tees's Blog

Officers accused of beating NFL player's father Arrested man in critical condition; family wants 2 lawmen taken off street

The father of a noted NFL player was in critical condition Wednesday, two days after an incident in which his family says Houston police officers beat the man while arresting him on outstanding traffic warrants.

Police said Marvin Driver, the father of Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver, was taken into custody about 1:30 a.m. on Monday. He was unresponsive when he arrived at the Southeast Jail on Mykawa, police said.

Family members say 56-year-old Marvin Driver was beaten by officers after being arrested at his mother's house in southeast Houston.

Late Wednesday, Houston police spokesman Victor Senties declined to address specific questions regarding the allegations. But in a statement, HPD noted that the internal affairs division is investigating claims "that injuries he sustained following his arrest were the result of an assault on Mr. Driver by two HPD officers."

The two accused officers remain on duty pending further investigation, the department said.

The family, however, wants the officers they say are responsible for causing Marvin Driver to suffer a brain hemorrhage, taken off the streets until the investigation is complete. Driver was in critical condition at Memorial Hermann Hospital-The Texas Medical Center on Wednesday.

"He left here in perfect condition, you know," said Winston Driver, Marvin Driver's brother, who witnessed the arrest early Monday. "I could tell by the way the police officers — the way they was grabbing him and pulling him and snatching him, you know — that he was in trouble."

Marvin Driver was in the driveway of his mother's residence in the 8300 block of Gibbons early Monday, when he was approached by a Houston police officer, said family spokesman Quanell X.

"He said, 'You're Donald Driver's father. I went to school with that (expletive),' " said the activist.

That's when Winston Driver said he heard the exchange and stepped outside the home.

"He was told to get his (expletive) behind back in the house," said Quanell X.

As his brother was cuffed, Winston Driver said he called 911 and asked for a sergeant to come to the scene. Quanell X said an officer never came.

"We are asking for Chief (Harold) Hurtt to suspend these officers until the IA (Internal Affairs) investigation is complete," said Quanell X.

The activist said he met with Marvin Driver on Wednesday and that he is improving, but cried while writing notes about his experience. "He just couldn't believe this had happened," Quanell X said. "He grew up in this neighborhood, knew the officer."

KHOU (Channel 11) contributed to this report.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6122212.h
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Hoekstra Condemns Potential CIA Cover-Up in Death of Bowers Family
Calls for New Congressional and Justice Inquiries into Alleged Wrongdoing

Washington, Nov 20 -

U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, today strongly criticized rogue CIA employees that a CIA Inspector General’s report concluded had attempted to block congressional and federal investigations into the agency’s role in the shoot-down of a plane carrying the Bowers family of Muskegon, Mich.

Hoekstra expressed his frustration after personally reviewing the findings of a CIA IG report titled the “Procedures Used in the Narcotics Airbridge Denial Program in Peru, 1995-2001.”

The IG report reviewed procedures used in the airbridge-denial program, including those that resulted in the deaths of Veronica “Roni” Bowers and her infant daughter, Charity, and the injury of three others on the plane carrying them, including Bowers’ husband and young son.

“To say these deaths did not have to happen is more than an understatement,” Hoekstra said. “The CIA knew about repeated serious issues with this program, but took no corrective actions, which could have prevented this needless tragedy. Making matters worse, the inspector general found continuous efforts to cover the matter up and potentially block criminal investigation.”

Hoekstra called for the House Intelligence Committee to hold hearings into the incident involving the Bowerses and potential attempts by CIA to obstruct previous congressional inquiries on the matter.

He sent a letter to CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, author and classification authority for the IG report, requesting that it be declassified as much as possible and made available for public scrutiny. In his letter, Hoekstra noted federal law prohibits the classification of information to prevent embarrassment to federal agencies.

Hoekstra, citing allegations in the IG report of deliberately misleading statements made before Congress and information withheld from federal investigators, also called for Helgerson to ensure the Justice Department has the opportunity to determine whether further inquiry is warranted.

“This issue goes to the heart of the American people's ability to trust the CIA," Hoekstra said. “Americans deserve to know that agencies given the power to operate on their behalf aren't abusing that power or their trust.

