Outsider

By Clinton Petty Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is the latest darling of the tea-party movement. She claims to be in step with tea-party ideals. She wants to go to Washington to stand up for average working taxpayers against the socialist takeover and its RINO (Republican in name only) enablers. She's the East Coast's own Sarah Palin. Or at least that's what she wants you to believe this year. In this election cycle, O'Donnell has made a habit of going after the political insiders and Washington elites who would dictate from on high to us common folk.

Ross Perot has hired two skilled political insiders, Hamilton Jordan and Ed Rollins. The man who is running as an outsider finds the need for people who have guided not only politics but government from the inside. This move brings the response that the outsider is hiring the type of "spin doctors" used by insiders all the time and he is not really an outsider after all. I understand the dilemma he faces. Political campaigns need professionals, even the campaigns of "outsiders.

It won't be Troy Vincent after all. DeMaurice Smith was elected the new executive director of the NFL Players Association yesterday, succeeding the late Gene Upshaw. Smith was chosen as the union's fourth leader in its 41-year history, and follows Upshaw, who died in August. The NFL outsider, who has served as an attorney in Washington, is challenged with the task of leading the union into a critical new era. Several NFL player representatives announced the winner as they left the closed-door meeting in Hawaii following the vote.

Mayor Rendell loves us? He loves Philadelphia and the people, neighborhoods and talent which make up our great city of neighborhoods? That must be why he has hired Rina Cutler (Parking Authority), Greg Rost (chief of staff), David Hornbeck (superintendent of schools), David L. Cohen (former chief of staff), Noel Eisenstat (director of the Redevelopment Authority), John Wilder (drug "czar"), Patrick Gallagher (former prison commissioner) and Riley Harrison (director of fleet management)

By the time she was in third grade at Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township, it was obvious to teachers and administrators that Maasha Kah had unusual ability. After living for several years in Gambia, her father's birthplace in West Africa, she had moved to South Jersey, mastered English, and been placed in a program for the gifted and talented. "But I never quite assimilated," Kah said. "I always felt a bit like an outsider. " Then a guidance counselor at Hopkins Middle School, also in Burlington Township, invited the 12-year-old to look into a special enrichment program called A Better Chance, designed to place academically gifted youth of color in prestigious college prep schools.

A thousand crammed into the Hyatt ballroom, and nearly that many greeted the blue-suited, hawklike figure as "Lamar" while he shook hands on his way to the dais. One man had the bad grace to ask him if this really wasn't just a two- person presidential race, and the skin tightened around Andrew Lamar Alexander Jr.'s mouth as he smiled. "Well, yes, it is," Alexander said. "Between the Washington insider and an outsider. " Euphoric Republicans at the Knox County Lincoln Day Dinner loved the line when he repeated it later.

A cochairman of Patrick J. Buchanan's GOP presidential campaign took a leave of absence yesterday, hours after a research group linked the official with white supremacist organizations and right-wing militia leaders. The activities of Larry Pratt, one of four Buchanan cochairmen, were contained in a report on campaign advisers that found all of the candidates relied on a coterie of Washington insiders. Pratt, director of Gun Owners of America, has appeared at workshops with Aryan Nation leaders, spoken at meetings organized by white supremacists, and suggested to right-wing groups they might form citizens militias, it said.

Peter Hearn is the guy who left a prestigious law firm, a handsome income, a charmed life to do something he had never done before - run for political office. Pardon the political. Run for mayor of Philadelphia. It sounds crazy, and some of his friends told him he was crazy - all that running around asking people for money or for votes, submitting your life to the public eye - but he decided to do it anyway. "Because this is no time for politics as usual," his campaign literature states.

The U.S. Olympic Committee is going with an outsider again, picking former Maytag chairman Lloyd Ward as its new chief executive officer. Ward, the unanimous choice yesterday of the USOC's executive committee in Chicago, will begin work Nov. 1 at the Olympic House in Colorado Springs, Colo. Ward is the permanent replacement for corporate turnaround artist Norm Blake, who resigned under pressure in October 2000, after just nine months on the job. Interim CEO Scott Blackmun was one of the three finalists, along with Ward and former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke.

"There's an inside group that controls everything. That's the Philadelphia social disease: to exclude the doers and workers and interested people in favor of Main Line habits. " Freddy Mann, who made that observation last December, was a doer and a worker by any definition. But by proper Philadelphia's definition, he remained an outsider throughout his life, no matter how much good work he did. Mann rescued the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians' summer concert series from bankruptcy in 1948 and then developed a funding plan that made Philadelphia the only city in the country to offer free summer concerts by a major orchestra.

