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 [...]

Just a thought but it seems like at a time when some really big decisions will need to be made concerning mass transit in the region and when a nearly unprecedented amount of stimulus money for transit is flowing into the region, it’s not a good idea to hold up two otherwise qualified city representatives [...]

(Editor’s note: City Controller Alan Butkovitz called me and complained that this story is misleading and that Brett Mandel either doesn’t understand the job of the Controller or is purposefully misleading the public into believing annual audits are not being done by the Controller’s Office. Butkovitz says, financial audits are done on every department once [...]

City Controller Alan Butkovitz says the City of Philadelphia could save $320,000 a year by diverting lower priority medical 911 calls to a team of nurses. The concept is called tele-nursing and Butkovitz says it’s being used in Houston, Seattle, WA and Richmond, VA. Butkovitz says in addition to financial savings, it also avoids sending [...]

Is Seth Williams too unorganized to be D.A.? Is Dan McCaffery cynically using the election process for political gain? Those two questions get to the heart of the recent court battle that resulted in Williams being temporarily kicked off the ballot.
In March, Seth Williams did not properly report some reimbursements he received when filing his [...]

It’s Our City has made a downloadable Mp3 of last night’s District Attorney’s debate in Philadelphia. It’s worth listening to because much of the media coverage of the race has been about campaign tactics and not about the issues.
This debate brought out many day-to-day issues that the D.A. faces like, managing the largest district attorney’s [...]

The race for Philadelphia District Attorney held its most high profile debate last night at the National Constitution Center. Six former Assistant District Attorneys talked about their past achievements and their unique vision for running the D.A.’s office. The moderator of the debate was Philadelphia Daily News Senior Writer Dave Davies did a good job [...]

The republican nominee for Philadelphia District Attorney is:
The primary race for Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s race is May 19, but Michael Untermeyer is the lone republican candidate. That means he can already schedule his primary victory party. His MySpace page is full of his accomplishments, everything from being a former Assistant District Attorney, working as a [...]