“Given all they have suffered, the Bowers family deserves to know that justice truly has been served when it comes to the loss of their loved ones.”

http://hoekstra.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx
?DocumentID=106059

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has been indicted in southern Texas over claims of abuse at private prisons.

 

Dick Cheney's office says he has not received any word on the indictment

 

A jury in Willacy County, near the US-Mexico border, brought the charges against Mr Cheney and former attorney general Alberto Gonzales for "organised criminal activity" in state jails.

The Vice-President is charged with "profiteering from depriving human beings of their liberty", while Mr Gonzales is accused of using his position to "stop the investigations as to the wrongdoings" at county prisons.

However, the indictment has not been seen by a judge, who could dismiss it.

The indictment cites a "money trail" of Mr Cheney's interests in private prison companies running federal detention centres in Texas.

He is accused of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.

The Vice-President's office said he had not received a copy of the indictment.

Alberto Gonzalez was also indicted

The indictment cites the case of prisoner Gregorio De La Rosa, who was beaten to death by inmates with padlocks stuffed in socks at a private jail in Willacy County in 2001.

The prison owners, Florida-based GEO, were indicted on a murder charge over his death.

The company was ordered to pay Mr de la Rosa's family $47.5m in a civil judgment in 2006.

The Cheney-Gonzales indictment makes reference to the de la Rosa case.

The grand jury wrote that it made its decision "with great sadness", but said they had no other choice but to indict the two men "because we love our country".

Mr Gonzales' attorney said in a written statement: "This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any good prosecutor can recognise" - and branded the charges an "abuse of the criminal justice system."

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/D**k-Ch
eney-Indicted-Over-Prison-Abuse-Claims-US-Vice-Presiden
t-Owns-Jail-Related-Enterprises/Article/200811315154864
?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_4&lid
=ARTICLE_15154864_D**k_Cheney_Indicted_Over_Prison_Abus
e_Claims%3A_US_Vice-President_Owns_Jail-Related_Enterpr
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Larger Inmate Population Is Boon to Private Prisons

Prison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons and several state governments have sent thousands of inmates in recent months to prisons and detention centers run by Corrections Corp. of America, Geo Group Inc. and other private operators, as a crackdown on illegal immigration, a lengthening of mandatory sentences for certain crimes and other factors have overcrowded many government facilities.

Prison-policy experts expect inmate populations in 10 states to have increased by 25% or more between 2006 and 2011, according to a report by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts.

Private prisons housed 7.4% of the country's 1.59 million incarcerated adults in federal and state prisons as of the middle of 2007, up from 1.57 million in 2006, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a crime-data-gathering arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Corrections Corp., the largest private-prison operator in the U.S., with 64 facilities, has built two prisons this year and expanded nine facilities, and it plans to finish two more in 2009. The Nashville, Tenn., company put 1,680 new prison beds into service in its third quarter, helping boost net income 14% to $37.9 million. "There is going to be a larger opportunity for us in the future," said Damon Hininger, Corrections Corp.'s president and chief operations officer, in a recent interview.

California has shipped more than 5,100 inmates to private prisons run by Corrections Corp. in Arizona, Mississippi and other states since late 2006, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered emergency measures to control a ballooning state-prison population. Prisons were so overcrowded that hundreds of inmates were sleeping in gyms, according to one report. An additional 2,900 prisoners are scheduled to be transferred to private prisons outside the state by the end of next year, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"Private prisons are a short-term solution while we work on long-term solutions, rehabilitation programs and recidivism strategies," said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state's corrections department.

View Full Image

Getty Images

Prison overcrowding, partially due to a crackdown on illegal immigration and longer mandatory sentences for certain crimes, could spur state and federal officials to increase the use of private prisons like this one in Otay Mesa, Calif.

Geo Group, of Boca Raton, Fla., the second-largest prison company, has built or expanded eight facilities this year in Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and other states, and it plans seven more expansions or new prisons by 2010. Last month, Geo Group was awarded a contract by Florida's Department of Management Services to design and build a 2,000-bed special-needs prison in that state. Cornell Cos., the nation's third-largest prison company, recently broke ground on a 1,250-bed private prison for men in Hudson, Colo.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, the government agency that operates all federal prisons and manages the handling of inmates convicted of federal crimes, has awarded 13 contracts since 1997 to prison companies to build prisons and detention centers that house low-security inmates, primarily "low security criminal aliens," says Felicia Ponce, a spokeswoman for the agency. The contracts give the bureau "flexibility to manage a rapidly growing inmate population and to help control overcrowding," Ms. Ponce says.

