Coalition

A Cinnaminson official is spear-heading the formation of a coalition of nearby towns to lobby against the proposed Pennsauken solid-waste incinerator. "It started with a coalition of just three or four towns, but it keeps on growing," Cinnaminson Township Committeeman Robert H. Bayard said. "In some cases, the towns have been calling us and asking to join. " About 10 municipalities have expressed interest in joining the coalition, according to Bayard. A letter seeking signatures in opposition to the incinerator has been forwarded to officials in Palmyra, Riverton, Edgewater Park, Maple Shade, Riverside, Delran, Beverly, Moorestown and Delanco, Bayard said.

The NAACP, the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and other community groups say they are continuing to pressure politicians to come up with enough local and state funding to avert a SEPTA strike in 10 days. Yesterday's press conference at Wayland Temple Baptist Church, 25th Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue, followed a morning strategy session involving the NAACP, Black Clergy and other members of the religious, business and education communities. The groups have formed a united front to push for a contract settlement.

"When you get a problem with the complexities that the Middle East has now, and the gulf has now, I enjoy trying to put the coalition together and keep it together. . . . " - President Bush, Oct. 10 The man who loved coalitions is now becoming their victim. President Bush, a man of no strong convictions, for whom building a coalition around a consensus is the most congenial way of doing business, is learning that coalition politics, domestic and international, has its price.

PRAGUE - The Czech Republic's three-party coalition government appeared to be heading toward collapse after a junior partner said it would quit. The Liberal Democrats announced the move Thursday shortly after Prime Minister Petr Necas fired Karolina Peake from the post of defense minister, just eight days after she was appointed. Necas said the main reason for him to dismiss Peake was "clearly a loss of confidence. " Peake chairs the centrist Liberal Democrats, the smallest member of the three-party coalition government.

A coalition of local black ministers and a black women's political lobby is planning to launch a series of boycotts next month aimed at white-controlled businesses it considers to have poor histories of hiring and promoting minorities. In addition to the boycotts, the group is also planning to call for mass demonstrations aimed at local department stores, banks, hospitals, hotels, colleges, advertising firms and major corporations believed to be generally unresponsive to black community needs, said a coalition spokesman.

Trying to shift the opposition of Camden County Judge Richard S. Hyland into mainstream politics, a group of municipal officials, labor leaders and women active in the Democratic Party yesterday formed what they call the Coalition of Judicial Integrity to stop the judge's reappointment. The coalition, which plans to testify against Hyland at tomorrow's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, has begun calling and sending telegrams to key state senators, expressing what a group spokesman said was the "outrage of the Hyland renomination.

President Bush is struggling to patch together an international coalition against terrorism in the face of many potential participants' fears of excessive U.S. military retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Bush gets high marks from foreign diplomats and private analysts for rallying most of the world over the last week to his self-declared war on terrorism. But as the initial rush of sympathy for the United States fades, land mines lurk everywhere.

A coalition of 69 civic groups yesterday issued a 10-point action plan designed to help Philadelphia's next mayor and City Council make neighborhoods cleaner and healthier. The potential appeal of the Next Great City initiative - immediately endorsed by three of the five major Democratic mayoral candidates - is that its recommendations are specific and, for the most part, low-cost or revenue-neutral. The ideas include making transit stations and shelters safer and more welcoming by expanding a program in which advertisers maintain them, replanting 23,000 trees cut down by the city since 2001, and letting residents put all their recyclables into a single container.

Judges in black robes accepting brown envelopes filled with cash from the city's Roofers Union is a lingering image that Philadelphia voters can change on May 16. There are 13 incumbent judges running for election to the Common Pleas Court - nine Democrats and four Republicans who have the support of an unprecedented coalition. They were recommended by a special state commission formed to screen judicial candidates. They were appointed to the bench by Gov. Casey. They were endorsed by both political parties and are backed by the Philadelphia Bar Association.

When Assembly Democrats got together last week to choose a new minority leader, the vote, they said, was unanimous: Willie B. Brown, an Essex County Democrat with 14 years in the Assembly. It was a victory, top Democrats said, for state Democratic Committee Chairman Raymond Durkin, also of Essex County, and Newark Mayor Sharpe James and the state's increasingly powerful black political community. But others said Brown's selection illustrated the growing power of a tightly knit coalition of South Jersey legislators, led by Camden County Democratic Assemblymen Anthony S. Marsella and Wayne R. Bryant.