Results tagged “charlesramsey”

• Eric Birnbaum stood chatting with a female co-worker in the parking lot outside of his Bucks County law office yesterday when a masked gunman appeared out of nowhere and fired a single shot into the back of his head. Authorities are baffled by the seemingly random, daylight shooting that occurred just after 9 a.m. yesterday.




Continue reading "Yo, Philly in the News"

Could you imagine if the Joker was around while this was happening? Yikes!

Phillyist reader Christopher followed up on last week's Asshole of the Week by pointing out something very strange: while Commissioner Ramsey's name was spelled correctly in the Inqy article we linked to, that same article published a day later in the Daily News features a misspelling of the name in the headline and in the URL, even though it's spelled correctly in the body of the article. Almost a week has gone by, and nobody at philly.com seems to have noticed yet.

It was an amazingly asshole-free week in Philadelphia news. For a little while there, it was looking like we weren't even going to be able to find an Asshole of the Week. Fortunately, when all else seemed lost, a couple dumb criminals saved the day for us. Not that these two women were dumber than your average petty criminal, but the circumstances around their arrest are just too glorious to resist calling them out.

Last Friday & the weekend: Michael defended his decision to cut $21 million in funding to Philadelphia Safe and Sound, the program that, as we mentioned last week, John Street had shifted money to in the waning days of his administration. And he announced that the Department of Public Welfare would be auditing Safe and Sound's finances for the last couple years. Michael also ignited Governor Rendell's fury with his revocation of SugarHouse's casino license, as Rendell is all for the casinos.

It was the week where Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey unveiled his plan to tackle Philadelphia's crime problem. It should have been a week of optimism and feeling like we're gonna get things headed in the right direction. But alas. We were reminded of the city's problems by the fact that, on the day that Ramsey announced his plan, he was in the process of investigating four homicides that occurred in a 16-hour span. The most gut-wrenching of these was the shotgun murder of a 28-week pregnant woman. (The fetus is in critical but stable condition as of this writing.) So it's without a touch of humor that we declare anyone and everyone contributing to the city's crime problem—and particularly with regard to gun violence—our asshole of the week.

Last Friday & the weekend: Michael's search for a new CEO of the Philadelphia School District got down to two contenders—apparently—after Temple College of Education dean Kent McGuire withdrew his name from consideration for the position.

Last Friday & the weekend: Michael probably doesn't know it, but he got a shout-out from Hot Hot Heat frontman Michael Bays at last week's FREEZEtival before the band played "Bandages." What the connection between the song and our mayor is, we have no idea. And in real news, Michael named his appointees to the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority board.