By Jason Kleinman

Twitter, the popular social networking site, was aflutter this afternoon when Sen. Arlen Specter announced that he was switching political parties. While Twitter’s trending application still showed that tweets about the swine flu taking over the world remained the site’s most popular topic, Specter’s defection from the GOP quickly moved to number two. [...]

I remember the last time we were talking about magic numbers. It was during those brisk fall days in 2008 when a minor blip in the subprime housing market had only begun to be an economy crippling downturn. A young Johnny McCain still held out hope that he would pull off an upset for the [...]

In a statement released today, Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Arlen Specter says it was his controversial vote in support of President Obama’s Stimulus Plan that proved to be too much for his fellow Republicans to handle.
It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this [...]

Tomorrow Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will release his plan aimed at making his city the most environmentally-friendly city in the United States. The event is scheduled for Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. at the Franklin Institute. The plan comes from his Office of Sustainability headed by Mark Alan Hughes who also holds the title of Senior [...]

One of the best things to see at the IMAX Theater in Philadelphia was not the main film but this seven-minute film shown as the opening-act. As part of my routine, I troll through various websites plugging in the word Philadelphia to see what’s being written and show about us. Some times I catch an [...]

I thought the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was facing an economic crisis.
In the past two months, the PA’s projected budget shortfall for next year jumped $300 million to a whooping total of $2.6 billion.
So, when the Governor Ed Rendell pledged an additional $50,000 in state money towards the bike race planned for Manayunk, I was shocked. [...]

The online auction Govdeals.com is helping city and towns sell extra inventory. The topic came up at today’s Philadelphia City Council budget hearing on the Streets Department.  The meeting is part of Council’s annual budget process to grill department heads to make sure its members fully understand the city’s fiscal situation.
The topic of Philadelphia’s car [...]

[UPDATE: I forgot to turn comments off so to my commenter who got through before I turned off comments, I have your submission and I'll send to Masashi.  Everyone else, please email mhanada (at) whyy.org with your replies.)
We got some great response to weeks 1 and 2 of our photo scavenger hunt so we’re going [...]

Last week when I revealed the answers, I feel like I buried the lede and relegated our contest winners to the bottom of a long post that most folks probably lost interest in about 200 words in. So without further ado, the first person to email Masashi with the correct answers to this week’s contest [...]

Two days ago I wrote with some interest about a little bit of information that I came across in a story about the South Street bridge reconstruction.  Long story short, traffic on I-76 seems to be moving along pretty well without the South Street entrance and exit ramps and it seems that street traffic in [...]