Goliath Squashes David: Comcast Ruling Kills Class-Action Lawsuits

Two recent SCOTUS rulings make it official: Corporations have won.

On the morning of March 27th, the corporations finally won their war on the people. A little after 10 a.m., before hearing oral arguments on a same-sex marriage lawsuit that burned up all the media oxygen that day, Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the Supreme Court was throwing out an anti-trust class action lawsuit brought against Comcast by two million cable subscribers. It was the other shoe dropping in a pair of decisions that will have a profoundly debilitating effect on the the average citizen’s capacity to seek judicial remedies for the destructive and/or discriminatory actions of giant corporations.

How Twitter Wrongfully Accused, Then Cleared Bryn Mawr Man of Boston Bombing

Does Twitter do more harm than good? Ask Sunil Tripathi’s family.

[caption id="attachment_319961" align="aligncenter" width="388" caption="This GIF, showing a Boston bombing suspect morph into Bryn Mawr-born Sunil Tripathi, went viral today"][/caption] Like many of you, I was up most of the night following the jaw-dropping events in Boston to the best of Twitter's ability. Between midnight and sunrise, it was a foregone conclusion on Twitter that the Boston Marathon bombing suspect in the White Hat (who, as of the publishing of this post, remains at large, and is considered armed and very dangerous) was Sunil Tripathi, who was born in Bryn Mawr, graduated from Radnor High School, and up until a few weeks ago when he mysteriously disappeared, was a philosophy major at Brown.

Does Jonathan Josey’s Acquittal Mean Philly’s Red-Light Cameras Don’t Count?

Caught on video? Meh.

My cousin is married to a cop who worked out in the 'burbs. He’s a rock solid, salt of the earth kind of guy, straight out of central casting for a Scorsese cop flick: Irish, Catholic, served in Afghanistan. In other words, he doesn’t spend a lot of time reading the Huffington Post.

Don’t Be a Dick, Dick Yuengling

Philadelphians have helped to make you rich. So pay your city taxes.

There was a time back in the '90s that a portion of my nightly prayers were dedicated to asking God to make Dick Yuengling adopt me.* Such was the depth of my devotion to Yuengling Lager back in the day. It was church and everything else was just beer. It wasn’t just that Yuengling offered full-bodied flavor and a rich amber hue at a reasonable price in a marketplace monopolized by over-priced, piss-tinted corporate firewater. Yuengling represented the triumph of indie, proof that a small, family-owned brand tucked away in the mountainous redoubts of Pennsyltucky’s Coal Belt could take on the transnational corporate beer barons and not only hold its own, but grow up to be the largest American-owned brewer in the nation. And it only took 184 years!

The Banality of Evil: The Bugman Cometh

How could shocking Center City murder be committed by a monster so ordinary?

Shortly before noon on Monday, Melissa Ketunuti, a 35-year old Children’s Hospital research scientist, was beaten, bound, choked to death and then set aflame in the basement of her own house on a tony block of Center City. The gruesome brutality of the murder, the sheer brazenness of perpetrating it in broad daylight, not to mention the zip code of the grisly crime scene, sent a panicked shiver through the legions who live, play or work downtown.

Louis C.K. Is the Perfect Comic for Right Now

And with last night’s hilarious show at the Merriam, he proved exactly why he’s the Seinfeld of the early 21st century.

Wanna hear a joke? Two schlubby middle-aged lesbian guys walk into a bar. "Boy, I'm fat and bald," says the first one. "Boy, I'm lonely and depressed," says the second one. LOL, right? OK, it's probably funnier the way Louis C.K. tells it -- in fact I know it is -- which would explain why he kicked off a sold out national tour with a three-night run at the Merriam last night and I just sat in the cheap seats. Part man, part manatee, C.K. took the stage last night dressed in muffin-topped jeans and a not entirely flattering blue t-shirt stretched across his lumpy thorax and cod-white limbs, a pruned-back Bozo-like shock of ginger hair and matching goatee.

10 Congresspeople You Will Meet in Hell

A roll call of the biggest hypocrites to vote against Sandy relief.

On Friday, the House of Representatives finally, a full two months after the fact, voted to greenlight nearly $10 billion in relief funds for victims of Superstorm Sandy. (Katrina funds were approved 10 days after the fact.) More specifically, the House voted to extend the debt ceiling on FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program by $10 billion, the first installment of a projected $60.4 billion relief package.

This Is the Very Simple Plan for How You and I Can Render the NRA Powerless

With a little help from Mayor Bloomberg and Bill Gates.

It is a sad testament to the depth of our national indifference that it took the massacre of 20 first-graders to finally trigger a united and sustained public outcry for an end to the madness. After 62 mass murders and counting since 1982, we have, it would appear, finally reached the tipping point.

Shore Towns That Get Sandy Relief Shouldn’t Sell Beach Tags

Thou shall not put the ocean behind a paywall.

As you may have heard, a bipartisan pair of New Jersey lawmakers are sponsoring a bill (S-2368) that offers the state's dazed and shattered Shore towns a Hobson's choice: Accept public funds to restore beaches from the ravages of superstorm Sandy and forfeit the right to charge beachgoers an admission price in the form of beach tags OR don't take a dime of public money and charge at will.