With Hillary Clinton's big primary wins in Texas and Ohio, it seems that the national eye has turned towards Pennsylvania and our primary on April 22. So much of the news about Michael this week was about his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. He says he's going to campaign hard for Clinton, who is no longer the presumptive nominee, as she was when Nutter gave his endorsement. Given that race may now be back in play......

Animal cruelty investigators raided some rowhouse stables on Fletcher Street yesterday, giving the owners 24 hours to relocate the 60 horses on the site. The Daily News paints a pretty horrific picture of the conditions the animals were living in. Chelsea Clinton was at Penn yesterday, stumping for her Mom, and said we should expect to see her and her family a lot in the near future. Which sounds like a threat to us. Beware,......

Highway Patrol Officers were passing a house on Jefferson Street near 26th on Friday night when they spotted a man who matched the description of someone who had robbed and shot another man earlier that night. When they arrested him, they discovered that the house had a cache of drugs, money, and weapons, including seven loaded handguns, an AK-47 assault rifle, a shotgun, two Kevlar vests, $3,000 in cash, and $25,000 worth of cocaine. In......

Governor Rendell said that he would back the indicted Senator Fumo's reelection bid if Fumo just asked him. Ed says: "We would be lost in Harrisburg without him because of his skill. He has done great things, and we are lucky to have him." The Inquirer is getting excited about the Philadelphia Flower Show, which will have a preview opening for selected guests tomorrow, and then open to the general public on Sunday. Catherine......

Teamsters plan to rally outside the Four Seasons Hotel at 18th Street and the Ben Franklin Parkway at 1:30PM today because AmerisourceBergen Corp.'s annual shareholder meeting is being held there at that time, and the teamsters are accusing the company of unfair labor practices. Remember how Rick's Steaks was fighting to stay in the Reading Terminal Market? Well, the fight continues. A recent court ruling dismissed most of Olivieri's claims against Reading Terminal, but Olivieri's......

Phillyist's favorite news item this morning is this one: twin 25-year-old internet hardcore gay porn stars Keyontyli and Taleon Goffney (apparently known as Keyon and Teyon in the biz), of New Jersey, have been arrested for a series of robberies in Philadelphia and New Jersey wherein they gained entry to businesses by cutting holes in the roofs using a handsaw and ax. In Nether Providence, they broke into Wawas, and Chief Richard Slifer of......

SEPTA will announce its "Go Green Go SEPTA" initiative this afternoon at Market East Station. (We've already seen the ads up there; they're posters with real moss or grass glued to them.) The idea is to increase ridership to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming, and they've timed it for the Philadelphia Flower Show, which runs March 2-9 at the Convention Center and is typically a time of increased ridership. General manager Joseph......

Two things with regard to this post. 1. Sorry the post didn't go up last week. The author was out of town on business and flaked out and didn't get someone to cover the post. 2. We're abandoning the day-by-day format that we'd adopted for our first several recaps of the goings-on in the Nutter Administration, and will be doing a more streamlined list of the previous week's highlights. The change is mainly because it......

The president and board chairman of the city-funded nonprofit Philadelphia Safe and Sound testified yesterday that they were forced by Mayor Street and his senior aides to spend an extra $21 million that they knew did not exist in the city budget. It's those expenditures that have forced Safe and Sound to cancel dozens of programs in recent weeks. You can find copies of Safe and Sound's testimony online here and here. Insiders say......

Philadelphia has one of the highest rates of police shootings in the country. The Daily News takes a look at what's being done about it, and is pretty underwhelmed. Apparently "many of the officers involved in these shootings are back to their regular street beats, even though most incidents are still being investigated without a determination that the officers were justified in firing their weapons." Due to the fact that local schools had received recalled......

The Daily News takes a closer look at one of the programs that Philadelphia Safe and Sound will have to shut down, thanks to Nutter's budget cuts: the anti-truancy program. Meanwhile, the Inquirer takes a closer look at a federal lawsuit filed by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, implicating Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson, a Bush cabinet member. A profile of Phyllis Beck and Alice Beck Dubow, the first mother-daughter judges in the......

The sweet scent of Friday is in the air, and as those without significant others recover from their hangovers and push their anti-couples bitterness back into the depths of their souls, let us all unite in giving thanks for another weekend. To whom shall we offer this thanks? Well, how about Mayor Michael "Here's My Budget" Nutter? A WALK INTO THE SEA: DANNY WILLIAMS & THE WARHOL FACTORY (2007) If you're an Andy Warhol......

The Inquirer takes a close look at Mayor Nutter's first budget proposal. The subtitle of the article is: "The $3.98 billion plan seeks bonds for pensions and a kitty for unions." Awww, that's nice! He's getting a kitty for the unions! We hope it's a cute kitty. David C. Sicoli, a Philadelphia priest with "a long history of abusive and manipulative relationships with adolescents," according to a grand jury report, has finally been defrocked by......

Sons of Ben and other Philly area soccer fans rejoice: the Inquirer says sources are telling them that "Major League Soccer is moving swiftly toward an agreement that will grant a long-sought expansion team to the Philadelphia region." Saint Joe's will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5PM today to officially open its new Hawks' Landing parking and retail facility at 54th and City Avenue. Hawks' Landing is a $19 million project that features a five-story,......

Apparently, our dear mayor's love of performing rap music didn't begin with his inauguration. Here's some vintage Nutter (same hairline, though) getting down with other alums of Leadership, Inc. (now Leadership Philadelphia).......

