Joel Mathis

It was my good fortune that, after a lifetime in Kansas, I found myself living in Philadelphia during the summer of 2008 — as it happens, working in an office one floor down from Barack Obama's campaign headquarters in the city. And one day late in the election, I rode the press bus as it joined the then-Senator on a whirlwind four-stop campaign swing through the city — culminating with a final rally in fabled West Philadelphia . Obama himself wasn't too memorable. He gave the same speech, told the same jokes at every stop, the message modified slightly for each audience. ("Don't let them give you the okey doke ," he warned the largely black audiences.) What I remember about the West Philadelphia stop: It was the most black people I'd ever seen in one place at one time — probably the most I'll ever see again. And the mood, it bordered on religious. Not that these folks worshipped Obama, no. It's just at this point in the campaign, so much hope was

Two years ago, trying to find a radical solution to the gun violence problem in Philadelphia, I suggested that maybe it was time to stop clamping down on guns and time to start inculcating a culture of responsible gun ownership and usage. It was kind of a controversial idea.  While there are plenty of guns circulating in Philadelphia, there are also plenty of guns — per-capita, at least — in my home state of Kansas. Yet there are relatively few gun deaths there: As best I can tell, 9.9 gun deaths per 100,000 residents in Kansas , compared to 24.3 in Philadelphia . (The comparisons aren’t quite exact, but I think the disparity between those two numbers is probably in the neighborhood of correct.) Why?  One of the reasons, surely, is that cities are simply more violent places: Living cheek by jowl can produce short tempers; short tempers can produce violence.  But it’s also true that my rural friends have built a culture of gun safety that goes hand-in-hand with the culture of

How I spent my Friday evening:

Over the last month, former Philadelphia Mayor/Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has mostly been in the news for leading a group of investors trying to buy the Philadelphia Daily News, Inquirer, and Philly.com. Late last week, though, he abruptly dropped out of the group bidding on those news properties. And then it became public that Rendell was under investigation by the feds for taking speaking fees from an Iranian (alleged) terrorist group. Since then, we've had several stories in the Inquirer and one today in the Daily News about Rendell's troubles with the feds ... and not one of them mentions that he was just days ago the leader of the group trying to buy those newspapers. I don't mean to impugn the hard-working reporters at either newspaper, some of whom I'm Twitter-friendly with. But it's an odd omission—particularly in light of the very public in-house battles about those papers' coverage of their own sale. It's perhaps a minor thing, but

Clive Crook, National Review, Monday : The ACLU’s stated mission is “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Given its record, however, one would be forgiven for concluding that its copy of our charter is incomplete. Unfortunately, the ACLU appears to base its actions on the text of a tattered and torn document, from which the Second and Tenth Amendments are missing entirely , the Fourth was re-written in 1973, and the words “more or less” are appended to each paragraph along with an explicit invitation to interpret the document as broadly as humanly possible. Emphasis added. Randy LoBasso, Philadelphia Weekly, today : Here’s something you weren’t expecting: The ACLU, along with the law firm of McCausland Keen and Buckman have filed a federal lawsuit today against the City of Philadelphia on behalf of Mark Fiorino, a Lansdale resident who was allegedly harassed by Phil

The Daily News columnist takes it to a new level today , trying to find an avenue through which she can praise the now-late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua while also coming to terms with two grand jury reports that suggest he covered up expansive child sex abuse by priests under his command. Here's the weirdest part of a weird column: The truth is, Anthony Bevilacqua was no saint. If the grand-jury allegations are true and he transferred known sex offenders to other parishes instead of notifying the police that crimes were occurring on his watch, his conduct was criminal. Stop right there, Christine, that's great. No need to elabora— And yet, perhaps it was his sense of propriety - and redemption - that led him to shuffle priests as if they were chess pieces, believing that the interest of the church, the priests and the alleged victims would be better served by silence. It's a concept that doesn't carry much weight in a society that now rewards shouts and exhibitionis

I meant to make mention of Ronnie Polanecsky's excellent column yesterday in the Daily News, pointing out that while Archbishop Charles Chaput is pushing for a state law that would, essentially, direct taxpayer money to Philadelphia's Catholic schools, his subordinates are also making it virtually impossible for Catholic families to choose which Catholic school they want to attend. His notion of "school choice" then, is one in which the church gets to choose—not you. Since Chaput seems to be putting his muscle behind this effort, though, I feel it's important to point out something: Chaput was the archbishop in Denver when a Catholic school there rejected a student because that student had two mommies. Now: I don't like that, but that's certainly the right of a church-affiliated private school. But I also don't really want my tax dollars to subsidize discrimination against my gay neighbors, either. If Chaput can promise that Catholic schools

Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua died Tuesday night . I arrived in Philadelphia in 2008, after he'd retired, yet his name has been regularly in the news the entire time I've been here. Why? Because he was running the archdiocese when it apparently kept a lid on child molestation accusation. As the Philadelphia Inquirer's obit notes, "In September 2005, after a 40-month grand jury investigation into clergy sex abuse in the archdiocese, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office issued a report excoriating Cardinals Bevilacqua and Krol for systematically allowing hundreds of abuser priests to go unpunished and ignoring the victims." But aside from an oblique reference to governing the archdiocese during a time of "crisis," the Inquirer's obit doesn't explicitly reference the sex abuse scandal until the 12th paragraph. It's an odd choice. But to be fair, it appears to be one that the Inquirer makes regularly: It's recent news story anno

Sounds preposterous, but via The Notebook , here's the City Controller formally and publicly telling the district that "we have identified various conditions and events that, when considered in the aggregate, indicate there may be substantial doubt about the School District's ability to continue as a going concern." Man. I don't wanna move to the suburbs.

Over the last year, there's been a lot of celebration in the local media about how college-educated parents are staying Philadelphia and raising their kids here—and even sending them to the better of the city's public schools . While Philadelphia has a lot of problems, the revitalization of Center City has generally been judged to be a good thing. I suspect that progress is very much threatened: In plainer, starker terms than it had ever used before, the School Reform Commission laid out the district's financial woes to the public in a dramatic meeting Thursday night. Commissioner Feather Houstoun, who chairs the SRC's finance committee, said the situation was much worse than people realized. And with 51/2 months before the end of the school year and little left to cut, the only options left on the table are bad ones - possibilities include cutting all spring sports, all instrumental music, all gifted programs, half the district's psychologists. Oh, and all

I actually agree with Daily News columnist Christine Flowers that churches, synagogues, mosques, etc., should have the right to choose their own ministers without government interference. But I think she distorts the facts of one case she references: Things do get murky when money is involved. As Catholic Charities of Illinois found out, the state can put you out of the adoption business if it thinks that you're discriminating with public funds. Just to be absolutely accurate: The state didn't put Catholic Charities out of the adoption business. Catholic Charities put itself out of the adoption business in Illinois rather than comply with state rules and help gay couples adopt kids. Flowers' description is legally defensible, I suppose—she is a lawyer, after all—but her characterization really misses the point of what happened.

True story: I got of the Broad Street line in South Philadelphia a few years ago with a group of four or five cops right behind me. As I walked down to the Italian Market, I listened to their conversation behind me. It was gossip, but interesting gossip. Apparently a young new police officer had been assigned to one of the cushiest precincts in the city. Why? His dad was an Internal Affairs officer, and he had marched his son before the precinct's higher-ups and told them, essentially, "You take my boy or I will start vigorously investigating every complaint against officers in this district." I don't know if the story is true--I didn't think the police officers telling me the story would appreciate it if I revealed myself to be a journalist, listening in to their public conversation, so I didn't get in any follow-up questions--but the officers telling it sure seemed to think it was true. So it's good that a few Internal Affairs heads are rolling

PhillyGrrl and Dan Denvir have already hopped on Gene Marks for his " if I were a poor black child " piece for Forbes, but it really is breathtaking in its awfulness. Marks writes about what he would do, as a poor black child in West Philadelphia, to stop being so poor. Shorter Marks: "If I were a poor black kid, I'd use all the advantages I have from not being a poor black kid." Sound too harsh? Check out these two, entirely representative paragraphs:  If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study. I’d become expert at Google Scholar . I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books. I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth , TED and the Khan Academy . (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. But there are plenty of videos on these sites that are suitable to my studies and would help me stand out.) I would als

It's not just the Mummers club. Apparently, it's really, really hard to get arrested for buying sex in Philadelphia—and really easy to get arrested for selling it. Our latest example is a bust at the Penthouse Club in Port Richmond , where seven dancers and one manager were arrested Friday night on prostitution charges. And the johns? Off scot-free. Once again. Some interesting details: The investigation and subsequent raid by the LCE and the police Citywide Vice Unit had been prompted by community complaints, i ncluding those from the spouses of men who'd blown their family's grocery money at the club, said Sgt. Bill LaTorre of LCE.  At the Penthouse Club, on Castor Avenue near Delaware, men would pay $300 for 30 minutes in the champagne room or $250 for a skybox, police said. There, guys could partake in any number of sexual acts with the dancers , including "the front door, the back door and the upstairs," LaTorre said.  State Police did not immedia

