Argument

Wednesday's preliminary hearing for the Black Madam featured testimony about "butt pumping parties" and a woman who goes by the name of "Back Shots. " But perhaps the most bizarre moment came when Black Madam's attorney argued that one reason his client isn't a flight risk is that she always wears 4-inch heels. Judge Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde didn't buy the argument. She held the case for trial and refused to reduce the $750,000 bail for Black Madam, a transgender gothic hip-hop artist whose real name is Padge Victoria Windslowe.

A barrage of violence Sunday that left five dead and seven wounded has left a top city police official puzzled. Most of the mayhem began over what William Blackburn, chief inspector of detectives, called "senseless argument. " "Arguments are still the dominant motive," he said in a news conference yesterday, "not just for the homicides, but for the shootings. " Asked to elaborate about violence on recent weekends, Blackburn said, "I'm not going to blame weather conditions.

Robert Adams, a member of Warrington's Parks and Recreation Board, says that Warrington Supervisor Joseph Bonargo pushed him several times during a heated argument Saturday morning at the Barness baseball fields. Adams has filed a criminal complaint against Bonargo with District Justice Oliver A. Groman because Bonargo's brother, John Bonargo, is the police chief in Warrington. Groman's court clerk confirmed that Adams had filed a complaint against Bonargo, but refused to release the complaint until the District Attorney's Office reviews it and decides whether to press charges.

You are to be congratulated on your article on guns (Feb. 13) - an excellent puff piece, probably written by Police Commissioner John Timoney and his sidekicks. It lacked any pretense of fairness. In the chart, "Armed and Dangerous," you list the number of guns used in major crimes in this city during 1999, but nowhere is there a breakdown of lawful gun permit holders vs. non-permit holders. It is obvious that the omission is intentional, so as to make it appear that all those crimes were committed by permit holders.

The prosecutor compared the alleged rapist to the little man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. "Damon Thornton says, 'Pay no attention to the man behind the evidence,' " Assistant Gloucester County Prosecutor Keith Warburton told the jury in his closing argument yesterday. "But the evidence, ladies and gentlemen, is the yellow-brick road that leads to him. " Thornton, 30, who is serving as his own attorney, called the state's case a "bunch of bull" and "a conspiracy" in his closing argument before Superior Court Judge Donald Smith Jr. The jurors - who occasionally giggled and yawned on the seventh day of the trial - deliberated for a half-hour before recessing until 9 a.m. today.

A team from Overbrook High School won the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Mock Trial Competition yesterday. Overbrook, which also captured the championship in 1997 and 2004, acted as the defense in the final round in Harrisburg, with runner-up Greensburg Salem High School of Westmoreland County as the prosecution. Overbrook teacher Philip Beauchemin coaches the team of seniors Sarah Brown, Kiersten Harris-Andrews, Jamal Hill, Cedric Ingram Jr., Jennifer Josiaste, Lakyra Stokes, Tamika Webb and Ian Wiley.

By Chris Kelly As a young beat reporter, I covered a Pennsylvania school board that included a member who was opposed to spending money on any educational advance newer than the blackboard. He was especially disdainful of computers, which he characterized as expensive toys that promoted laziness, liberalism, and pornography. "When I was in school, we didn't have no damned computers," he once said at a public meeting. "We had to use our noodle. " It wasn't clear if there was just the one noodle for the whole school, or if each kid got one. What was clear is that this dolt had no business visiting a school district, let alone running one. His statement is a classic example of the "straw man" fallacy, in which a debater creates a caricature of his opponent's argument and attacks it. This way, the dolt was able to sidestep the real problem, which was that the district had fallen behind its peers in acquiring computers.

THANK YOU, Tony Lance Chiu, for your ignorant letter on your escort service. Just a few things wrong with it: "Your girls": Do you have a uterus? Did you give birth to these unfortunate women who see no other option in life but to sell their bodies for you? They come to you? How do they know about you? While you are exploiting their bodies, health and chance for a decent future, what do you give them in return? They do all the work while you do what? Hold their coats while they do their business with the men who pay?

Two men were shot and seriously wounded by one of the owners of Homer's Diner during an argument outside the 24-hour restaurant on the Collingswood Circle shortly before midnight Friday, police said yesterday. Collingswood police said Bret Nigro, 23, of Argyle Avenue, Washington Township, was shot in the right back and right shoulder and was listed in critical condition at Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center after surgery. William Palmer, 29, of Wedgewood Drive, also in Washington Township, was shot once in the abdomen and was listed in serious condition at Cooper.

