DAILY NEWS: The evacuation of a Chester County hotel earlier this month was caused when staffers entered a room, found an Indiana man’s naked, lifeless body next to various sexual devices and a gas mask, and smelled the stinging odor of unknown liquids, police and sources said. The liquids turned out to be cleaning solutions that the man had been huffing as part of a solo sexual act, a source said yesterday. State Police responded to the Fairfield Inn and Suites, on Baltimore Pike near McFarlan Road, in Kennett Square, on Nov. 4, after hotel employees found the 48-year-old man, […]

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: If you’re a high school cheerleader, you cheer for the whole team. The stars and the scrubs. The nice guys and the jerks. But what about a player you’ve accused of raping you? You’ve got to cheer for him too, according to a federal appeals court, because you’re really speaking for the school and not yourself. The court dismissed a free-speech suit by a Texas teenager [NOT pictured, above] who was kicked off the cheerleading squad for sitting silently, with her arms folded, while her assailant shot free throws in a playoff game. The former cheerleader and […]

TED KOPPEL: Much of the American public used to gather before the electronic hearth every evening, separate but together, while Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith offered relatively unbiased accounts of information that their respective news organizations believed the public needed to know. The ritual permitted, and perhaps encouraged, shared perceptions and even the possibility of compromise among those who disagreed. It was an imperfect, untidy little Eden of journalism where reporters were motivated to gather facts about important issues. We didn’t know that we could become profit centers. No one had bitten into […]

On Friday, November 26, George Harrison’s magnificent 1970 solo debut, All Things Must Pass, will be released in a limited edition, numbered 180-gram vinyl set in its original 3LP configuration, with faithfully replicated original monochromic album art, poster and lift-top box packaging.  Newly remastered at Abbey Road Studios from the original analogue master tapes, the deluxe vinyl reissue commemorates the landmark album’s 40th anniversary and will be available exclusively at Record Store Day-participating independent music retailers across the U.S.  On the same date, the album will be available for download purchase in audiophile quality digital format (96Khz/24 bit) exclusively at […]

FRESH AIR “Darkness on the Edge of Town came out of a huge body of work that had tons of very happy songs,” Bruce Springsteen told actor Ed Norton at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. “It was all music that we recorded, we wrote and made a very distinct decision to not use.” Twenty-one songs Springsteen originally recorded for Darkness on the Edge of Town are now being released for the first time as part of a collection called The Promise. Here, we feature some of Springsteen’s conversation with Norton at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the […]

FRANK RICH: The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 — up from less than 9 percent in 1976. During the boom years of 2002 to 2007, that top 1 percent’s pretax income increased an extraordinary 10 percent every year. But the boom proved an exclusive affair: in that same period, the median income for non-elderly American households went down and the poverty rate rose. It’s the very top earners, not your garden variety, entrepreneurial multimillionaires, who will be by far the biggest beneficiaries if there’s an extension of the […]

The Mutter Museum is selling  a conjoined twin gingerbread man cookie mold. We are holding out for the stillborn Siamese twin fetus cookie mold. Now that’s good eatin’!

WASHINGTON POST: A Pentagon study group is preparing a report due Dec. 1 to Obama that found a majority of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops during the summer said the effect of lifting the gay ban would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, according to two sources familiar with the report who shared details last week with The Washington Post. McCain (Ariz.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Sunday that he did not think the Senate should lift the ban during the lame-duck session that begins this week. “Once we get this […]

INQUIRER: In a sweeping move to lower Philadelphia’s staggering tally of 47,000 fugitives, top court officials have quietly dropped criminal charges against Sanchez and more than 19,000 other defendants who skipped court years ago. At the urging of Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille and District Attorney Seth Williams, Philadelphia judges closed criminal cases and canceled fugitive bench warrants for thousands of accused drug dealers, drunken drivers, thieves, prostitutes, sex offenders, burglars, and other suspects. The withdrawn cases date to 1998 and earlier. “They were clogging up the system,” said Castille, a former Philadelphia district attorney. “You’re never going to […]

NEW YORK TIMES: A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad. The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades. Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement […]

16 th Floor 211 S. Broad St. 10:29 PM Friday by JEFF FUSCO