Stu Bykofsky, always the contrarian, uses his perch in the Philadelphia Daily News today to let the "Top 1 Percent" respond to the Occupy Wall Street protests. I found this excerpt to be particularly confounding: How do the members of the "1 percent" feel? I asked three - Renee Amoore, Tom Knox and George Bochetto - each a local, unapologetic, self-made millionaire. They believe they already pay their "fair share" in federal taxes. "I don't only pay the 35 percent," says Center City lawyer Bochetto, who was raised in an orphanage. "I also pay Social Security tax, state and city income tax, property tax. More than half of my income goes to the government. That's my fair share." Due respect to Bochetto and his rise to riches from the orphanage. Good for him! But does he really pay more than half his income to the government? If so, he needs to hire a new accountant—immediately. Why do I say that? Because the effective tax r

A friend passes on a link to this interview with Witold Rybczynski , author of "Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville." This passage stood out: Think of the difference between “town” and “country” one hundred years ago. It was absolute and affected what you ate, how you lived, the amenities to which you had access, and much more. I would argue that today the differences between amenities, resources, etc. available to someone living in an exurb outside Denver or Pittsburgh, and living in downtown Denver or Pittsburgh, while they have not disappeared, are slight. The fact that information, medical care, education, entertainment, and so on have dispersed is significant. I am not aruing that there are no differences at all, but rather that they have, for most people, diminished to the point of being trivial. Nor is the balance weighted to the city, as it once was. Suburban Philadelphians, for example, have more choice in department stores or food stores, than those livin

Juliana Reyes reports police lamentations that they're spending so much of their time and energy on the Occupy Philly protests: For the first week and a half that Occupy Philly held court in City Hall, the Police Department's entire Neighborhood Services Unit was detailed to the protest to watch over its participants. That means for that week and a half, the roughly 30-officer unit , whose responsibilities include responding to abandoned vehicle complaints, recovering stolen cars and investigating reports of short dumping and graffiti, didn't exist in the rest of the city. NSU's Sgt. Frank Spires said that all 3-1-1 complaints, as well as direct calls to the unit, were shelved until the detail was over. It's a shame that neighborhoods will go without the service—but is that necessary? Consider this: The entire Philadelphia Police Department has roughly 6,650 officers to police a city of 1.5 million people —roughly one officer per 225 residents. The population

 Traffic Court President Judge Thomasine Tynes, the new love of my life, wants to require the registration of bikes, just like other vehicles. When that idea was proposed two years ago by Councilmen Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney, pedalists howled like coyotes. How dare they be asked to register? Condensed, and translated, the cyclists said, kind of like Dr. Seuss: "We are green! We are keen! We do not pollute the air! Registration is not fair!" Bicycling for Dummies 101 (There may be a quiz at the end): Under Pennsylvania law, bicycles are vehicles and must obey vehicular laws. That includes riding in the same direction as traffic, no blowing red lights, full stops at stop signs, no sidewalk-riding in business districts unless, chronologically, you are a child. ( Acting like a child isn't good enough). If bikes are vehicles, you logically can ask why they shouldn't be registered like other vehicles - and the judge has. Tynes' reasons include the abilit

I'm clearly a bit cranky that the criminal burden of the Mummers prostitution party has fallen upon the female prostitutes involved. Here's a question for Philadelphia police and prosecutors: Why not bring criminal conspiracy charges against some of the Mummers' leaders? Here's how the Inquirer describes the investigation : The investigation into the club began almost two months ago, after police received tips that women were soliciting sex on the second floor of the building every second Tuesday of the month between 7 and 11 p.m., Blackburn said. Lt. Charles Green of the citywide vice unit said an undercover officer gained access to one of the parties last month after wrangling an invitation from Crovetti. Inside, the officer saw women walking around wearing next to nothing, as well as about 50 men. About 7:30 Tuesday night, two undercover officers made a repeat visit to the party. As the officers made their way around the building, they saw a man pulling his p

Lawrence Crovetti, charged with promoting prostitution—the only man to face sex charges in the case. We get a bit of an explanation in today's Inquirer : John Murray, 56, of Deptford, the club's financial secretary, and Alfred Sanborn, 44, of South Philadelphia, its steward, were arrested on liquor violation charges. The two acted as bartenders during the parties, and the clubhouse did not have a liquor license, police said. Murray and Sanborn were aware of the prostitution, said Deputy Police Commissioner William Blackburn, but police did not have enough evidence to charge them with prostitution-related offenses. The dozens of men seen interacting with the women were not arrested, either. "We weren't privy to the conversations between the males and the females, where there was a price and a particular act that was identified," Blackburn said. "Our main targets were the females." The main targets were the females? Why? If the police are correc