Linn Washington Jr.

The career accomplishments of Kelley Hodge situate her well for the vital mission she volunteered to undertake over the next five-plus months.

Disappointment is how Louis Cruz described his reaction to the closed door he encountered when he sought work for his company on the project City Hall and Conrail proudly announced recently to cleanup a section of railroad tracks in West Kensington where a filthy heroin abuse corridor has festered for nearly twenty years.

This case involves “retaliation” the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals declared in the first sentence of the second paragraph of a recent ruling.

The pompous, pilfering prosecutor pleads guilty to corruption charges on the eighth day of his unprecedented federal criminal trial. Authorities haul this prosecutor off to prison in handcuffs…another segment in the sordid saga of Seth Williams – Philadelphia’s now former District Attorney.

The recent announcement that City Hall and Conrail cut a deal to cleanup the notorious heroin corridor along a section of railroad track running through Philadelphia’s Fairhill and West Kensington communities is welcomed removal of a dangerous blight that’s festered for nearly two decades.

Protests punctuated the Youth Day celebration in South Africa on June 16.

Donald Trump launched his long shot but ultimately successful campaign for the U.S. presidency in June 2015 with a clearly bigoted barrage against Mexicans in particular and Latinos in general. 

Tucked down in some news coverage about the recent death of Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama, were accounts of the 1989 U.S. invasion of that Central American country to arrest Noriega, a longtime CIA asset turned collaborator with mega drug dealers.

While U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Jacob Zuma are not strictly two peas in a pod, both heads of state share some astounding similarities beyond both having achieved the age of 70.

The same week that America’s federal government plunged deeper into a governance crisis from misconduct by President Trump and members of his professed Law-&-Order administration, many Philadelphians took a big step towards restoring the vitality of democracy with their participation in the primary election.

Candidates seeking a victory in the May 16, 2017 primary election for District Attorney in Philadelphia have spent months making big promises to initiate reforms and ‘restore integrity’ to that post now polluted by the presence of current DA Seth Williams who is facing a federal trial for a slew of corruption charges.

A few days before President Trump and Republican congressional leaders trumpeted a legislative success toward their goal of dismantling Obamacare, America’s 45^th president burnished his unenviable image of ignorance about history.

Although the decision by FOX News to sack its ratings superstar Bill O’Reilly in the wake of revelations that FOX paid $13-million to settle multiple sexual harassment claims against O’Reilly sparked cheers in some circles, circumstances surrounding O’Reilly’s ouster do not merit a champagne celebration.

Two days after another Trump Administration official made another astoundingly inaccurate assertion about the dangers of marijuana, Ricardo Rivera gave a group of Temple University students a poignant account about the powers of pot.

Thousands of children in Philadelphia went to bed with wrenching pains from hunger on the same night that President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on an airbase in Syria shortly before he dined on a gourmet meal at his opulent, sea-side estate in West Palm Beach, Florida.