Control

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie married Philadelphia resident Tina Lai in a private ceremony this weekend. Lurie, 61, announced last July that he and Christina Weiss Lurie were getting divorced after 20 years of marriage. Lai will have no official role in the Eagles organization. The wedding was attended by family and close friends. "I am happy and excited as Tina and I begin our lives together," Lurie said in a statement. Lai, 39, is from a family that owns restaurants in Philadelphia, including the Vietnam Restaurant in Chinatown and the Vietnam Cafe in University City.

NEW YORK - Carnival Cruise Lines prices have taken a dip this spring, according to pricing data, and some industry observers blame headlines about problems on several Carnival ships. Todd Elliott, owner of Cruise Vacation Outlet, said his agents had seen a drop in price of 20 percent or more for equivalent cruises. "Rates are far lower than I have seen in a while; for example, the Carnival Dream, seven nights, Eastern Caribbean out of Port Canaveral, May 4 is $299 per person," he said.

MY WIFE and I just attended the car show. Both of us had few different cars we were interested in looking at. We are serious car-buyers looking for ease in shopping by going to the show. My problem is the parents who bring small children and let them loose in the cars. Where are people's heads at that they let a small child stand on the seat of a Lincoln playing with the steering wheel - while an adult is standing there waiting to check it out? My son and his wife also saw the same thing the night they attended.

I am awed by the story of the 19-year-old unmarried mother of three who "needed" an abortion because she couldn't manage a fourth on welfare. Doesn't she understand what she's doing to become pregnant? Doesn't she know or care about birth control? Don't she and the father realize that they should not beget children that they have no way of supporting? The attitude seems to be, "Poor me, I was just standing here minding my own business and look what happened!" I'm sure taxpaying citizens don't want her to be pregnant again, but abortion is not birth control; in this case it's a sign of a body out of control.

The center of gravity in American life has shifted away from partisan politics and into other areas of activity in which individuals ... have far greater hopes for gaining satisfaction. ... Aiding and abetting such developments is a consumer culture that by and large responds to customer demand by increasing hours, service and product selection ... In a word, American life is increasingly characterized by choice. Which may also explain why people increasingly see politics as irrelevant to their lives: Politics remains fundamentally a realm of control, not choice.

Opponents of the Barnes Foundation's petition to move from Lower Merion to the Parkway claim that part of that petition - the proposal to expand the board of trustees - is a racially-motivated effort by white-dominated foundations to wrest control of the Barnes from Lincoln University, the oldest historically black college in the nation. This serious charge has given both donors and the public pause in considering whether to relocate the magnificent art treasure that is the Barnes Foundation.

It was five innings out of 328 in a professional career that began with high expectations and now has spanned three minor-league seasons. No, for a former first-round draft pick, five triple-A innings in the first game of a lazy September doubleheader at Allentown's Coca-Cola Park are nothing to celebrate. Yet Joe Savery said he never felt better about five innings in his life. In his seven games last season with Lehigh Valley, the Phillies' triple-A affiliate, Savery walked 5.5 batters per nine innings.

During an early-season match against Souderton, Upper Dublin's Miguel DelValle was on the receiving end of what he perceived to be a cheap shot by his opponent. "I thought about hitting him back but I decided to forget about it and just wrestle," DelValle recalled. "I ended up winning the match, and the best part was knowing that it wouldn't have happened that way a year ago. Last year, I would have sucker-punched him and gotten myself disqualified. " According to Upper Dublin coach Bob Masonis, whose roof DelValle has lived under for the last 3 years, his star light-middleweight (119-126 pounds)

Two decades ago, when he was just a kid in high school, Tony Danza worked part-time washing dishes at a catering firm. He was a bit of a dreamer. "Yeah, I mostly dreamed of getting out of work," he said, laughing, "and when I really dreamed, I dreamed that maybe someday I'd actually make it to kitchen steward. " These days, the popular "Who's the Boss?" star is still cleaning up - but now it's on TV. And Danza, 38, is looking to the big screen as well. In "She's Out of Control," which opened Friday, he plays a father concerned with his teen daughter's budding sexuality.

