TMZ: Tsk, Tsk, Tsk PHAWKER: This Is A Teachable Moment NORMAL: The FBI has released its annual report on Crime in the United States 2007. Once again, the number of people in the United States arrested for marijuana has gone up. 872,721 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2007, and of those arrests, 89% or 775,138 were arrests for simple possession – not buying, selling, trafficking, or manufacture (growing). This represents an increase in marijuana arrests of 5.2% from the previous year and the fifth straight year marijuana arrests have increased from the previous year. Now a marijuana smoker is […]
KILLADELPHIA: Mother Killed In Hit On The Father
INQUIRER: At a news conference today at Philadelphia Police Headquarters, authorities released new information about a triple shooting this morning on the 3300 block of Mutter Street in Hunting Park that left a 19-year-old woman dead and her husband and young son seriously injured. The injured boy is a 5-year-old who was shot twice, police said. There was another child, 2, inside the house when the gunfire erupted, but that toddler was not injured. Two assailants entered the rowhouse through the basement. They found the four members of the family – a 20-year-old father, 19-year-old mother, and the two young children — […]
FORTRESS AMERICA: Pentagon Plans To Station 20,000 Troops Inside The U.S. Homeland
WASHINGTON POST: The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military’s role in domestic law enforcement. The Pentagon’s plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response […]
Ex-City Paper Editor Gravely Injured In Hit And Run
Brian Hickey (pictured above with Danny Devito, on the set of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia), formerly editor of the City Paper and spokesman for John Dougherty’s unsuccessful bid for Vincent Fumo’s state senate seat (not to mention a trusted colleague during our staff writer days at PW), was seriously injured by a hit and run driver in Collingswood last night, according to his wife Angela. He is currently in the Trauma-ICU of Cooper University hospital and in stable condition after emergency surgery to alleviate swelling of the brain. INQUIRER: Hickey, 35, was walking to the PATCO station on Atlantic […]
ILLADELPHIA HALF-LIFE: Postcards From The Edge
INQUIRER: In the tight rowhouse streets of North Philadelphia, people share walls and worries. Few outsiders see, know or feel the cycle of want and chaos that a week of privation creates. To show what life north of Spring Garden Street looks like to some of the people who live there, Mariana Chilton, a professor and anthropologist at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, gave digital cameras to 40 women. Out of a simple idea, complex images and narratives emerge. An exhibit of the photos, called Witnesses to Hunger, will open to the public Dec. 11 at Drexel’s Bossone Center. […]
WORTH REPEATING: To Live And Die In Mumbai
BY SUKETU MEHTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness. Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim […]
KILLADELPHIA: 1 More Dead Since You Went To Bed
INQUIRER: Police found the body of an unidentified man inside a parked car North Philadelphia shortly after 12 a.m. today. The man, who was shot in the left chest area and the arm, was discovered in the 4600 block of North 16th Street, police said. He was pronounced dead at Einstein Medical Center. The investigation is continuing and no other details were available. MORE ALSO: A man who was carjacked in Hunting Parkon Friday remained in Temple University Hospital in serious condition today with a single gunshot wound to his buttocks, according to city police information officer Christine O’Brien. The […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
I’M RICK JAMES, BITCH: : King Khan & The BBQ, Johnny Brendas, Last Night BY TIFFANY YOON I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Love City, the opener for Johnny Brenda’s Black Friday show, but unfortunately, I missed their set, which is supposed to pull influences from psychedelic 70’s punk, 90’s grunge and 80’s new wave. I did catch some words with the bass player Patrick outside, and he said they had some technical difficulties anyways. He seemed pretty upset, and to top it off Jamie, the lead of Love City, walked by looking miserable and fairly wasted […]
BOOKS: Death Of A Salesman
INQUIRER: Robin’s Book Store, a favorite haunt of the Philadelphia’s literati, announced last week that this will be its last holiday season. It will be closing up shop at the end of January. Early this afternoon there were a handful of customers at the store. The customers appeared surprised at the store’s demise. The city’s oldest independent book seller, Robin’s has long hosted poetry readings and autograph signings at 108 S. 13th Street. “Operating a books store was always a better hoppy than a way to make a living, but now it’s impossible” writes Larry Robin in a news release. […]
GUNCRAZY: Woman Shot In Old City Bar
INQUIRER: A 26-year old woman was shot in the leg inside an Old City nightclub this morning, police said. At 1:20 a.m., police responded to a shooting inside CEBU in the 100 block of Chestnut Street, police said. The victim had been shot in the lower right shin. The woman was taken to Jefferson University Hospital where she was listed in stable condition. No arrests were reported. MORE
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
The White Album Listening Party DAVID SREBNIK: “The White Album Listening Party: Revisiting The Beatles’ Top-Seller” celebrates the 40th anniversary (Nov. 22, 1968) of the release of the Beatles scary-new, scary-wonderful, scary-ambitious new recording. The “Listening Party” puts the Beatles White Album in the center of a circle of non celebrity, smart, non-fanatic, well-spoken and knowledgeable Beatles experts, who share their memories, opinions and stories behind the stories and the recording. The discussion proceeds by track order, usually two tracks at a time, followed by both songs. Almost each segue from discussion to music generates both a musical “AHA” moment.It […]
INDIA 9/11: Murder & Mayhem In Mumbai, Gunmen Kill 172, 370 Wounded, Americans And Brits Targeted
UPDATE: A team of FBI agents was ordered to fly to India to investigate the militants who killed four Americans and injured at least two others during a wave of assaults that ripped through a commercial center of Mumbai. The investigators aim to learn more about the origins of the militants who carried out the lethal strikes on luxury hotels, a train station and an Orthodox Jewish center where a New York rabbi and his wife were among five hostages slain. An American and his teenage daughter traveling with a Virginia-based spiritual group were also among the 150 people killed […]
ABATTOIR BLUES: A Thanksgiving Story
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Every Thanksgiving for the last 50 years, the Jaindl family turkey farm has been putting the bird on the dinner table at the White House. A Jaindl bird also goes to George Clooney, Michael Jordan, J. Lo, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger courtesy of Warner Bros. Studios, which has a standing annual order with Jaindl for 500 turkeys to be doled out to its sundry stars and VIPs. Meanwhile, some 350,000 families from Maine to Florida and as far west as the Mississippi — flyover country, as it were — will sit down today to […]