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Tuesday
09Dec

Senate seat for sale? Ill. Gov. arrested in Obama successor probe

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to get financial benefits through his authority to appoint a U.S. senator to fill the vacancy left by Barack Obama's election as president. According to a federal criminal complaint, Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper's editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

A 76-page FBI affidavit said the 51-year-old Democratic governor was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps over the last month conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife, Patti. The affidavit said Blagojevich discussed getting a substantial salary for himself at a nonprofit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions.

It said that Blagojevich also talked about getting his wife placed on corporate boards where she might get $150,000 a year in director's fees. He also allegedly discussed getting campaign funds for himself or possibly a post in the president's cabinet or an ambassadorship once he left the governor's office. "I want to make money," the affidavit quotes him as saying in one conversation. U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a statement that "the breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering."

"They allege that Blagojevich put a for sale sign on the naming of a United States senator," Fitzgerald said."
Among those being considered for the post include U.S. Reps. Danny Davis and Jesse Jackson Jr. Blagojevich also was charged with using his authority as governor in an attempt to squeeze out campaign contributions.

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Monday
01Dec

Obama confirms Eric Holder as Attorney General Nomination

US President-elect Barack Obama officially announced [transition materials and transcript] on Monday that he is nominating former Department of Justice (DOJ) official Eric Holder as the next US attorney general. If confirmed by the Senate, Holder will be the first African American to lead the DOJ. Holder served as Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton Administration and led Obam's VP selection team during the election.

Age: 57; born Jan. 21, 1951, in New York City.

Education: Bachelor's degree in American history, Columbia College, 1973; law degree, Columbia Law School, 1976.

Experience: Senior legal adviser, Obama campaign, 2007-08. Litigation partner at Covington & Burling, 2001-present. Deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, appointed by President Clinton, 1997-2001. U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, appointed by Clinton, 1993-97. Associate judge for the Washington, D.C., Superior Court, appointed by President Reagan, 1988-93. Prosecutor in the Justice Department's public integrity section, 1976-88.

Family: Wife, Sharon Malone, an obstetrician. Three children.

Quote: "It is incumbent upon those of us who lead the department to ensure not only that the nation is safe but also that our laws and traditions are respected," Holder said Monday.

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Monday
01Dec

HIV/AIDS Still Ravaging Black Community

Nationally, an estimated 56,300 people are infected each year by the virus that causes AIDS. In Indiana, 8,851 people are living with HIV/AIDS, 15 percent of whom live in Northwest Indiana. In Lake County, half of the people living with HIV/AIDS are in Gary. Overall, the AIDS epidemic is ravaging the black community at a disproportionate rate, with African-American men and woman accounting for almost half of the new cases reported across the country and in Indiana.

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Friday
28Nov

Discrimination Complaint Filed Against Wall Street Rating Agencies: Black & Latino Home Buyers Disproportionately Harmed

In what is apparently the first legal action of its kind, an association of community-based organizations has filed a federal civil rights complaint against two of the three largest Wall Street ratings agencies, charging that their inflated ratings on subprime mortgage bonds disproportionately caused financial harm to African-American and Latino home buyers across the country.

The complaint, filed by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, alleges that Moody's Investor Services and Fitch Ratings Ltd. enriched themselves by assigning high ratings to bonds backed by mortgages "that were designed to fail" because of "unfair payment terms and insufficient borrower income levels."

The agencies "knew or should have known" that subprime loans disproportionately were marketed to minority consumers — a process known as "reverse redlining" — and that those borrowers would ultimately default and go into foreclosure at high rates, according to the complaint.

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Friday
28Nov

McWhat? Research on mice links fast food to Alzheimer's

Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday. The findings, which come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia. "On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement. "We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's." Alzheimer's disease is incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language.

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Friday
28Nov

New Report says War on Drugs has Failed

The United States' war on drugs has failed and will continue to do so as long as it emphasizes law enforcement and neglects the problem of consumption, a Washington think tank (Brookings' Partnership for the Americas Commission) says in a report co-chaired by a former president of Mexico.