For any city controller in Philadelphia there is a conflict between the ideal job specifications and the political reality of getting yourself elected. The public would like to see a snarling watchdog keeping a wary eye over city finances, fearlessly attacking mayors, City Council members, bureaucrats, ward leaders, and union bosses whenever they threaten to tax or spend or waste another penny from the public till. The reality is, the controller - the most powerful city office on the ballot in Tuesday's sleepy Pennsylvania primary - gets elected every four years in low-turnout Democratic primaries where organizational support from the same assortment of party power brokers can be critical to winning reelection.

THE CONTENTIOUS three-way Democratic primary election for City Controller on the ballot Tuesday has at times resembled a "Three Stooges" episode, with a trio of combatants verbally slapping at each other for weeks. Incumbent Alan Butkovitz and his two challengers, Brett Mandel and Mark Zecca, have appeared at several free-for-all debates. Some themes have emerged: Butkovitz, 61, says he modernized the City Controller's office and used it for important audits, including a probe of the finances at the Sheriff's Office and of charter school funding in the city.

PETARE, Venezuela - Stern-looking soldiers clutching assault rifles wave down the beat-up Chevy Caprice entering this sprawling slum on the outskirts of Caracas. Flashlights in his face, the driver steps out and places his hands on the roof while the soldiers frisk him for drugs and weapons. He's clean, and a hand gesture from the commanding officer sends him off into the maze of ramshackle homes that is Petare, one of the most dangerous parts of Venezuela's notoriously crime-infested capital.

WE KNEW the city controller's race was a pissing match. But wow. Supporters of City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who is seeking a third term in Tuesday's Democratic primary election, are up in arms about a tweet from challenger Brett Mandel on Thursday. Mandel's tweet said: "#aimhigher - @PhillyInqurier endorsement of my candidacy. Also advice I gave my son in the NE High School bathroom!" The tweet included a picture of Mandel's young son, from behind, as he struggled to use a high trough-style urinal at Northeast High School during a football game last fall.

AFTER THE JURY decided the fate of Kermit "House of Horrors" Gosnell yesterday, my editor asked me, "So what do you think, now that Gosnell has been found guilty?" He inquired as though my opinion mattered, which it's supposed to when you write an opinion column, right? But the truth is, I feel almost too overwhelmed by the case to render an opinion about Gosnell beyond the most obvious one: That he's a monster who became rich by preying on the poor and desperate, and that I wish him years of misery behind bars until a death sentence ends his waste of a life.

The 149 small airport traffic-control towers slated for reduced hours or closure June 15, including Trenton-Mercer Airport, will stay open, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration will transfer sufficient funds to end employee furloughs and keep the 149 towers open for the remainder of the fiscal year through Sept. 30. The FAA will also put $10 million towards reducing cuts and delays in "core NextGen programs and will allocate about $11 million to partially restore the support of infrastructure in the national airspace system," LaHood said.

ALMOST every week, it seems, someone releases a study designed to refute the city's new Actual Value Initiative. The latest is from Controller Alan Butkovitz's office, and his says that not only are the new property assessments more inaccurate than the current system, but they're maybe racist, too. For months now, the hue and cry over AVI has been unrelenting: Some homeowners saw jaw-dropping increases in values for properties that hadn't been...

IT IS RARE for a city controller's race to feature a television ad. But Brett Mandel was looking for attention. And he got it. A group of 19 politically active people, calling themselves an "ad hoc group of Philadelphia progressives," demanded yesterday that Mandel withdraw his "misleading TV commercial. " On Wednesday, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers called Mandel's commercial a "distortion" of the record of City Controller Alan Butkovitz , who is seeking a third term.

HOUSTON - National Rifle Association leaders told members Saturday that the fight against gun control legislation was far from over, with battles yet to come in Congress and next year's midterm elections, but they vowed that none in the organization would ever have to surrender their weapons. Proponents of gun control also asserted that they are in their fight for the long haul and have not been disheartened by last month's defeat of a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun sales.

CITY CONTROLLER Alan Butkovitz and Brett Mandel, one of his two foes in the May 21 Democratic primary election, used a debate yesterday afternoon to accuse one another of ethical violations. Mandel, who finished third in the 2009 primary for controller, claimed that Butkovitz is under investigation by the Philadelphia Board of Ethics for using brochures produced with city money in his campaign for a third term. "Alan has been using his staff and his resources to produce materials that he distributes at campaign events as if they were political material," said Mandel, who later said he based his claim on an account from one person questioned in the investigation.