Outsourcing incarceration to prison companies can reduce a government's cost of housing those prisoners by as much as 15%, according to a study by the Reason Foundation, a research organization in Los Angeles. Private operators say they can build prisons more quickly and operate them less expensively than governments because their payroll costs are lower and they can consolidate prisoners from many far-flung jurisdictions into facilities located in areas where land and building costs are very low.

Some groups accuse the private prisons of neglecting inmates or of putting them in bad conditions. "Profit is still a motive and it's structured into the way these prisons are operated," says Judy Greene, a justice-policy analyst for Justice Strategies, a nonprofit studying prison-sentencing issues and problems. "Just because the system has expanded doesn't mean there is evidence that conditions have improved."

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits involving several prison companies over the past decade alleging poor treatment of inmates. Last year, the organization and other parties filed a lawsuit against Corrections Corp. and the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm in federal court in San Diego, alleging that the company was operating an overcrowded, unsafe immigrant-detention center in that city. Detainees were routinely assigned in groups of three to sleep in two-room cells -- meaning one had to sleep on the floor near the toilet -- or to temporary beds in recreation rooms and other common spaces, according to the complaint. The suit also alleged that detainees had little access to mental-health care.

"We have serious concerns about for-profit prison companies because they are notorious for cutting essential costs that need to be provided to maintain a safe and constitutional environment for prisoners," says Jody Kent, a public-policy coordinator for the ACLU's National Prison Project.

The lawsuit was settled in June, with Corrections Corp. and Homeland Security agreeing to limit immigrant detainees to the number of inmates the facility was designed for. Louise Grant, a Corrections Corp. spokeswoman, says the company's prison practices complied with federal standards and that it regularly discloses capacity levels and other information in federal filings.

"Our government partners monitor us daily," Ms. Grant says. "There is no cutting corners."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122705334657739263.
html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The new, but hidden face of slavery. It has gotten so bad that some towns would not survive if these prisons were to shut down. America is has the largest prison population in the world; even China is not that diabolical as to make prison its growing business.

Survivors of 1921 Tulsa Race Riots Salvage History at New York Premiere of 'Before They Die'

Devastation of "Black Wall Street" in Oklahoma Is Not Forgotten

 NEW YORK, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots will give voice to a little-known and shameful chapter of history before hundreds of African American leaders from business, politics and media at the New York premiere of "Before They Die," a documentary produced by Reginald Turner, CEO of Mportant Films, and Harvard Law Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. as part of The Tulsa Project, a nonprofit foundation to raise awareness of the event and seek restitution for its survivors.

 Otis Clark, 105, Wess Young, 92, and Dr. Olivia Hooker, 94, will speak about the 18-hour siege that destroyed 30 blocks of a thriving African-American residential and business community known as the "Black Wall Street," leaving 300 known dead and 10,000 homeless.

 Hosted by The Executive Leadership Council and The New York Times, the screening is part a nationwide tour and fundraising effort.

 "The time has come to correct the history books and seek justice for the Tulsa Race Riots survivors Before They Die," said Professor Ogletree. Since 2002, he and Mr. Turner have waged a legal battle on the survivors' behalf, leading up to an unsuccessful hearing in the Supreme Court in 2006. Professor Ogletree is a Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and Founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

 "The film is focused on telling the story of the survivors, keeping African-American history alive and broadening awareness of it among all Americans," said Mr. Turner, who directed the film.

 "Before They Die" follows the survivors and their legal team headed by Professor Ogletree through the court system all the way to the Supreme Court and on to the U.S. Congress. It will be shown at TheTimesCenter in New York.

 "Showing our children the true light of history is the first step in teaching them the self-respect that will carry them to achievement and excellence," said Carl Brooks, President and CEO of The Executive Leadership Council and The Executive Leadership Foundation. The Council provides African-American executives of Fortune 500 companies with a network and leadership forum that adds perspective and direction to the achievement of excellence in business, economic and public policies for the African-American community, their corporations and the community at large.

