekend Contra Is #1 Album In The Nation
Now playing on Phawker Radio! EW: It’s a grand day for indie rock, as Vampire Weekend have just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Go ahead and hoist a refreshing glass of horchata in their honor. The preppy foursome sold 124,000 copies of their sophomore album Contra, according to Nielsen SoundScan — a nice number that, combined with weak retail competition, was enough to make them the biggest band in the nation for at least one week. Considering that the No. 1 spot generally belongs to major-label acts like Ke$ha and Susan Boyle, it’s impressive to see a […]
There’s Tea Party In His Pants & Everyone’s Invited!
THE INDEPENDENT: As voters in Massachusetts flooded polling centres yesterday to choose a successor to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, there was one image of the Republican runner, Scott Brown, that may or may not have been in their minds: half prone and naked with only a carefully placed hand hiding his most precious assets. A campaign poster this was not. Rather it was the picture of him that graced a spread inside Cosmopolitan magazine when it named him “America’s Sexiest Man” in 1982. Had it emerged sooner, the portrait could have put the brakes on the Brown insurgency. As […]