In fact, if we all try hard enough, we can envision an end to the decline in the city’s fortunes and a revival of political integrity and civic activism.This election could offer proof that there is a constituency for a Philadelphia that is neither corrupt nor contented. That we can be a city that draws new people and new jobs, an ancient urban place that is still brimming with vitality — with more to come. Hope is a fragile thing, but it’s out there, in the neighborhoods in the suddenly crowded streets of Center City, among the new and old […]

ALL SIX MEN arrested in an alleged plot to massacre soldiers at the Fort Dix Army base in South Jersey were ordered held without bail yesterday at a hearing in federal court in Camden. U.S. Magistrate Joel Schneider said the men posed a danger to the community and might flee if released. DAILY NEWS: Judge Says ‘Bail? No Fuckin’ Way!’ SAY CHEESE: Unidentified man attacks Daily News photographer Alejandro Alvarez outside Federal Courthouse in Camden, yesterday.

LATROBE, PA — The normally tranquil campus in the lush hills of western Pennsylvania has been riveted by a lively discussion over whether the choice of Bush as graduation speaker was appropriate in light of the school’s peaceful Benedictine traditions and the president’s policy in Iraq. Ronny Menzie chose to join a protest on the road to the college instead of standing with her fellow graduates. “I didn’t finish my thesis because I didn’t want my graduation with him,” said Menzie, 35, a philosophy major. “I think it’s a blight, an embarrassment on a Catholic college.” Some 30 current and […]

A clearly agitated Mayor John Street was refusing to talk about his efforts on behalf of a group that is behind an advertisement attacking the apparent front-runner in next week’s Democratic mayoral primary (see related story). Reporters have been trying to follow up on word that the mayor has been helping to raise money for the anti-Nutter group. The mayor went on a rant against The Philadelphia Inquirer for sending a reporter to knock on his door Wednesday night. That reporter had a door slammed in her face. Street’s spokesman confirms that the mayor had made fundraising calls on behalf of […]

We are fairly certain that if Martin Luther King came back today and saw how the legacy of the Civil Rights struggle was being manipulated to scare off black voters from pulling the lever for an accomplished and more-than-qualified black candidate — well, he’d probably never stop vomiting. (Yes, we are talking to you, John Street) We’d like to see a commercial standing up for the ‘rights’ of the dead, namely the right to life — arguably the most civil right of them all. The murder rate in the city of Philadelphia just rolled over to 139 140 dead in […]

Michael Nutter has taken the lead in the mayor’s race — the third man to lead this bumpy, ever-changing race, according to a new Daily News Keystone Poll released May 9, 2007. But the poll also finds a great deal of “uncertainty and potential for change” among the city’s Democratic voters. Nutter’s poll numbers have jumped from 12 percent in the April poll to 31 percent now. Tom Knox polled at 21 percent; Chaka Fattah, 13 percent; Bob Brady, 11 percent; and Dwight Evans, 3 percent. Twenty-one percent were undecided, say the pollsters, the Center for Opinion Research of the […]

[Click image to activate Internets]

BY ANNETTE JOHN-HALL OF THE INQURER Well, now. Talk about black-on-black crime. I’m not referring to the city’s exploding homicide total, now at an abysmal 139, by the way. I’m talking about Chaka Fattah’s drive-by in the debate Monday night, the underhanded and unseemly shot he took at Michael Nutter in an attempt to undermine his candidacy for mayor. […] Defending charges from opponents that his proposal to stop and frisk those suspected of carrying illegal weapons was a racist tactic, Nutter insisted his plan wasn’t about race. “It’s about criminals. As a person who’s been black for 49 years, […]

SMASHMOUTH POLITICS: On The Pavement Outside The Mayoral Debate, Constitution Center, 8:05 PM During the hour-long encounter at the National Constitution Center, Chaka Fattah and Michael Nutter went at it bitterly over race, with Fattah stunning the crowd by accusing Nutter of having “to remind himself that he’s an African American.” Fattah and Dwight Evans went at it over the wisdom of Fattah’s proposal to lease the airport as a way of funding a massive antipoverty initiative, with Evans calling the idea “half-baked.” And Tom Knox and Bob Brady almost went at it quite literally. What prompted the Knox-Brady explosion […]