The former president, Ernesto Zedillo, in an interview, called for a major rethinking of U.S. policy, which he said has been "asymmetrical" in demanding that countries such as Mexico stanch the flow of drugs northward, without successful efforts to stop the flow of guns south. In addition to disrupting drug-smuggling routes, eradicating crops and prosecuting dealers, the U.S. must confront the public health issue that large-scale consumption poses, he said.  Zedillo cited skyrocketing violence in his own country as an example of the damage done by these policies. More than 4,000 people have been killed in Mexico this year in drug-related warfare between government troops and traffickers, and among rival drug gangs. Many of the weapons confiscated in raids and shootouts came from the U.S....

Contrary to government claims, the use of heroin and cocaine in the U.S. has not declined significantly, the report says, and the use of methamphetamine is spreading. Falling street prices suggest that the supply of narcotics has not declined noticeably, and U.S. prevention and treatment programs are woefully underfunded, the study says. "Current U.S. counter- narcotics policies are failing by most objective standards," the report says. "The only long-run solution to the problem of illegal narcotics is to reduce the demand for drugs in the major consuming countries, including the United States." [MORE]


Friday
28Nov

Chomsky: Hold Obama Accountable

There was meeting on November 7, I think of a group of couple, of a dozen advisers to deal with the financial crisis. Their careers were, records were reviewed in the business press, and Bloomberg News had an article reviewing their records and concluded that these people, most of these people shouldn't be giving advice about the economy. They should be given subpoenas.

Because most of them were involved in one or other form of financial fraud, that includes Rahm Emanuel, for example. What reason is there to think that the people who brought this crisis about are some how going to fix it? Well, that's a good indication of what's likely to come next, at least if we look at actions. We couldn't, but it won't. You can bring this up. Ask what we expect to see in particular cases. And there's evidence about that from statements from Obama's website. I'll mention just one thing about Obama's website, which gives an indication of what's happening. One of the major problems coming is Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's pretty serious. Take a look at Obama's website under issues, foreign policy issues. The names don't even appear. I mean, we're supposed to be ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. We're not supposed to know what Brand Obama is. So you can't find out that way. The statements that you hear are pretty hawkish. And it doesn't change much as you go through the list. So it's up to you to continue. [MORE]


Friday
28Nov

Obama's Black Appointments

In the past week alone, we've heard of at least six African Americans who will join his new team, including Eric Holder, who will become the nation's first African American Attorney General.

In addition to Holder, Obama selected Valerie Jarrett to be his White House senior advisor, Melody Barnes to lead his Domestic Policy Council, Patrick Gaspard to be his political director, Desirée Rogers to become White House Social Secretary and Rob Nabors to be Deputy OMB Director. That means two of the six members of his economic team are African Americans at a time when economic issues are the most important concern facing the country. And three of the most influential people in the White House -- Gaspard, Jarrett and Rogers -- are also African American. [MORE]


Friday
28Nov

Artur Davis Aims to be First Black Governor in Deep South

Democrat Barack Obama ’s historic win to become the nation’s first black president provides obvious encouragement to Democratic Rep. Artur Davis — Alabama’s only African-American member of Congress — as he ponders a 2010 campaign he hopes would make him the state’s first black governor.

If elected, Davis would not only be the first black governor anywhere in the Deep South, he would only be the second in any Southern state, following Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, whose 1989 election in Virginia made him the first in the nation. And Davis would be doing so in a state where racial voting patterns have persisted, even though the strong resistance to the civil rights movement exhibited by many white Alabamans a couple of generations ago has faded. The tendency of the mainly conservative white electorate to vote Republican for major federal and state offices typically overwhelms the strongly Democratic voting habits of the black constituency that makes up about a quarter of Alabama’s population.

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Friday
28Nov

Bush = Less than President

"That we have slightly more than one President for the moment is mostly a consequence of the extraordinary economic times. Even if George Washington were the incumbent, the markets would want to know what John Adams was planning to do after his Inauguration. And yet this final humiliation seems particularly appropriate for George W. Bush. At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks... He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one." [MORE]


Friday
28Nov

Rep Jefferson asks 4th Circuit to Drop Charges Against him

UPI Attorneys for U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., asked the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to consider dropping 14 of 16 criminal charges against him. The lawyers cited constitutional issues as they asked, in effect, that the entire court overrule a unanimous decision by its own three-judge panel, The New Orleans Times-Picayune said. That panel recently rejected the argument that a Virginia grand jury improperly indicted Jefferson on corruption charges because it heard certain testimony about his congressional duties.

