By Kathy Boccella Inquirer Staff Writer In recent years, Ellen slipped deeper into her problems and away from her friends. By early 2004, she rarely left the house or returned phone calls. In March of that year, she still hadn’t taken down her Christmas tree. The house was so cluttered it was hard to get past the front door. “Things were bad,” Pedlow said. Her friend sought counseling, Pedlow said, but she claimed that antidepressants aggravated her chronic colitis. Five months ago, Ellen finally consulted a lawyer and rented a place in King of Prussia for $1,550 a month. She […]
EXPLAINER: WHAT THE FUCK IS HABEAS CORPUS?
Under Habeas Corpus, you have the right to say, I want to be brought into the court to determine if I am the right person charged, if there’s an actual law prohibiting what I’m charged with, if the people who are holding me have the jurisdiction to do so, and I want that publicly known and I want the right to dispute all of that and the right to be tried too. Without Habeas Corpus you can be swept up off the street and never heard from again. Period. Nobody has to know. Nobody – including yourself – has to […]
HARRISBURG: What If We Ran The State Like A Democracy Instead Of A Pirate Ship? Hmmm…
HARRISBURG – One House member wants to see all bills and amendments posted on the Internet before a vote. Another wants to give rank-and-file members a chance to get at least one of their bills to a committee vote each session. But, wait, there’s more: No more midnight sessions. End “ghost voting.” Eliminate the two-week legislative land rush known as sine die. Like wayward men and women who have suddenly found religion, the Pennsylvania state House is at long last embracing reform. Yesterday, one by one, House members – some freshmen, others longtime reform advocates – proposed ways to make […]
AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT
PHAWKER RADIO: Yo La Tengo‘s AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT Gregory Crewdson’s eerie photographs of suburbia at dusk require set-ups as elaborate as a film shoot. “My photographs are about the moment of transition between before and after,” he explains. “Twilight is evocative of that. There’s something magical about the condition.” The eerie effect of twilight crossed with strong artificial light — street lights, house lights, lights from the sky — is exaggerated by Crewdson’s choice of backdrop, which is almost always nondescript suburban America. He is not the first photographer to be drawn to twilight — “nature […]
VOTE FOR VETS Tells Specter Talk Is Cheap
By KYW’s Mike DeNardo An Iraq veterans’ group is launching an ad campaign urging some Republican senators — including Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter — to support a resolution condemning a troop buildup in Iraq. “I cannot support sending additional troops to Iraq.” That’s Sen. Arlen Specter on Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” on CBS. But Jon Soltz, chair of the group called Votevets.org wants more. His group wants Specter to vote for a resolution condemning the buildup: “Arlen Specter is willing to say that he’s concerned about the president’s policies of escalation. But we don’t need talk, we need a vote.” Votevets […]
CRUEL INTENTIONS: Penn Animal Researchers Are #1!
A research watchdog group is calling the University of Pennsylvania the most prolific lawbreaker in the country for violating the Animal Welfare Act. The group is called “SAEN,” or Stop Animal Exploitation Now. Executive director Michael Budkie says his group analyzed inspection reports from the US Department of Agriculture for 2005 and found the University of Pennsylvania had the highest number of violations for problems involving lab animals: “During a nine-month period, the University of Pennsylvania violated the Animal Welfare Act 77 times, which is about twice a week.” Budkie says in comparison, the #2 violator had 27 violations. According […]
METAPHOR: IRAQ, THE MOVIE
[googlevideo]1120793438507203379&q=iraq&hl=en[/googlevideo] WARNING: This is awesome.?
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR WITH TERRY GROSS Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was elected to Congress at the age of 29 and served in the House of Representatives for eight years. He just began his second term as a Senator. He is a member of the Senate Democratic Leadership team, and sits on the Senate Finance Committee; the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; and the Judiciary Committee. His new book is Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family At a Time. ALSO Before being elected into the U.S. Senate in 1994 Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) served in the U.S. […]
SEX PISTOLS: God Save The Queen
She ain’t no human bean!
VIET-NOW: Specter Schools Prez On Constitution
Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush’s declaration that “I am the decision-maker” on issues of war. “I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider,” Specter (R-Pa.) said during a hearing on Congress’ war powers amid an increasingly harsh debate over Iraq war policy. “The decider is a shared and joint responsibility,” Specter said.[…] No one challenges the notion that Congress can stop a war by canceling its funding. In fact, vice president Dick Cheney challenged Congress to back up its objections to Bush’s plan to put 21,500 more troops in Iraq […]
GAYBO: The Prince Charles Cockring & Hip-Hop Homos
BY TOMMY ZANE This week, Philadelphia was treated to a visit from Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall, in honor of the 150th Anniversary of The Academy of Music. Camilla wore a $25 million necklace made of diamonds and rubies, and hell — why not? Surely a $20 million necklace of sapphires and emeralds would have been just too understated for such an event. My also sources report that Charles wore his $40 million cockring with matching ben-wa balls, and Camilla fingered the crack of the Liberty Bell. Christ, I know these people are royalty, but […]
BEST IN SHOW: Viva La Dork Revolution!
Nerds://A Musical Software Satire began previews at the Philadelphia Theatre Company on January 25th and will open on January 31st for a run through February 25th.[…] Nerds “is an outrageous epic take on the parallel stories of technology pioneers Bill GatesandSteve Jobs as they blaze a path from garage inventors to warring titans of the computer revolution!,” press notes state. “From the invention of the floppy disk and the mouse to the present-day phenomenon of instant messaging and podcasting, Nerds hilariously celebrates the birth of computer technology and the two pop-culture icons that made it possible, with a rollicking original […]