A Million Stories

All the news we care to print.

by A.D. Amorosi, Jeffrey C. Billman, Holly Otterbein, Valerie Rubinsky and Brendan Skwire

Evan M. Lopez

Man, what's in the water up there in Wyoming County?

In January, we told you how that county's District Attorney's Office tried to bring child-pornography charges against three teenage girls who appeared semi-naked in cell phone pics [News, A Million Stories, Jan. 21]. The DA, George Skumanick Jr., threatened the girls and 13 other teenagers with prosecution unless they attended a re-education program — during which, we shit you not, they would learn " what it means to be a girl in today's society" — and wrote an essay on why sexting is icky. The ACLU of Pennsylvania sued on behalf of the three girls, and Skumanick — who was voted out of office in November — was appropriately mocked.

On March 17, the girls won their lawsuit. A panel of Third Circuit Court of Appeals judges blocked Wyoming County from charging the girls: "An individual district attorney may not coerce parents into permitting him to impose on their children his ideas of morality and gender roles."

Check out what these goobers did next: In January 2009, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week in Philadelphia against Wyoming County and Tunkhannock Area School District officials, school officials confiscated a 17-year-old high school senior's cell phone, decided — why not — to flip through the pictures she had stored on it, found some racy images, suspended her for three days and shipped her phone off to a crime lab in Delaware, where the naughty pics were thoroughly examined by lab techs before being erased. (Kinda makes that Lower Merion Webcam-gate thing look tame, huh?)

Skumanick gave this student, referred to as "N.N." in court papers, the same morality-class-or-child-porn-charges ultimatum. She chose the former. (Best part: According to the lawsuit, the DA office's chief detective, David Ide, told N.N. that "it was a shame she had not waited until after her 18th birthday in April 2009, because, instead of getting into trouble, she could have submitted the photographs directly to Playboy magazine." Ide then ended the conversation, the lawsuit says, by promising, "I'll get your phone back," while winking at her.) But N.N. found the re-education program "objectionable for multiple reasons," and sued. Namely, she didn't like being treated like she was a victim of sexual violence or lectured on how to be a lady (and paying $100 for the privilege).

Tunkhannock Area School District Superintendent Michael Healey told A Million Stories last week that he hasn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment.

FROM THE UPDATES DESK

Two weeks ago, this insanely popular column reported on Councilmen Darrell Clarke and Bill Greenlee's proposed Bill No. 100267, which would force event promoters to seek permits from the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) 30 days before every single event. Last-minute shows and pickup parties would be all but outlawed. The bill would also hold promoters liable for the actions of the crowds at the events they promote, and mandate that every permit application include a copy of the contract between the venue and the promoter, making these contracts promoter public records. Plus, the PPD could deny a permit for any reason and without explanation up to 10 days before the event.

After our report, pro-nightlife allies rallied to the cause, launching a (what else?) Facebook group and petition (phillymetal.com/protest). And, since Greenlee said he was open to suggestions, Patrick Rodgers of Dracula's Ball and Dancing Ferret booking and management decided to take him up on the offer.

Good news: After a meeting with Greenlee's staff last week, Rodgers says the 30-day permit and the 10-day cancellation rules are "dead, no longer part of the legislation."

Related, but less good: Last week we asked Greenlee's office for a list of the violent and criminal incidents that prompted this bill's creation. (It's worth noting that, if any club is problematic, the PPD and L&I have the authority to declare it a nuisance and shut it down.) His office pointed us to the Police Commissioner's Office. The Police Commissioner's Office suggested we hit up the PPD's research department. The research department recommended we call the PPD's statistics folks. Long story short, after navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth, we were still without answers by press time — which makes us wonder how big a problem these rogue clubs really were.

And we're not alone. On background, some prominent members of Philly's promotions community don't think it's in their best interest to work with Council, and instead want to take a more adversarial approach to killing this bill.

Rodgers, however, is sticking with his catch-more-flies-with-honey strategy: "Right now, I am focused on using my resources cooperatively with [Greenlee] to help craft a better bill. I find this vastly preferable to the possibility of having to organize protests, petitions and legal challenges if a bad bill is forced upon us."

THE FACE OF EVIL

By now, you've heard that Attorney General/GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Corbett got a grand jury to subpoena Twitter in early May to obtain information about @bfbarbie and @casablancaPA, two users who took stabs at Corbett's politics (i.e., "Is it wrong to mix campaign work with taxpayer business? Apparently not when Tom Corbett does it") and, at the time of the subpoena, had a combined following of 191 people.

By: Evan M. Lopez (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Corbett argued that he needed his detractors' information because of "alleged violations of the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," and left it at that, until he got some blowback over using his office to intimidate critics. Then, Corbett claimed that Brett Cott — a former legislative aide convicted in the Bonusgate scandal and awaiting sentencing — maintained @casablancaPA and casablancapa.blogspot.com, and that he needed those Twitter records to show that Cott was less than contrite about his crimes. (Cott didn't confirm or deny owning the Twitter account.) After he was sentenced to up to five years on Friday, Corbett withdrew his subpoena — which, was pretty much illegal even under Corbett's pretext: Under state law, grand juries can only use subpoenas to ferret out criminal wrongdoing, not to get defendants extra time in the pokey.

Of course, this isn't the first time our AG has used (we'd say "abused," but we'd rather not get subpoenaed) his office for political gain. We could forgive his minor offenses — the chest-thumping press releases any time his office nabs some child-porn gawker from Wilkes-Barre — but not his more mendacious activities, like when, in March, Corbett sued the federal government over the health-care legislation because Glenn Beck thinks it was unconstitutional or whatever. In doing so, Corbett deemed it appropriate to use your tax dollars to try to deny 30 million people access to affordable health care so he could suck up to the Tea Baggers. There's a word for that: Evil.

This leads us to ask a very important question, which we will surely be forced to revisit before November: How evil is Tom Corbett? The inaugural edition of the HEITC? Barometer finds him slightly more evil than Norman Braman, but not quite in Frank Rizzo/Vince Fumo territory. Yet.

This week's report by A.D. Amorosi, Jeffrey C. Billman, Holly Otterbein, Valerie Rubinsky and Brendan Skwire. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.