The Inquirer takes a hard look at the soccer stadium that's being proposed for Chester and whether it will really help the city as much as some people say. "The fate of the city's public golf courses is in the hands of City Council today in a hearing to examine a proposed contract to run them and, hopefully, improve them." Well, it's good to know City Council is taking care of the really important things.........

Mayor Nutter has cut taxpayer-funded nonprofit Philadelphia Safe and Sound's funding by $21 million, and City Council's majority leader said she would call today for hearings to look into how Safe and Sound conducts its business. The funding cuts will result in the closing of ten school-based community centers; the termination of a parent-truancy program; and the elimination of many after-school programs. As the head of one after-school program put it, "It's a fiasco."......

The Inquirer takes a look at the political landscape on the morning of Super Tuesday. If you're from New Jersey or Delaware, remember to vote! As long as you've done your research, and you care at all. If neither of those things are true then please, don't vote. A federal lawsuit filed in December says that President Bush's housing czar, Alphonso Jackson, pressured the Philadelphia Housing Authority to transfer land worth $2 million to Kenny......

Last Friday & the weekend: Michael's search for a new CEO of the Philadelphia School District got down to two contenders—apparently—after Temple College of Education dean Kent McGuire withdrew his name from consideration for the position. Monday: Michael's choice for city commerce director, Germantown-born Andrew Altman, was sworn in, as was Managing Director Camille Bates Barnett. And the worst-kept secret of Michael's early administration appointments became official, as he named Lori Shorr his chief education......

Proofreading Philly tries to capture typos, wordos, and all other kinds of grammatical mistakes that we see around the city. But we need your help! Email photos to us from your computer or your phone, and show the city that you care about good grammar. Mr. Philadelphia Will Do himself, Dan McQuade, submitted this gem from Mayor Nutter's itinerary from last Friday. Surely, a mayor with a new plan for public education (PDF) should hire......

"A weekend Philadelphia police clash with partygoers at a Latina girl's 'Sweet 15' celebration ended with at least 20 people alleging they were beaten by officers, prompting the first major internal investigation of officer misconduct under new Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey." A woman 28 weeks pregnant was killed with a single shotgun blast to the back shortly after 1AM this morning on the 4600 block of Griscomb Street. She was found by police......

Philadelphian Karen Kilimnik has been selected as one of the artists for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, an exhibition of recent American art at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC. (Via Jill, via Lenny) Frank Funaro, who runs a nightclub and a real estate business on South Street in Philadelphia, was robbed of $40,000 yesterday morning at his home in Washington Township, New Jersey. A gunman, apparently deliberately targeting the family, was hiding in......

The Inquirer takes a look at a local and national trend of gay CEOs coming out. Mayor Nutter has tapped a Philadelphia native, and city planner who specializes in urban revitalization, to be the city's next commerce director and deputy mayor for economic development. Key Pennsylvania lawmakers have yet to say whether they support the construction of a riverfront stadium that would be necessary to bring a Major League Soccer team to the Philadelphia area,......

The Daily News analyzes Paris Hilton's visit to the area yesterday, and comes to the rather surprising conclusion that she's a nice lady and her only real fault is that she's not punctual. The Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition of American artist Bruce Nauman has been selected to appear in the US Pavilion of the the 53rd Venice Biennale, "one of the most important art gatherings in the world." Mayor Nutter revoked a license given......

Philly sure can attract the celebrity. Yesterday Senator Hillary Clinton graced our fair walks to secure support from Governor Rendell and Mayor Nutter for her presidential bid. But her appearance pales in importance against the paragon of womanhood who is visiting us today. Yes, folks, that’s right: Paris Hilton is in town. Again. This time she’s not shilling perfume, but rather her new film The Hottie and the Nottie. Although it doesn’t get an official......

Last Friday & the Weekend: Michael must have had a low-key weekend, as the Nutter newswires were fairly quiet. He probably needed the rest, though, as he had a pretty hectic week last week, and it may only now be sinking in that he's the mayor. Monday: Michael tapped Lori Shorr, (now-)former VP for policy and planning at Philadelphia Youth Network, to serve as his chief education adviser and help him get to work on......

How did last night's debut of American Idol treat Philadelphia? The Inquirer has the analysis - and a horrifying picture. Two West Philadelphia High students were slashed during an argument on Monday, so a heavy police presence blanketed the area yesterday as students were dismissed for the day. A suspect on the city's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list, described as a "one-man army," and who had eluded authorities for over two years while running a......

There's a new big boss man in the City of Brotherly Love, which means there's a new column on Phillyist. Each week, we'll be tracking Michael Nutter's mayorship (which we only found out was a word when spellcheck didn't correct it) and giving you the Reader's Digest version of the week that was in Nutter's tenure. Think of it as SportsCenter for the new man in charge: You might not have seen the whole story......

The Daily News checks in with Nicholas Yarris, the first man exonerated by DNA evidence from Pennsylvania's death row, on the occasion of his receiving the last installment of a recent $4 million cash settlement in a malicious-prosecution lawsuit against Delaware County. A 15-page report, put together by an independent technical firm and commissioned by the advocacy group Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, states that two Montgomery County manufacturers in the Collegeville area whose emissions......

The Inquirer has the highlights from Nutter's first crazy day as Mayor, and they also take a look at his "almost impossibly ambitious goals for Philadelphia." Nutter's first act as Mayor was to declare that Philadelphia has a "crime emergency," for which our new police commissioner has only 22 days to develop a strategy. A high-profile area World War II veteran who has served as a frequent speaker, museum advisory board member, and reunion......