CHICAGO - NATO leaders on Monday adopted President Obama's exit strategy from the nearly 11-year-old U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, cementing an "irreversible" pullout of foreign combat troops that will leave Afghan security forces with the leading role in combat operations by the summer of 2013. "We are now unified to responsibly wind down the war in Afghanistan," Obama declared at a news conference at the close of the two-day summit in his hometown, while acknowledging that serious risks persist.

ROME - A bomb exploded Saturday outside an Italian high school named after the wife of an assassinated anti-Mafia prosecutor, killing one student and wounding at least seven others, officials said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and police were trying to determine who had planted the bomb. But an anti-Mafia prosecutor said it didn't appear to be the kind of attack that organized crime has carried out in Italy. The bombing also followed a spate of attacks against Italian officials and buildings by a group of anarchists.

Chipper Jones unloaded on Jamie Moyer on Saturday night, figuratively speaking. Moyer, the Colorado Rockies' lefthander, accused the Braves slugger of stealing signs while on second base. According to Mark Bowman of MLB.com, Jones responded that Moyer is "paranoid," that he believes others are stealing signs because he played for the Phillies "who are known for stealing signs," then challenged the 49-year-old lefthander to "meet him in the hallway" if he wanted to take things any further.

Was it an audition for the vice presidential spot? On the cusp of the Pennsylvania primary, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney campaigned in Delaware County on Monday afternoon, accompanied by one of his most-discussed potential running mates, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Rick Santorum's decision to drop out two weeks ago has drained Tuesday's GOP presidential primary of any remaining drama, so Rubio created a buzz as he and Romney answered questions during a town-hall meeting at Mustang Expediting, a transportation company in Aston.

XALITZINTLA, Mexico - A 17,886-foot volcano outside Mexico City exhaled dozens of towering plumes of ash and shot fragments of glowing rock down its slopes Friday morning, frightening the residents of surrounding villages with hours of low-pitched roaring not heard in a decade. A roiling white cloud of ash, gas, water vapor and superheated rock spewed from the cone of Popocatepetl high above the village of Xalitzintla, whose residents said they were awakened by a window-rattling series of eruptions.

Two people were shot after a fight broke out early Saturday in front of Good Times Bar and Restaurant on the 6600 block of Lansdowne Ave. in West Philadelphia. Police say that an unknown male sprayed the crowd with gunfire at about 12:30 a.m. following the argument, striking a 22-year-old woman in the shin and a 31-year-old man in the knee. The suspect was described by police as medium build, early to mid 20's, 5'7" to 5'8", light complexion with a full close cropped beard and wearing a gray, hooded sweat jacket, blue baseball hat, and black sneakers.

NFL NETWORK analyst Mike Mayock, a Newtown Square resident, will break down each position in advance of the draft for Daily News readers. Here is Part 9 with his take on the outside linebackers: BEST MELVIN INGRAM South Carolina 6-1 1/2, 264 Arm: 31 1/2 40-yard dash: 4.79 225-bench: 28 Projected Rd.: 1 (picks 9-18) Mayock: "He's a freak. His athletic ability to drop in space, to catch the football . . . he could play tight end and be an All-Pro.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Syria launched a blistering assault Thursday on the outskirts of its capital, shelling residential areas and deploying snipers on rooftops as international envoy Kofi Annan demanded that every fighter lay down arms in time for a U.N.-brokered cease-fire. The bloodshed undermined already fading hopes that more than a year of violence will end soon, and France accused President Bashar al-Assad of trying to fool the world by accepting Annan's deadline to pull the army back from population centers by April 10. According to the plan, rebels are supposed to stop fighting 48 hours later, paving the way for talks to end Assad's violent suppression of the uprising against his rule.

Making your way through the creepy, funky, and inspiring FiberPhiladelphia exhibition "Outside/Inside the Box," in the Crane Arts Building's Icebox Project Space, is unexpectedly affecting. There is a surprising intimacy to these materials that makes the art very direct and personal, and it tends to follow you around throughout your day. And why not? When Brenna K. Murphy is using hair in her art, or Riccardo Berlingeri is transforming burned newspapers (and one hopeful green shoot)