Once upon a time, in a Philadelphia not so far away, Arlen Specter had aspirations for higher office as an assistant district attorney. People vote with their guts, as opposed to cerebral gumption, and so the stepping stones thereto require the usual encomiums to law and order, and a toothy resolve to be tough on [...]

Courtroom 1007 doesn’t have much of a peanut gallery. In a tight space of three or four rows, a dozen reporters and rubberneckers kept the families of Sabina O’Donnell and Donte Johnson at diametric poles throughout the course of the day’s proceedings. I found myself serving as a rather unwilling border guard amidst a gaggle [...]

Let me clear my throat: Sandra Bernhard’s cemented status as a deliberate provocateur guarantees a certain resurrection of the snarky, gay delights of the late ’80s and early ’90s. The Painted Bride — where she began a five-night run of performances last night — was packed with devotees of the genre, a comfortably plump, aging [...]

Joey – Did you read this hornet’s nest of shit? To know him is to loathe him. And this time – it’s not just the prosecutors. I can only imagine that upon combing through the cacophony of Vince Fumo’s correspondence from the hoosegow, the U.S. Attorneys did their own tawdry version of the Truffle Shuffle, [...]

Two years ago, Philebrity asked me to cover the sentencing hearing for Vince Fumo -– a cinematic catastrophe ne plus ultra. Fumo’s women: Stalwart beams of sclerotic beauty, rent asunder as collateral damage in the Dresdenesque prosecution of a colossal titan. The sycophants in the gallery, from Johnny Baggadonuts to the judges and attorneys, beadily [...]

After Boston and Los Angeles and Portland and San Diego; after Lynne Abraham’s scathing indictment of the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s obfuscating pattern of reassignments; after the Vatican was caught –- cardinal handed, no less -– ordering Irish Bishops to refrain from turning over their pedophiles to the police, and then providing diplomatic safe haven for Bernard [...]

Dear Joey: The problem with running a new media enterprise is that there is an inclination to leave the old media machinations of yellow journalism in the dust. The greatest American historical proponents thereof –- Joseph Pulitzer (whose name is now, incredibly, the gold standard for audacious truth in public discourse) and William Jennings Bryant [...]

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010 (Philadelphia) — The gathering of the faithful began with a processional three blocks long on Broad Street. It was a phalanx of Harleys, straddled by the Centurion bikers, a social club of active Philadelphia cops who evidently enjoy a wee bit too much of the ol’ reverse role play and YMCA macho [...]

Ryan Howard waltzed in with a harem as hot as Georgia asphalt. I couldn’t decide what was more impressive: How a man that size can wear earrings that big with some dreadful Ed Hardy type gear and still be considered a heterosexual, or the fact that he so effortlessly slid to the rear of the [...]

An invitation arrived for lunch last week at the Union League with John Yoo, a man noted in recent years for his torture memos, but also a graduate of Episcopal Academy. (A shimmering scarlet letter of the satanic, if there ever was one. Long live El Mallochio!) It was billed as a “lunch discussion” with [...]

J. CONOR CORCORAN, ESQ. REPORTING: There’s three branches of government, right? Each of ‘em has its own subdivisions, and the Courts have offices like the Sheriff, the Prothonotary (the clerk for civil cases), and the Clerk of Quarter Sessions (the clerk for criminal cases). Most lawyers couldn’t tell you why this vital office is named [...]

AS TOLD BY OUR LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, J. CONOR CORCORAN, ESQ.: Standing on State Road in the great Northeast, outside the four houses of correction for Philadelphia, one can often hear the dulcet tones of a jailhouse full of cherubs, wailing cries of injustice because of their lawyers. Nevermind being caught in flagrante delicto with a [...]

Now, yes: It was kinda stupid for Michael Phelps to allow himself to be photographed horkin’ on a giant bong at some stupid beer pong party a person of his social standing shouldn’t have been caught dead at. But is there anything even remotely legal or constitutional about the Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff’s Office’s [...]

AS TOLD BY OUR LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, J. CONOR CORCORAN, ESQ.: The observation of Philadelphian politics is conducive to strange similes, metaphors and empathies. Circumstances and facts may differ, but visceral concurrencies abound. As the Fumo trial trots out its defensive durge, standard operating procedure concerning the character of Philadelphia politicians is exposed to the light [...]

AS TOLD BY OUR LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, J. CONOR CORCORAN, ESQ.: With its case coming to a close, the Feds were saving one of their best witnesses for last: Leonard Luchko, a former Senate staffer and Fumo devotee who, subsequent to the FBI’s investigation of Senator Fumo, began destroying records and various communications in an effort [...]

I spent Election Night at The Union League, and sat beside the head of John McCain’s finance team for Pennsylvania, watching the election, and wracked with anxiety. Like much of the country, I was drinking, considerably. My psyche has been twisted by eight years of an unending cacophony of rabid right-wing nonsense, courtesy of the [...]

WARNING: The following product of cerebral consideration was born as a consequence of a recent post concerning a national celebrity, the very paragon of a benevolent Philebrity and, perhaps, the ne plus ultra of a local success story. I’m not entirely certain that the following tale is 100% true, given that central events mentioned herein [...]

AS TOLD BY OUR LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, J. CONOR CORCORAN, ESQ.: Let’s be honest – there haven’t been any colossal revelations in the course of the Fumo trial. There certainly hasn’t been anything more salacious than what had already been leaked to the press over the past few years. Christian Marrone, the son-in-law, laid out a [...]

I should confess. I have been rightfully accused, on occasion and with some pride, of fostering a reputation for a rhapsodic and concupiscient interest in prurient pastimes of the First Order (which, I might add, the sailors of the Good Ship Philebrity have often aided and abetted, and which, come to think of it, bears [...]

AS TOLD BY CONOR CORCORAN:As often bemused and bemoaned on this website, Philadelphia is a city of colossal contradiction and irony. Our beloved metropolis, now an epicenter of the avant-garde in many aspects, is a parallel universe compared to the Philadelphia of the 1970s and 1980s. Our ne’er-do-well neighborhoods, once domains of deviance, now entice [...]