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 […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR For years, the name Tom Ford has been associated with fashion: He was, after all, the man credited with reviving the almost bankrupt Gucci empire, and then he started a couture label of his own. Ford has also earned plenty of attention for his provocative advertising, which often uses erotic imagery (including plenty of nudity) to sell fashion and fragrances. Now the Texas native, a onetime actor and model himself, has put his eye for design and his creative sensibilities to work in the service of silver-screen storytelling, translating a ’60s-vintage novel into an elegantly controlled, eloquently stylish […]
SPORTO: Cowgirls In The Sand
BY MIKE WOLVERTON The Eagles outscored the Giants Sunday night, but there was some cause for concern. Giants receivers hit on numerous big plays, and missed several more. Mario Manningham was barely out of bounds for what could have been two separate touchdowns. Fellow receiver Hakeem Nicks dropped a sure long TD. And the Giants still put up 38. Factor in that the Eagles got a fluky fumble return touchdown and a punt return TD by DeSean Jackson, things you can’t count on happening every week. My point is that the Eagles had a lot of things go their way […]
LET IT BLURT: Lester Bangs Speaks
ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Back in the day, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer and Nick Tosches formed a terrible triumvirate of rowdy, hard-living rock scribblers — angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of rock — feared and loathed by the music industry’s power elite. They didn’t just write about rock ‘n’ roll; he lived it, drank it, smoked it, felt it up, snorted it down and puked it up all over the page the morning after. BOING BOING: So what an incredible thrill it was to come across a 90-minute interview with Lester […]
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
NEW YORK TIMES: Forgotten except by the most fervent punk rock record collectors — the band’s self-released 1976 single recently traded hands for the equivalent of $800 — Death would likely have remained lost in obscurity if not for the discovery last year of a 1974 demo tape in Bobby Sr.’s attic. Released last month by Drag City Records as “… For the Whole World to See,” Death’s newly unearthed recordings reveal a remarkable missing link between the high-energy hard rock of Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5 from the late 1960s and early ’70s and the high-velocity assault […]
Khyber Pass Scion Was International Man Of Danger
INQUIRER: One June day in 1988, customs agents at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport pulled aside an intense and striking young man waiting to get on a plane back home to Philadelphia. They suspected he had heroin in his suitcase. They were right — two kilos’ worth from Pakistan, hidden under a false bottom. He wasn’t tough to crack: Before the day was out, Daood “David” Gilani decided to save his own skin, agreeing to betray his drug-dealing partners by helping U.S. drug agents set up a sting. It was the beginning of a complicated, off-and-on relationship as a confidential informant […]
THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIV: Down The Shore
WARNING: Audio NSFW MONICA YANT KINNEY: Did Andy Warhol have Jersey Shore in mind when he predicted that “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”? That was around 1968, before cable provided a forum for the classless masses to share their special gifts. It’s easy to argue that these playas are acting. In her Jersey Shore introduction, cast member Angelina even compared herself to reality royalty, bragging that “I’m the Kim Kardashian of Staten Island.” And yet every drunk Guidette scarfing Cool Ranch Doritos after an evening of videotaped humiliation was once someone’s little girl. In ranchers […]