 "We at The New York Times are proud that we covered this notorious event at the time and are now increasing awareness of it again with this New York premiere," said Desiree L. Dancy, Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion, The New York Times Company.

 New Yorker Dr. Olivia Hooker, 94, recalls with perfect clarity being woken from her bed by her mother and the sound of a hailstorm that was actually a rain of bullets -- fired from a gun carrying an American flag. Dr. Hooker went on to make history by becoming the first African American woman to enlist and go on active duty in the Coast Guard, then part of the US Navy in WWII. She earned an M.A. from Columbia University teachers College on the GI Bill, and a PhD at the University of Rochester where she was one of the two black female students. She has taught at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University, retiring as Associate Professor in 1985.

 The event is chaired by Jessica C. Isaacs, Senior Vice President, Field Operations and Global Reinsurance, AIU Personal Lines, and Vice Chairman, The Executive Leadership Council; and Westina Matthews Shatteen, Managing Director, Community Business Development, Merrill Lynch, and Board Member, The Executive Leadership Council.

 The Tulsa Race Riots took place in the segregated Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, which was known as the "Black Wall Street" of America. It was founded by O.W. Gurley, the son of two former slaves who moved to Tulsa in July 1906 and bought 40 acres that would be sold exclusively to African Americans. Black Wall Street was a completely black-owned and black-operated community. Its initial business was a rooming house and grocery store built by Gurley in 1906. It housed many migrants fleeing the oppression in Mississippi and those in search of a better life despite the segregation mandates of the Jim Crow era.

 For more information about the documentary, see http://www.beforetheydiemovie.com

 SOURCE The Tulsa Project

To see the film's page & info go here:

Before They Die...on Tulsa Riots  
Devastation of "Black Wall Street" in Oklahoma Is Not Forgotten 
 
http://www.beforetheydiemovie.com/
 
other links on the riots -
 
Tulsa reparations  
http://www.tulsareparations.org/FinalReport.htm
 
 
Black Wall Street
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/default.ht
m
 
black past.org
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/tulsa-race-riot-1921

Now We Must See Ourselves Differently - and Act Accordingly
Date: Friday, November 07, 2008

By: Judge Greg Mathis, Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com


The world celebrated when Senator Barack Obama ascended to the presidency of the United States, the first African-American to do so. His election not only marked a new era in American politics but also a giant leap forward for race relations. Obama, his campaign staffers and his supporters have done what many thought was impossible. Collectively, we all worked together and made history. Now it is time for us to individually do our parts to make sure we, as African-Americans, continue to progress forward.

There are certain moments in U.S. history that have signaled a positive shift in the way Americans view race and injustices. The 1955 kidnapping and murder of 14-year Emmett Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman brought to light, for many white Americans, the constant fear blacks in the South lived in. In 1965, 600 peaceful marchers were attacked by state and local police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama with billy clubs and tear gas. Television cameras captured the attacks and broadcast them to the nation. Many were horrified by what they saw and became active in the civil rights movement gained newfound support. More recently, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and the government’s failure to assist the people of New Orleans has renewed discussions around racial, social and economic injustice. Along the way, there have been leaders who have represented each step in America’s move toward true racial equality. President-elect Obama is that latest symbol of hope. But he needn’t stand alone.

As individuals, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our communities to guide this country in the direction of openness and fairness. For the most part, white people have, at a very basic level, done theirs. Sixty-one percent of those who voted for Obama were white. It has taken centuries, but now, finally, the majority of white people in America are comfortable with the idea of a black person leading this nation. This shows that old stereotypes are, if not erased, fading.

We can help eradicate these stereotypes by not playing into them. Young men: Put down your guns, pull up your pants, and pick up a book. Take your education seriously. Aspire to greatness. If you are a father, be responsible. Support your child financially and emotionally. Young women: Turn off the radio when a sexist and demeaning song comes on. It doesn’t matter if "the beat is hot;" you must have more respect for yourselves. If you don’t, how can others? Parents, raise your children. Don’t let the television or video games replace family time, time that can be used to guide and educate your child. Become active at their school, get to know their friends. Studies show that children with fully involved parents do better in school and are less likely to go to prison.

America is far from perfect, and Obama’s election alone won’t "cure" racial injustice. But it can change perceptions. If whites are already beginning to see us differently, it is high time we begin to see ourselves differently. And we must act accordingly.