Jefferson Trial Expected In First Half Of 2009
From the Frontrunner The Hill (11/25) reports LA2 Rep. William Jefferson's (D) corruption trial, "which was postponed last week beyond its original Dec. 2 start date, may not begin for months." The trial was originally scheduled for Dec. 2, "four days before Louisiana's Dec. 6 general election, in which Jefferson is seeking a 10th term against a crowded field of candidates," including Anh "Joseph" Cao (R), the Green Party's Malik Rahim, Libertarian Party candidate Gregory Kahn and Independent Jerry Jacobs. "The trial is now expected to begin at some point in the first half of 2009."

Jefferson Favored for Re-election Despite Indictment
It would be an understatement to say that controversy-plagued Louisiana Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson is running for re-election this year under less than optimal circumstances. Yet it is not an exaggeration to say that he is a nearly prohibitive favorite to win his bid for a 10th House term in the weather-delayed Dec. 6 general election in the New Orleans-based 2nd Congressional District.

The 61-year-old Jefferson is awaiting trial on federal bribery and corruption charges. Even before his indictment in June 2007, the House Democratic leadership removed him from the prestigious Ways and Means Committee — prompted by the Justice Department investigation into his activities, which included a highly publicized allegation that Jefferson had foil-wrapped $90,000 in bribe money and stored it in a freezer.

The 16 counts on which Jefferson stands indicted include soliciting bribes, corruption, money laundering, obstruction of justice, wire fraud and racketeering. The case centers on an accusation that he sought and accepted bribes to be paid to a family member in return for his official assistance in promoting business deals in Africa. A status conference for his trial is scheduled for Dec. 16. [MORE]


Friday
28Nov

Cummings Won't Seek Oversight Committee Chairmanship

From the Frontrunner The Hill (11/26, Allen) reports, "Despite growing pressure from colleagues to mount an internal challenge for the Oversight Committee gavel, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has reiterated to House Democratic leaders his decision to avoid running against his elder on the committee, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.)." The Hill adds "leadership sources said Cummings made his views known -- and final -- in brief discussions with senior House Democrats on Tuesday morning," in a move that "essentially paves the way for Towns to receive the unanimous recommendation of the Steering and Policy Committee when it meets...to consider the vacant top post on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee."


Friday
28Nov

Congressman Hastings: Stop deporting Haitians

Nov. 26, 2008 (Sun Sentinel delivered by Newstex) -- Barack Obama wont take office for nearly two months, but South Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings already is pressing him to allow thousands of Haitians to remain legally in this country. Alcee Hastings Hastings has constantly pushed for ``temporary protected status for undocumented Haitians to prevent them from being deported back to an impoverished, turbulent and storm-wracked island. Many Haitians who are living in the shadows of the law in Florida and other states send money back home to their families. ``The people of Haiti cannot afford to wait a single day longer for this much-needed assistance, Hastings said in a letter to the president-elect. œWhile I continue to hope that our current president (George W. Bush) will finally acknowledge and address the dire plight of the Haitian people, it is important that the next administration be made aware of the importance of TPS.


Friday
28Nov

Amid Ethics Probe Pelosi faces pressure to replace Rangel

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing growing pressure to replace Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., atop of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, but so far she's sticking with the embattled chairman.

In a statement released late Wednesday, Pelosi said she is prepared to wait for the House Ethics Committee to complete its investigation of Rangel's personal finances, which is slated to occur before the official end of the 110th Congress in early January. But Pelosi also signaled that she does not want Rangel's problems hanging over House Democrats indefinitely, and some action on the embattled congressman is expected early next year, maybe even before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn into office.

"In September, I called on the House Ethics Committee to look into issues raised by news reports on Chairman Rangel. This followed up on the chairman's own request for an investigation by the Committee," Pelosi said in her statement. "I have been assured the report will be completed by the end of this session of Congress, which concludes on Jan. 3, 2009. I look forward to reviewing the report at that time."