Government can't attempt to maintain a status quo simply by spending money simply to maintain areas that are no longer competitive. . . . People, on their own, are going to where they think the greater opportunities are. . . . There's no question in my mind, the cities were overpopulated by the 1950s. - Thacher Longstreth Dec. 29, 1980, as president of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce

Victor Guzman tried to pull his son away from the man he'd been arguing with on his front stoop in Frankford Sunday night. Before he could get him back into the house, it was too late. The man Guzman's son, 25-year-old Edward Pagan, had been fighting with pulled a gun and opened fire in front of their rowhouse on Adams Avenue near Wingohocking Street, wounding Guzman and killing Pagan. "I was trying to drag my son into the house," Guzman, 49, said quietly as he stood outside the house Monday, his left arm bandaged from elbow to knuckles.

EVEN THOUGH we hoped it had been neutralized, a grave threat to national security still exists. No, it's not al Qaeda and it's not Iran. Short of acquiring a stray nuke, neither one of those entities could do nearly as much damage as the reckless gambling by big banks that almost blew up the world economy three years ago. But even now when the danger has been revealed, some people want to ignore it. That's the message from Jamie Dimon,...

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Attorneys hammered at the credibility of John Edwards and his once-trusted aide as arguments in his campaign corruption trial ended Thursday, leaving jurors to decide whether the presidential candidate's sex scandal cover-up amounted to a crime or a litany of lies. Jurors begin deliberations Friday on six counts of campaign finance fraud that could send Edwards to prison for up to 30 years. They will weigh whether to believe Edwards' arguments that he didn't knowingly break the law when he sought to cover up an affair with his pregnant mistress, or his aide, Andrew Young, who said Edwards recruited him to use secret donations from wealthy donor to hide the affair.

A lawyer for Pennsylvania urged a panel of seven Commonwealth Court justices on Wednesday to reverse decisions by two Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judges and let a jury decide whether Johnson & Johnson inappropriately profited from sales of the antipsychotic drug Risperdal through the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program. J&J's lawyer, Edward Posner of Drinker Biddle, countered by telling the justices that the commonwealth had shown "a complete and total failure" to prove its case.

Investigators believe an argument triggered a triple shooting that left a 19-year-old man dead in Hunting Park Monday night. The slaying victim was identified Tuesday morning as Devin Brown of the 400 block of Caskey Street in the neighboring Feltonville section. Of the other victims, a 22-year-old man was treated for a graze wound to the neck and released and a 16-year-old boy was reported in stable condition Tuesday morning at Temple University Hospital with gunshot wounds to the leg and face, police said.

Mild-mannered he is not. If Jaap van Zweden were a dinner-party guest, he might dominate table chatter, slide headlong into controversy, and hold forth in a self-important if good-humored tone. As it was, leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in Friday night's all-Russian program, the 51-year-old Dutchman was one of those guests trailing disagreement in his wake while still managing to leave you feeling more stimulated than riled. His most questionable piece of judgment on the podium in Verizon Hall was the sprint through the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. The pace was simply ridiculous.

A 31-year-old man was shot and killed early today during an argument in the entranceway to his apartment building in Philadelphia's West Oak Lane section, police said. The victim, whom police identified as Quasay Johnson, left his apartment and went to the vestibule of the building on the 7000 block of N. 15th Street about 12:30 a.m. after receiving a phone call, police said. Witnesses told police they heard some men arguing and then a round of gunfire. The victim was shot three times in the chest and once in an arm, police said.

Spat leads to 2 shootings * Myrtlewood Street near Master, North Philadelphia A woman narrowly escaped grave injury when her cheek, leg and arm were grazed by gunfire when two thugs fired shots at an 18-year-old youth with whom the gunmen had been fighting earlier Thursday. The intended target was shot at least three times and was in critical condition. At 8:44 p.m., the victim was outside when two men opened fire on him, striking him in the abdomen, arm and leg, Chief Inspector Scott Small said at the scene.

WILMINGTON - A federal judge on Wednesday halted the execution of convicted killer Shannon Johnson, saying he wants to hear oral arguments over claims that Johnson is mentally incompetent and should not be executed. The decision by U.S. Chief District Judge Gregory Sleet stunned prosecutors, who noted that the incompetency claims were made by federal public defenders who were not authorized by Johnson to intervene in the case. Johnson was scheduled to be executed Friday.

A man killed in a shooting in a house of ill-repute in Southwest Philadelphia Tuesday was identified today as 22-year-old Shirkey Warthen. Police said Warthen lived on the 1200 block of South Ruby Street in the same Kingsessing neighborhood as the crime scene. He was hit multiple times and a 34-year-old woman was wounded in the knee when gunfire erupted about 10 p.m. following an argument in the residence on Florence Avenue near 54th Street, described by police as a known location for drug activity and prostitution.