---

Judge Greg Mathis is national vice president of Rainbow PUSH and a national board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/baw_c
ommentary_news/2265

Legendary singer Makeba dies after collapsing on stage



JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- Miriam Makeba, the South African singer who wooed the world with her sultry voice but was banned from her own country for more than 30 years under apartheid, died after collapsing on stage in Italy. She was 76.

In her dazzling career, Makeba performed with musical legends from around the world -- jazz maestros Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon -- and sang for world leaders such as John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela.

"Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us," Mandela said in a statement.

He said it was "fitting" that her last moments were spent on stage.

The Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno, near the southern city of Naples, said Makeba died early Monday of a heart attack.

Makeba collapsed on stage Sunday night after singing one of her most famous hits, "Pata Pata," her family said in a statement. Her grandson, Nelson Lumumba Lee, was with her as well as her longtime friend, Italian promoter Roberto Meglioli.

"Whilst this great lady was alive she would say: 'I will sing until the last day of my life,' " the statement said.

Castel Volturno Mayor Francesco Nuzzo said Makeba sang at a concert in solidarity with six immigrants from Ghana who were shot to death in September in the town, an attack that investigators have blamed on organized crime.

The death of "Mama Africa," as she was known, plunged South Africa into shock and mourning.

"One of the greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing," Foreign Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said in a statement.

"Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism through the art of song."

Makeba wrote in her 1987 memoirs that friends and relatives who first encouraged her to perform compared her voice to that of a nightingale. With her distinctive style combining jazz with folk with South African township rhythms, she was often called "The Empress of African Song."

The first African woman to win a Grammy award, Makeba started singing in Sophiatown, a cosmopolitan neighborhood of Johannesburg that was a cultural hotspot in the 1950s before its black residents were forcibly removed by the apartheid government.

She then teamed up with South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela -- later her first husband -- and her rise to international prominence started when she starred in the anti-apartheid documentary "Come Back, Africa" in 1959.

When she tried to fly home for her mother's funeral the following year, she discovered her passport had been revoked. It was 30 years before she was allowed to return.

In 1963, Makeba appeared before the U.N. Special Committee on Apartheid to call for an international boycott of South Africa. The South African government responded by banning her records, including hits like "Pata Pata," "The Click Song" ("Qongqothwane" in Xhosa), and "Malaika."

"Pata Pata" became a Top 20 U.S. hit in 1967.

Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording in 1966 together with Belafonte for "An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba." The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid.

Thanks to her close relationship with Belafonte, she received star status in the United States and performed for President Kennedy at his birthday party in 1962. But she fell briefly out of favor when she married black power activist Stokely Carmichael -- later known as Kwame Ture -- and moved to Guinea in the late 1960s.

Besides working with Simone and Gillespie, she also appeared with Paul Simon at his "Graceland" concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.

After three decades abroad, Makeba was invited back to South Africa by Mandela, the anti-apartheid icon, shortly after his release from prison in 1990 as white racist rule crumbled.

"It was like a revival," she said about going home. "My music having been banned for so long, that people still felt the same way about me was too much for me. I just went home and I cried."

Makeba courted controversy by lending support to dictators such as Togo's Gnassingbe Eyadema and Felix Houphouet-Boigny from Ivory Coast, performing at political campaigns for the veteran leaders even as they were violently suppressing the movements for democracy that swept West Africa in the early 90s.

The first person to give her refuge was Guinea's former President Ahmed Sekou Toure who was accused in the slaughtering of 10 percent of the population.

Makeba, though, insisted that her songs were not deliberately political.

"I'm not a political singer," she insisted in an interview with Britain's Guardian newspaper earlier this year. "I don't know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us -- especially the things that hurt us."

Makeba announced her retirement three years ago, but despite a series of farewell concerts she never stopped performing. When she turned 75 last year, she said she would sing for as long as possible.

Makeba is survived by her grandchildren, Nelson Lumumba Lee and Zenzi Monique Lee, and her great-grandchildren Lindelani, Ayanda and Kwame.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/11/10/obit.make
ba.ap/index.html

Story Highlights

Malia Obama, 10, Sasha Obama, 7, will be in the public eye
Historian: Kids will do something that they'll be forever remembered for
Flunk a test and make headlines, historian said
Pranks and mischief: Teddy Roosevelt's kids dropped water balloons on people

(CNN) -- Barack Obama's daughters are moving into a house with a swimming pool, a bowling alley and its own movie theater.