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Friday
28Nov

Rep. Rangel says NY Times Article is Garbage

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel on Tuesday responded to what he called an "inflammatory" New York Times article that questions the New York Democrat's ethics. The article, published Tuesday, says "Congressional records and interviews show that Mr. Rangel was instrumental in preserving a lucrative tax loophole that benefited an oil-drilling company last year, while at the same time its chief executive was pledging $1 million," to a Rangel project at the City College of New York.

Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, denied the allegations spelled out in the article, saying in a statement, "At no time -- never -- did I entertain, promote or secure a tax break or any special favor for anyone as an inducement or reward for a contribution to the City College of New York."

The oil-drilling company in question is Nabors Industries. Rangel met with Nabors CEO Eugene Isenberg, on February 12, 2007, to discuss how a tax increase would affect the company, Nabors lobbyist Kenneth Kies who was at the meeting told CNN.

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Friday
28Nov

Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown may Join Obama Cabinet

President-elect Barack Obama is considering Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown for his Cabinet, leaving Marylanders to figure out who could fill Brown’s shoes at home.

Reports surfaced last week that Brown, an Army Reserve colonel who served in Iraq, was on Obama’s short list for secretary of veterans affairs, just days after it was announced he was co-chairman of Obama’s transition team for the department.

“I think that speculation is natural given his talents and given his military service,” Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said Monday night on Maryland Public Television.

Brown is the highest elected official in the country to have served in Iraq.

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Friday
28Nov

Danny Davis seeks Obama's Senate seat

Someone will get an early Christmas present when Governor Rod Blagojevich appoints a senator next month to fill the vacancy left by President-elect Barack Obama.

Congressman Danny Davis, D-Chicago, was in Waukegan on Wednesday to campaign for the seat at a press conference with state Rep. Eddie Washington, D-Waukegan, and local pastors. Davis has similar campaign stops in Rockford, Peoria, Champagne and Cairo over the next few weeks to reiterate his interest in the open Senate post which expires in 2010.

Davis, who has represented the 7th Congressional District in Chicago for 12 years, is not the only one openly campaigning for the position. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Chicago, is also trying to publicly drum up support.

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Wednesday
19Nov

Barbara Lee to head Congressional Black Caucus

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, was announced as chairwoman-elect of the Congressional Black Caucus at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday. She takes the 42-member caucus' reins as its power seems ascendant. Members will lead the House Judiciary, Homeland Security and Ways and Means committees in the 111th Congress; another, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., will be the majority whip; and all of them will work in tandem with the nation's first black president, Barack Obama, of whom Lee was an early and ardent supporter.

"We have many, many challenges, but those challenges do present historic opportunities," she said Wednesday. "When you look at the economy and the fact that millions of Americans' lives are in shambles due to the foreclosure crisis, that's the first priority for all of us." Obama's approach to tempering the economic crisis reflects strategies the CBC has been pursuing for years, Lee said, and she said she's confident her caucus and other House Democrats will "be able to work together to reach consensus on a common agenda with the White House."

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Tuesday
11Nov

Color Barrier in Arkansas - No Blacks Ever Elected to Congress or State Wide

From Associated Press Arkansas remains the only state from the former Confederacy never to elect an African-American to Congress or any statewide office — and last week it soundly rejected the man set to become the nation's first black president. Barack Obama lost by 20 percentage points, even though fellow Democrats control all of Arkansas' statewide offices, both chambers of the Legislature and three of its four congressional districts.

Many blacks say race is the reason, and consider the poor showing to be another frustrating chapter in Arkansas' long and tortured civil-rights history. "To vote for an African-American at a statewide level would show we're willing to move forward. We have an obligation to continue to belie that piece of history that is indelibly in people's brains," said Joyce Elliott, a Democrat unopposed last week in a state Senate race in Little Rock.

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Saturday
08Nov

Secret Service says Sarah Palin's Hateful Speeches Led to Death Threats Against Obama

  • Pictured above: Campaignworkers cleaning bulletproof glass on the stage where Obama would speak - NT Times hard copy.

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further. The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin's credentials as a future presidential candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.

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