In one of the weirdest mayoral elections that I can remember (a fire-bombing, staff member turncoats, etc…) this just makes it all the more strange:

The inquiry is being handled in part by the Philadelphia FBI office’s anticorruption squad.

One of the FBI raids yesterday morning focused on Keystone Information & Financial Services, a Mount Airy business awarded a contract in 2002 that netted $60,600 from the city for collection of taxes.

The FBI also searched the Cheltenham home of an executive of the business, Imam Shamsud-din Ali, according to a law enforcement official. Ali is a leading Muslim cleric in Philadelphia.

“We served a few search warrants today,” FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said yesterday. “They are sealed. I cannot give you any specific information about them.”

Those knowledgeable about the inquiry said it focused in part on contracts at the airport.

The mayor’s brother, T. Milton Street, who has ties to a firm doing airport business, said yesterday that he, too, thought the probe was related to the airport.

For Mayor Street, the discovery of the bug loomed as the biggest crisis of his mayoralty. It blotted out everything else in a campaign that has for months struggled to stay on message.

Read more in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Update: HOME, OFFICE OF MAYOR’S PAL RAIDED.

Whawhahwa…what is going on here?!?! More in: The Philadelphia Inquirer and CNN.

Well *I* didn’t – I couldn’t. But who knows – I just may have if I reasoned it out like Mickey Kaus does in Slate. Read it. It answers the question, “how could he get elected?” that so many are asking. Especially Democrats. Especially those running the Wesley Clark campaign. Please.

Limbaugh quits ESPN. That was a surprise really. Don’t take from my previous posts I have issue with someone being controversial. For example – I think Howard Stern is great. No, I simply believe that it works both ways. Not only does Rush have a right to speak – even filled with ignorance and race baiting as it was – but everyone else has a right to tell him to stuff it up his ass. Which they did. It was universal. A beautiful thing. Even on Fox News this morning (yep I tuned in just to catch what they would say about it).

Read all about it in today’s Inquirer.

That’s what Sports Illustrated asks. ESPN says:

An ESPN spokesman said Tuesday that Limbaugh doesn’t do interviews and added that he didn’t think the comments were racially biased.

“He was comparing McNabb’s performance on the field to his reputation in the media,” spokesman Dave Nagle said.

Nagle said that with Limbaugh on the show this season, ratings for Sunday NFL Countdown are up 10 percent overall, and 26 percent among the 18-to-34 male demographic. Sunday’s show drew its biggest audience in the regular season since November 1996.

“ESPN hired Limbaugh for his passion and his ability to express opinion and spark debate as a football fan,” Nagle said. “In just one month, he has certainly delivered.”

Wow. Twists your stomach doesn’t it?

Note: I updated the title of this post. I can’t stoop the same level as Limbaugh

More at slacktivist.

Rush Limbaugh goes and does what ESPN is paying him to do – encourage controversy at others expense. But guess what – I’m not tunning in. And I will encourage my friends and family to tune out in protest. Get this quote:

“I don’t think he’s been that good from the get-go. I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL,”…”The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well; I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team, that he really didn’t deserve.”

Better yet: See it for yourself.

What bullshit is this?!? Read the rest by Les Bowen in The Daily News.

Phil Sheridan, in the Inquirer, lets Rush have it in one of the best takedowns of him I have read anywhere.

Here’s your mistake, Rush. You stepped out of your radio comfort zone, where “Dittoheads” either echo your twisted view of America or you can cut them off. You stepped into a place where your bluff – and that’s all it ever has been – is easily called.

The only thing tough about this is deciding where to begin. How about with “the media”?

Conservative sleight-of-hand artists like Limbaugh love to use the label “the media” (alternately “the liberal media”) as a kind of blanket insult. Well, guess what, Rush? You’ve got a nationally syndicated radio show. You have your own Web site. You had a national TV show. Now you’re on ESPN every Sunday morning.

You.

Are.

The.

Media.

Was that slow enough for you to grasp? You are the media. You’re a part of them, anyway. Just like this paper and the others that have covered McNabb since he came to the Eagles in 1999. Just like the radio stations that thrive on Eagles coverage and just like ESPN, which has set the bar for overpromoting athletes so high that no other outlet will ever come close to hitting it.

More at Atrios, Paddling to New Zealand, and The Rittenhouse Review.

Make sure to Let ESPN know how you feel! While he has a right to pontificate, you have a right to let the station know how you feel.

Oh, it’s in some papers (WashingtonPost), but it’s not registering on TV. Website postings are not enough.

There is meat to this story:

rc3.org
The Pennsylvania Gazette
Oiliver Willis
Daily Kos
Talking Points Memo
Political Wire
slacktivist
suburban guerrilla

Will the mainstream pick it up? Not simply as website updates, but during prime-time network news? Indepth? Or will it be a blurb to that comes and goes? Tonight will be telling.