Sasha Obama, left, and Malia Obama will make the White House home come January 20.

When their father is inaugurated on January 20, Malia Obama, 10, and Sasha Obama, 7, will also be moving into a place where they'll not only be under the watchful eye of the Secret Service but also under the eye of the media.

"One of the negatives of the White House is that its very much a fishbowl," presidential historian Doug Wead said.

"There's something that Sasha or Malia will say or do and they'll be remembered for it for the rest of their lives," said Wead, who wrote "All the Presidents' Children," a book on the lives of kids at the White House. Watch what life's like for White House kids »

Theodore Roosevelt's children used to like to drop water balloons on foreign dignitaries, Wead said. They also let their pet snake slither around the White House dining room.

John F. Kennedy Jr. was known for hiding under his father's Oval Office desk. His older sister, Caroline, had a pony who romped untethered around the White House grounds.

President Abraham Lincoln's youngest son, Thomas, used to startle everyone in the building by making all the White House bells ring at one time.

But with the mischief and pranks comes a lifetime of pressure, said Noah McCollough, who wrote the book "First Kids."

"John Quincy Adams' kids went through alcoholism and addiction because they couldn't live up to their parents expectation" in their later years, McCollough said.

Much of Malia and Sasha's White House experience will be monitored by their mother, Michelle Obama, who seems determined to be active in their lives.

Even as her husband campaigned for the presidency, Michelle Obama was a soccer mom, cheering from the sidelines of her daughters' games.

"I'm a mother first. And I'm going to be at parent-teacher conferences, and ... I'm going to be at the things that they want me to attend. I'm not going to miss a ballet recital," Michelle Obama said.

Together with the president-elect, she'll have to decide where the girls will attend school.

"If they send their child to a private school they'll be called elitist for betraying the public school system," Wead said.

Jacqueline Kennedy, not wanting Caroline being hounded by the media as she went to school, set up a first-grade classroom on the third floor of the White House. Ten of Caroline's friends also attended, each bringing their own lunch pail.

President Jimmy Carter sent daughter Amy, age 9 when she moved to Washington, to the public Hardy Middle School.

President Bill Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, attended the private Sidwell Friends School.

No matter the choice, even their grades will come under public scrutiny.

"If you flunk that huge math test, it's on the front page of the newspaper the next day," McCollough said.

But assuming no one gets grounded for bad grades, imagine the possibilities for sleepovers or parties. President Gerald Ford's daughter Susan, for example, held her senior prom at the White House.

Whatever the educational choice, the Obamas have made clear their kids won't be an afterthought now that Barack Obama is about to become the world's most powerful person.

On Friday morning, before the president-elect met with his advisers on the troubled economy and before his first news conference since the election scheduled for the afternoon, Barack and Michelle Obama went to a parent-teacher conference at the University of Chicago Lab School.

And the girls will have company at the house on Pennsylvania Avenue.

"You have earned that puppy that is coming with us to the White House," their father told them in his acceptance speech

One more time....

Two Families Named McCain Candidate's Kin Share a History With Descendants of Slaves

TEOC, Miss. -- Lillie McCain is watching the presidential campaign from a singular perspective.

A 56-year-old psychology professor whose family spans five generations from the enslavement of her great-great-grandparents to her own generation's fight for civil rights, Ms. McCain appreciates the social changes that have opened the way for Sen. Barack Obama to be the first major-party black contender for the White House.

But she also has an uncommon view on another American passage. Ms. McCain and her siblings are descended from two of about 120 slaves held before the end of the Civil War at Teoc, the Mississippi plantation owned by the family of Republican nominee John McCain's great-great-grandfather.

In a year when the historic nature of Sen. Obama's candidacy is drawing much comment, the case of the Teoc McCains offers another quintessential American narrative in black and white. For the black McCain family, it is a story of triumph over the legacy of slavery; for the white McCains, it is the evolution of a 19th-century cotton dynasty into one rooted in an ethic of military and national service.

