FOLLOW THE MONEY: Governor Whorebett Signs Repeal Of Fire Sprinkler Mandate For New Homes

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Gov. Tom Corbett is signing his first bill as governor. The Republican plans Monday afternoon to sign a bill repealing a requirement that fire sprinkler systems be installed in all new one- and two-family homes. The legislation was approved earlier this month by margins of nearly 2-1 in the state House and Senate. Proponents of the requirement said it would save lives by extinguishing fires before firefighters can get to the scene. Opponents, led by the Pennsylvania Builders Association, said it would unnecessarily drive up housing prices already out of reach for many people. MORE RELATED: Sometimes life-saving […]

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INFINITE JEST: You Are Missing Almost Everything

[Artwork via BATTLEROYALEWITHCHEEZE] NPR/MONKEY SEE BLOG: The vast majority of the world’s books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It’s just numbers. Consider books alone. Let’s say you read two a week, and sometimes you take on a long one that takes you a whole week. That’s quite a brisk pace for the average person. That lets you finish, let’s say, 100 books a year. If we assume you start now, and you’re 15, and you are willing to continue at this pace until you’re 80. That’s 6,500 books, which really sounds like a lot. […] Of […]

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Secret Gitmo Files Released By Wikileaks Reveal Many, Many Prisoners Innocent Or Low-Level At Best

THE GUARDIAN: More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America’s controversial prison camp in Cuba. The US military dossiers, obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian, reveal how, alongside the so-called “worst of the worst”, many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment. The 759 Guantánamo files, classified “secret”, cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure […]

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Pulling A Hogan’s Heroes Manuever, 475 Taliban Insurgents Tunnel Out Of Afghan Prison

[Photo by Allauddin Khan/Associated Press] ASSOCIATED PRESS: Taliban insurgents dug a more than 1,050-foot (320-meter) tunnel underground and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, most of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and the insurgents said Monday. The massive jailbreak overnight in Afghanistan’s second-largest city serves as a reminder of the Afghan government’s continuing weakness in the south, despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. Kandahar city, in particular, has been a focus of the international effort to establish a strong Afghan government presence in former Taliban strongholds. The 1,200-inmate Sarposa […]

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WORTH REPEATING: Sebastian Junger’s Tribute To Tim Hetherington, His Restrepo Co-Director

“Tim*, man, what can I say? For the first few hours, the stories were confused enough that I could imagine maybe none of them were true, but they finally settled into one brief, brutal narrative: While covering rebel forces in the city of Misrata, Libya, you got hit by a piece of shrapnel and bled to death on the way to the clinic. You couldn’t have known this, but your fellow photographer Chris Hondros would die later that evening. I’m picturing you in the back of a pickup truck with your three wounded colleagues. There are young men with bandannas […]

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THE DEENEY BEAST: PCP, Not Just For Kicking Out The Back Windows Of Cop Cars Anymore

THE DAILY BEAST: During its heyday in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, PCP was associated with biker gangs and horror stories in the press detailing catastrophically bad trips resulting in mental breakdown and bodily injury. But today, the drug’s spread more closely resembles that of crack-cocaine: poor, inner-city kids looking for an initially affordable, easy-to-obtain high. Philadelphia’s notorious Badlands, primarily a Latin barrio comprised of narrow streets lined with ailing two-story brick row homes, has been the epicenter of the city’s drug trade for decades. Today, the neighborhood is drenched in wet, and the corners where wet sells are some […]

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EARLY WORD: Return Of The Red-Haired Stranger

Willie Nelson’s Country Throwdown Tour 2011 ( www.countrythrowdown.com) will make a highly anticipated stop in Philadelphia on May 27th  when eight top country acts and six emerging singer/songwriters take the stage at The Mann for a one-of-a-kind-festival experience. The only tour of its kind in the world of country music, Willie Nelson’s Country Throwdown Tour 2011 features eight headliners, including Willie Nelson, Jamey Johnson, Randy Houser, Lee Brice, Brantley Gilbert, Craig Campbell, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real. Recently added to the tour, Drake White, is sure to entertain with his signature freestyle twist on original songs, ad-libs and […]

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CINEMA: Elephant’s Memory

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (2011, directed by Francis Lawrence, 122 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC If you thought a seen-it-all big city film critic was too cynical to enjoy a film adaptation of Sara Gruen ‘s Depression-era circus romance Water For Elephants, you would be mistaken. A romantic triangle between a circus owner, his star attraction wife, and an Ivy-League-drop-out turned roustabout is just the sort of old-fashioned hokum that Hollywood once did best. There was every reason to believe that movie stars Reese Witherspoon and Edward the Vampire from Twilight could bring their sizable star power to make […]

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THRONE UP: Stop The Wedding, I’m Gonna Be Sick!

BY REBECCA GOODACRE ROYAL SUBJECT It is officially a week until the Royal Wedding. Well, bloody hell, I better get out my hand-held union jack flags and commemorative china. My crumpets always taste so much better eaten off the smarmy faces of two young future monarchs.  And the date of the big day hasn’t really been mentioned much in the media (sarcasm alert), so it’s useful to have it painted onto my tea-cup, just so I can be reminded with every sip exactly when all my taxes are being spent on four tons of roses and a glass carriage. Yes, […]

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