LOS ANGELES TIMES: The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law. The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over marriage rights for gays. Gay rights activists say they may ask voters to repeal the marriage ban as early as next year, and opponents have pledged to fight any such effort. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote. Although the court split 6-1 on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the justices were unanimous in […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
RADIO TIMES w/ MARTY MOSS-COANE BRIAN TIERNEY, Publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News senior writer WILL BUNCH discuss the issues around hiring John Yoo as a commentator for the Philadelphia Inquirer. 11:00 a.m. Call in number is 1-888-477-9499 IT’S OUR CITY: Will Bunch is the Philadelphia Daily News staff writer and blogger who raised hell when he found out that torture memo author John Yoo was now a monthly columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Seeking more information about all of this, I emailed the Inquirer’s editorial page editor, Harold Jackson, this afternoon. What exactly was Yoo’s arrangement with […]
CONCERT REVIEW: mewithoutYou + Danielson
BY DIANCA POTTS mewithoutYou’s super sold out CD release show started off with Greensboro hip-hoppers Urban Sophisticates. Currently signed to Right Hook Records, the classy stylistics of MC Benton James rocked the Troc to the back beat of the act’s rock-funk jam band sound. A surprising opener for Tooth and Nail’s mwY, Urban Sophisticates’ squeaky clean but catchy “Head Nod Head Rock” got hands in the air and ample applause by the song and set’s end. Quickly thanking the crowd and the evening’s headliner, the southern sextet turned the stage over to New Jersey’s Danielson. Dressed alike in uniforms like […]
CONCERT REVIEW: St. Vincent’s Holy Soul Jellyroll
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), was a missionary and logician. Annie Clark (1982- ), the American singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist who goes by the name St. Vincent, brings a missionary zeal to her current status as indie’s ambassador of goodwill from The Other Side. Likewise, despite all its head-spinning detours and U-turns, her music follows the pristine logic of a flowchart. Such was the case Thursday night when St. Vincent stunned a near-capacity crowd in the sweaty basement of the First Unitarian Church with a flawless recreation of selections from Actor, her just-released and deservedly hyped sophomore collection […]
SPECIAL EDITION: The Good News Flower Hour
Collateral News: The Good News Flower Hour #22 This week we examine the strange art of Donald Rumsfeld’s holy war. Enjoy. RELATED: This Sunday, GQ magazine is posted on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more […]
How I Left My Heart On The Market-Frankford Line
BY PHILLYGRRL Perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning. When I was a girl of three, I lived with my parents and my older brother in the first floor of a row house on South Farragut Street in West Philadelphia. Occasionally, when my father was using the family’s orange VW Beetle or when my mom didn’t feel like driving, she would take me and my older brother on the Girard Avenue Trolley (Route 15). She’d say she needed to finish errands, but more than likely she just wanted to get out of the house – stuck as she was […]
BEING THERE: The Good News Flower Hour
A special edition, look for it later today.
ALLEGED: Jersey Devil Caught — 100 Years Ago
INQUIRER: One hundred years ago, thousands of people believed. “WHAT-IS-IT VISITS ALL SOUTH JERSEY” declared the front page of The Inquirer on Jan. 21, 1909 — above a photograph of “actual proof-prints of the strange creature.” “Hooflike tracks” could be seen in the snow “in practically every block in Burlington city” — including rooftops — throwing “this section into a state bordering on panic.” Even dogs were scared. “Hounds put on the trail refused to follow the tracks, and, with bristling hair and the picture of terror, ran home,” the article stated. Armed with shotguns, a party of young farmers […]
HACK AXED: Judges Shitcan BRT Board Member
INQUIRER: The city’s judges fired Joseph A. Russo from the Board of Revision of Taxes today, after a scathing report from the city inspector general said he had manipulated property assessments, abused his power, and committed perjury. The sudden firing of Russo, a longtime ally of former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, appeared to be unprecedented in the 155-year history of the BRT, the agency that sets tax values for all properties in Philadelphia. “He did not uphold the standards expected of appointees,” President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe said. She said the vote was unanimous and the firing effective immediately. The […]
RAWK TAWK: With Mike Kennedy Of Audible
BY KYLEE MESSNER As if following the prime directive of the great philosopher known as Old Blue Eyes (“Let’s take it nice an easy”), Mike Kennedy lives his life “in simple intervals,” which is why he chose it as the title of his band Audible’s latest record. “Basically, it was a line in one of the songs on the record,” explains Kennedy. “In the last song on the record we all sing in harmony.” With Kristine Muller, Kennedy’s wife-and-bandmate, expecting twins due in September, the record’s title was, it seems, quite in tune with the the band’s offstage life, as […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Brent Jeffs [NOT PICTURED] grew up in the inner circles of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; his grandfather was a prophet of the FLDS, which teaches that polygamy is a religious practice that guarantees salvation. Jeffs’ uncle Warren Jeffs became president of the sect in 2002. FLDS followers believe that they are the only true practitioners of the Mormon faith, which officially abandoned polygamy in 1890. Although Brent Jeffs’ lineage gives him what he says FLDS followers think of as “royal blood,” he was eventually expelled from the FLDS church during a series […]
Look Ma, Stephen Colbert On Inky/Yoo Controversey
? Extra! Extra! Bleed All About It! – The Colbert Report (Video Clip) RELATED: The Velvet Revolution DOWNLOAD FULL COMPLAINT: Microsoft Word (.doc) Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) PREVIOUSLY: YOO HOOEY: Inky’s Harold Jackson And Daily News’ Will Bunch Trade Blows Over ‘Torture Guy’ Editorialist PREVIOUSLY: Why Is THIS Man Bloviating About Supreme Court Replacements In The Inquirer?
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 […]