"I think that since we can't undo what has been done, that the most effective thing for us to do is figure out how to put things in perspective and go from there," says Ms. McCain, who holds a doctorate in psychology and teaches at Mott Community College in Flint, Mich. "To harbor anger and hostility and all that is counterproductive."

To Sen. McCain, "How the Teoc descendants have served their community and, by extension, their country is a testament to the power of family, love, compassion and the human spirit." It is, he added, in a statement provided by a spokesman, "an example for all citizens."

The McCains of Teoc

View Interactive

See family trees of the black and white McCains of Teoc, Miss.

The black and white McCain families have long acknowledged their shared history at Teoc, a name that applies to both the plantation and the now-sparse community around it. A cousin of the senator still owns 1,500 acres of the original 2,000. Sen. McCain's younger brother, Joe, and other white McCains have attended family reunions organized by the African-American McCains.

Lillie McCain's family is descended from two slaves, named Isom and Lettie, according to interviews and examinations of family documents, county files and U.S. Census Bureau records. They remained closely entwined with the white family for decades after the Civil War, taking its surname and living close by on land rented from their former owners. Lettie McCain's headstone is still visible in an overgrown graveyard for African-Americans not far from the ruins of the last "big house" on the Teoc plantation.

View Full Image

Fabrizio Costantini for the Wall Street Journal

Lillie McCain's family spans five generations from the enslavement of her great-great grandparents on the Mississippi Delta plantation, Teoc.

According to members of the white McCain family, the plantation in rural Carroll County, Miss., was purchased by Sen. McCain's great-great-grandfather, William Alexander McCain, in 1851, when many of the flat vistas of the Mississippi Delta region in the state's northwest corner were still swampy wilderness. After his death in 1863, his widow and a brother, Nathaniel Henry McCain, maintained the family's position among Mississippi gentry.

William Alexander McCain's son John Sidney McCain ran the plantation and served in local politics, including a term as county sheriff. A son of his, also named John Sidney McCain but known as "Slew," graduated from the Naval Academy in 1906 and began a military life that would eventually supplant the family's long history as cotton barons. He became an admiral and top naval officer during World War II. His son, the third with the same name but known as John S. "Jack" McCain Jr., also rose to the rank of admiral, in the Vietnam War era -- while his own son, Sen. McCain, was a Navy pilot and then a prisoner of war.

Sen. McCain's family lived primarily on military installations around the world. But they remained attached to Teoc, visiting repeatedly during Sen. McCain's childhood, often for long periods. When they went to the farm in the 1940s and 1950s, the future Sen. McCain and his brother stayed in the rambling house, now abandoned, of their great-uncle, Joe McCain, who had become the plantation's owner.

Sen. McCain's younger brother, also named Joe, said that though their father "moved around as the son of a naval officer, he too always thought of Teoc as his 'blood ground' and loved visiting there."

The McCains in the early 20th century were known among African-Americans for relatively equitable treatment of their workers and tenants, especially compared with the abuses happening on many other farms. A visitor to the plantation in 1923 published an account that described "a tradition and a policy of fair dealing between planter and laborer."

"That's how I remember it," said Frank Bryant, 90, a black former Teoc sharecropper.

The 19th century had been a different story for African-Americans in Carroll County. In 1886, after two black men filed a lawsuit against a white man, a white mob rushed the courthouse and murdered more than 20 blacks there, according to court documents and newspaper accounts at the time. They weren't prosecuted.

Earlier still, just after the Civil War, Sen. McCain's ancestors, like many former slave owners, made use of newly passed laws designed to temporarily force some freed slaves back into the control of their former masters. Records in a dusty storage room in the Carroll County courthouse show that in February 1866, Sen. McCain's great-great-grandmother, Louisa McCain, and her brother-in-law Nathaniel filed petitions to take legal custody of three girls under age 15 whom the McCains had owned before emancipation. In court, the girls were identified with the surname "Freedman," a common practice with emancipated slaves.

There is no record of the full circumstances, but thousands of young African-Americans at that time were forced under such claims to return to their onetime masters as apprentices. Those apprentice laws in the South were later struck down.

Once freedom was clearly established, two black McCain families remained close to the former owners. One family was led by the former slave Isom McCain, who was 34 at the end of the Civil War, and the other by Henderson McCain, a 16-year-old at the time of emancipation, according to census records. They raised large families in rented houses next door to each other at Teoc.

