Rat's Nest of Urban Politics Behind Philly's 'Big Stall'

Suburban Philly club could face millions of dollars in fines for booting camp

(NEWSER) - A state panel has found that a Philadelphia-area swim club racially discriminated against a day camp group of mostly black and Hispanic children when it canceled an agreement to let them swim, the Philadelpha Inquirer reports. The panel examined the Valley Club's actions and communications before and after the agreement was revoked with the Creative Steps camp. "Racial animus" and "racially coded comments" from members were the cause for the switch, the panel ruled. More»

Simulations ignore 'reality of war itself:' Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges

(NEWSER) - The Army Experience Center in Philadelphia—a sort of video arcade/recruiting center—has numerous detractors, and those opponents have an influential ally. “This is just a new version of an old attempt” at recruiting, Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges tells dscriber. The simulations at the center demonstrate “the empowerment of firing those weapons, but without the reality of war itself,” he says. More»

(NEWSER) - Birther "crazies" are fueling ugly confrontations at town hall meetings about health care reform, complains Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. “The birthers are a perfect slice of people who have lost their rationality" whose "obsession is hurting the Democratic process," he said on Hardball yesterday. The so-called birthers insist President Obama is an undocumented alien despite "clear evidence" that he was born in Hawaii, said the Democratic governor. They're "absolutely nuts," he added. More»

(NEWSER) - The suburban Philadelphia swim club at the center of a racism controversy will ask the day campers it disinvited to return, the local ABC affiliate reports. "We are very very sorry that this had to happen," the club president tells WPVI-TV. He had sparked the incident by saying the presence of the campers, who are mostly African American and Hispanic, changed the facility's "complexion" and "atmosphere." More»

Racial discrimination sends us back to the 1950s

(NEWSER) - A largely white suburban Philadelphia swim club’s barring of black and Latino campers was so backward “I thought I had fallen into a time warp,” writes Annette John-Hall in the Inquirer. Things like this happened in the 1950s—when singer Dorothy Dandridge booked a room in a Las Vegas hotel, the staff actually drained the pool—but “this isn't 1950s Las Vegas. It's 2009 Philly.” More»