Pulitzer-Prize winning correspondent and author Richard Ben Cramer, best known for his chronicle of the 1988 U.S. presidential election, died on Monday in Baltimore. The cause of death was lung cancer, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where Cramer worked for seven years. He was 62. Cramer won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for…
The humble bagel is a staple of Western Jewish culture, but what most of us know about it amounts to little more than a shmear. After all, bagels are generally something we buy, not bake. This makes the bagel ideal for a hands-on workshop, especially at a restaurant-bakery called Spread Bagelry, one of the few…
More than 1,000 people bid farewell on Tuesday to former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter at a service featuring tributes by family and dignitaries and concluding with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Specter died at his Philadelphia home on Sunday after battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 82. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed…
During his 30 years in the clubby confines of the U.S. Senate, Arlen Specter never lost his acerbic prosecutorial zeal, friends and associates say. The insistent questions, the commitment to independence that made the longtime Pennsylvania senator a critical player in recent U.S. history, ultimately did in his career. In his 2010 bid for a…
It was impossible to be a journalist in Philadelphia and not encounter Arlen Specter. It was just about impossible to be engaged in the Philadelphia Jewish community and not encounter Arlen Specter. As a member of the working press in Philadelphia for decades, and as a parent active in my children’s Jewish day schools, I…
Arlen Specter, a gruff, independent-minded moderate who spent three decades in the U.S. Senate but was spurned by Pennsylvania voters after switching in 2009 from Republican to Democrat, died on Sunday of cancer, his family said. He was 82. Specter had announced in August a recurrence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system. His…
Former longtime Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania confirmed that he is fighting a new battle with cancer — and vowed to beat the deadly disease. “I am battling cancer, and it’s another battle I intend to win,” Specter said in a statement issued by his office Tuesday. “I am grateful for the well wishes I…
By chance I attended “Slaying the Dragon,” a new opera on the subject of violence and surprising redemption, on June 17, the same day that Rodney King died. King — the victim of a savage beating in 1991 by Los Angeles police (the video of which provoked one of the worst race riots in recent…
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