The meeting came on May 8th, just two weeks after the SRC announced their radical proposal. A woman in her mid-thirties, voice quivering slightly, admitted: “We knew that what happened in Wisconsin last year would happen here too. This is going to be a huge fight.”

The agenda of this meeting of public school teachers, students, labor organizers and seasoned activists (including members of Occupy Philadelphia) included crafting a response to what some here see as the “Shock Doctrine” being applied to Philadelphia public education. Residents have received an ultimatum from the city: accept property tax hikes – which Mayor Michael Nutter says would raise upwards of $92 million, but would disproportionately affect low income residents -- or let schools close.

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Take, for example, Pennsylvania. Democrats there are already hard at work to tie Mitt Romney to Gov. Tom Corbett, whose antiabortion statements and austere budgets have proved unpopular in the state.

“He is becoming a more polarizing figure,” says Muhlenberg College political science professor Christopher Borick, who calls the gender gap a “treasure trove” for Democrats. “If I'm putting an ad out in Pennsylvania and I want to show Republicans to be opposed to women's issues, I run sound bites from Tom Corbett next to those of Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh, and anybody else I can find.”

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No cause or origin of the fire had been determined by early Wednesday morning, but the children's grandfather, Noah Sauder, told The Associated Press the blaze may have started in the kitchen, where the family used a propane heater. Fire marshals were investigating.

Public records indicate the parents are Theodore and Janelle Clouse. A neighbor described the family as hard-working.

Police said the children's father had left the two-story home on a working farm in dairy country not far from the state capital, to begin his rounds hauling milk around 10 p.m. Tuesday. Two children, ages 2 and 3, were watching television at the time.

The father picked up milk and then parked the truck about a mile from home before nodding off, state police Trooper Tom Pinkerton said.

Soon after, the 3-year-old smelled smoke in the home and ran to the barn to alert her mother, who apparently tried to get into the house. The woman then ran to the homes of two neighbors before getting someone to call 911, then ran with the child to the father's truck and banged on its windows, screaming that their home was on fire, he said.

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The victim lived in two-story row house in a downtown residential neighborhood that blew up about 10:45 p.m. Wednesday, police Chief Roger MacClean said. A couple in their 70s lived in the home, but the condition of the body prevented positive identification, fire Chief Robert Scheirer said.

The cause of the explosion was unclear.

The fires consumed an entire row of homes, Scheirer said. The blaze was put out early Thursday, delayed by the difficulty of digging through packed layers of snow and ice to a ruptured underground gas line that was feeding the flames, he said.

He predicted eight houses would be lost and another 16 damaged.

In all, 500 to 600 people were evacuated, including elderly residents of a high rise. Residents were allowed to return home early Thursday. They had been taken to a Jewish community center and an agricultural hall at the city's fairgrounds while emergency crews worked overnight.

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Former Shenandoah police chief Matthew Nestor and two subordinates, William Moyer and Jason Hayes, are charged with obstructing an FBI investigation into the July 2008 attack on 25-year-old Luis Ramirez. Prosecutors allege that the officers helped a group of white high school football players concoct a cover story.

An FBI agent testified Thursday that Moyer lied about what a witness said during the investigation. Moyer had told the agent, Adam B. Aichele, that Edward Ney saw a Mexican chasing a group of kids with a gun. A taped 911 call from Ney proves he did not make that statement and it was fabricated by Moyer. 

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Forecasters are predicting moderate temperatures and rain showers for the Capitals-Penguins outdoor game Saturday, conditions that possibly could result in the game not starting as scheduled at 1 p.m. EST. The NHL is prepared to play the game as late as 8 p.m. if the weather improves.

The NHL could delay the game to Sunday but prefers not to because the NBC's telecast would oppose NFL games on CBS and Fox.

The forecast for Friday's team practices and the Capitals-Penguins alumni game featuring Mario Lemieux is cloudy with temperatures in the 50s.

Temperatures well above freezing should not affect the ice, but rain poses a risk to players.

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Rendell offered two reasons for his belief: First, any primary challenge would be "too hard to do -- it costs too much money."

And, second, Rendell believes that Obama has checked off enough boxes on the progressive scorecard to keep any challenge from the left at bay.

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Biden is set to campaign Wednesday for Democrat Bryan Lentz in the home stretch of a close race for an open congressional seat.

Lentz, a state representative, is facing Republican Pat Meehan, a former U.S. attorney.

Lentz's campaign manager says he signed a deal Friday to hold the rally at Radnor High School, only to have the plan unravel. Campaign manager Kevin McTigue believes Republican school officials are to blame.

A call to the district's superintendent was not immediately returned Tuesday.

The event will instead be held at a township-owned gym.

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Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek says 39-year-old Denise Merhi tried to defend herself as she was fatally stabbed June 26 inside her home.

Lysek testified Tuesday at the preliminary hearing for Merhi's former boyfriend, 37-year-old convicted murder Michael Eric Ballard. He is charged with stabbing Merhi, her 62-year-old father, 87-year-old grandfather and a neighbor.

Lysek says all four victims were stabbed multiple times. Merhi's grandfather was found dead in his wheelchair.

At the time of the killings, Ballard was on parole for a 1991 murder in Allentown and was living in a halfway house there.

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Information from: The Morning Call, http://www.mcall.com

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The city's so-called business privilege license costs $50 a year or $300 for a lifetime.

If a blog takes money for advertising, or sells photographs or other goods, it's a business and must pay for a license -- no matter how little it makes -- plus taxes on profits.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Nutter says it's is nothing new and it applies to any revenue-making enterprise, from large corporations to neighborhood pizza joints and mom-and-pop businesses.

Some bloggers are complaining that the fee would impinge on their free speech and would discourage dissent. They also say it's unfair to require business to pay taxes if they're making only $25 or $50 a year.

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Officers said Scoggins left the older child on board, giving a stranger the address for one of the boy's friends and instructions to drop him off there.

Police later learned the boy had been on the bus and found him at the address Scoggins supplied to the stranger.

Online court records don't detail the charges against Scoggins. A phone listing for her could not be located Monday.

The children are in the custody of county social workers.

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Peake, 64, was charged a week ago with killing attorney Todd Getgen and stealing his semi-automatic rifle at a shooting range in Cumberland County. He later told police that he was collecting weapons to help an organization -- which he would not name -- that intends to overthrow the federal government.

The latest in the case is that police searched Peake's home and found the other guns, several T-shirts that may be splattered with blood, and a copy of "Notes of a Russian Sniper," Vassili Zaitsev's account of hunting Nazis in Stalingrad during World War II.

There's still no word yet on what organization Peake belonged to. The district attorney did not immediately respond to Salon's request for comment.

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It's a story that has flown under the national radar but may represent the latest anti-government flare-up of the Obama era.

Raymond Peake III, 64, was charged Saturday in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, with killing Attorney Todd Getgen at a shooting range in the south central part of the state. Getgen, 42, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds. Police allege that Peake stole Getgen's AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, with attached custom silencer, and brought it the house of another corrections officer, Thomas Tuso, for safekeeping.

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As it happens, that's also more or less the game plan that Sen. Arlen Specter will need Tuesday against Rep. Joe Sestak, if he doesn't want to become a lame duck after the Democratic primary. Specter wants a big turnout in Philadelphia, where he's courting black voters. He needs to avoid getting steamrolled in the suburbs, where -- as a Republican -- he used to pick up crossover votes from Democrats, but where Sestak is well known from his four years representing a district based in Delaware County. And he needs to run decently in the rest of the state, which is why Specter's latest ad near Pittsburgh rips Sestak for favoring an assault weapons ban (which is not an issue you hear the incumbent talk about much in Philly).

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It's a complex subject that Mysak explains well, and if you're interested in unraveling the mysteries of interest rate swaps, I'd recommend that you read his full column, instead of my attempting to summarize it into unintelligibility. But the basic gist is simple: The municipalities and school districts were trying to be too clever by half, hoping to save money through financial sleights of hand that ended up costing them far more than if they just issued traditional fixed-rate bonds.

Mysak's column is based on a 78-page report by Pennsylvania's Auditor General, Jack Wagner.

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When he became a Democrat, the immediate assumption was that Specter was a lock for a general election victory. The conventional wisdom for decades on him was that he had mastered the art of sticking to Pennsylvania’s political center, which meant his weak point was in holding on to his party’s nomination. Toomey might be invincible on primary day (he even managing to fend off the national GOP’s efforts to find a more moderate candidate), but come November, Specter and the people of Pennsylvania would rekindle their love affair. The polls right after the party switch seemed to bear this out: Specter led Toomey by 20 points in a Quinnipiac general election poll.

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The DSCC is the election arm of the Senate Democratic caucus (and, full disclosure, my former employer). When it comes to sorting out who gets to run for Senate, the chair of the DSCC -- currently New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez -- is the heavy. So it shouldn’t be taken lightly that the DSCC commissioned a poll pitting Specter against possible primary challenger Rep. Joe Sestak. The lopsided result -- a Specter lead of 56 percent to Sestak's 16 percent -- sends a pretty loud signal to the congressman. Remember, nobody made the party release these results, and indeed, if you want to get technical about it, the DSCC didn't actually "release" them; they just became public somehow.

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No, what finally shoved Specter out of the Republican Party and into the waiting arms of Senate Democrats on Tuesday was something a bit more pragmatic. "I got my own poll results back last Friday -- late last week, and consulted with my campaign managers," Specter told reporters matter-of-factly in the Capitol, a couple of hours after he said goodbye to the GOP. He didn't say exactly what that poll showed, but it couldn't have had good news about his primary battle against die-hard conservative Pat Toomey, a refugee from the anti-tax jihadist Club for Growth. As soon as Specter made his move, the polling firm that had done the survey for him, Public Opinion Strategies, quit (and pollster Glen Bolger posted an ode to beer and crazy people on his Twitter feed).

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