The black McCains of today were raised to believe that they were blood relatives of the white McCains, dating back to slavery times. White McCains say they're unaware of any biological connection between the families. A spokesman for Sen. McCain declined to comment.

View Full Image

Fabrizio Costantini for the Wall Street Journal

COMMON GROUND: Lillie McCain's great-great-grandparents were two slaves on a plantation owned by Sen. McCain's great-great-grandfather.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Henderson McCain and later Isom's son, Harry, became trustees of a tiny school for black children, according to records found by a local genealogist, Susie James. In 1922, blacks at Teoc built a four-room schoolhouse with $1,750 they scraped together and $900 from a philanthropy that was helping blacks build schools across the South, the Rosenwald Fund.

Most of the descendants of Henderson McCain left Teoc in the 1950s. Isom's son Harry had a boy in 1885 named Weston. He saved enough to buy a small parcel of farmland.

"He didn't want to be dependent on white people, or needing white people," says Lillie McCain, who is his granddaughter. "He thought it was important to own land. He used to say, 'Everybody ought to have some dirt.'"

Weston McCain's oldest son was Charles W. McCain, who lived from 1916 to 2000. After serving in the Army in France during World War II, he returned to Carroll County and, along with a cousin, bought 160 acres of land.

By then, the black McCains were emerging among the county's most important leaders. Charles McCain was a central figure in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When civil-rights workers swarmed Mississippi in 1964, the black McCains housed white activists and received bomb threats and harassing calls.

"Daddy didn't want us to roll over and play dead or live as if you are not a person," says Lillie McCain. Her sister Mary McCain Fluker, 53, says their father "would always tell us you are just as good as anybody. 'You are no better than anybody,' he'd tell us, 'but you're just as good as anybody.'"

Civil-rights organizers held secret meetings at the family's church just off the Teoc plantation. The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state agency formed to thwart the civil-rights movement, kept tabs on Mr. McCain, according to commission records. "Daddy was one of the leaders, one of the people out front," says 60-year-old Charles McCain Jr., a retired brick mason and teacher who still lives on the family land.

Lillie McCain remembers seeing Martin Luther King Jr. speak from the back of a flatbed truck in nearby Greenwood. She and her two brothers were arrested at a march in Jackson, Miss., organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, whose leader, Stokely Carmichael, introduced the phrase "black power." Not long after Mr. Carmichael spoke at the McCains' church, it burned down, during a wave of Ku Klux Klan firebombings. The McCain children remember passing its smoking remains on their way to school the next day.

Amid those events, the black McCain children wondered what must be wrong with white people. "I was thinking, 'How can they kill people and they all go to church?'" says Lillie McCain. "I was just baffled by that."

Sen. McCain grew to adulthood largely unaware of his family's ties to slavery. In a statement, he called the abuses of African-Americans in the 20th century "a dark and tragic chapter in American history" and said that "cultivating the bond between the two families...is important."

In the late 1960s, black McCain children were among those who integrated the previously all-white schools in the county seat, Carrollton. In 1969, Lillie McCain was one of the first two African-Americans to graduate from the integrated high school. Four of the six McCain children in her family served in the military and all six earned college degrees.

Lillie McCain earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Wayne State University in Detroit. Her sister Mrs. Fluker retired after a career as special-education teacher in the public schools from which she once was barred. Joyce McCain became a production executive at General Motors. Delbra McCain Roberts became a registered nurse. Charles Jr. taught bricklaying in the high school. The eldest child, George, became the first black fire chief in the town of Greenwood. Lillie and all of her siblings say they support Sen. Obama for president.

When George McCain was killed in a traffic accident in 2003, Frank Bryant, the aged former sharecropper, invited to the funeral Bill McCain, the senator's cousin, who owns the remaining 1,500 acres of Teoc plantation and lives nearby. It was the beginning of a modern dialogue between the two families as equals. At the service, Mr. McCain stood in the family section with the black McCains.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122419511761942501.
html?mod=article-outset-box

Descendents of slaves owned by ancestors of John McCain will vote for Barack Obama The descendants of slaves owned by ancestors of John McCain will vote for Barack Obama, it has emerged.

Lillie McCain, 56, a professor of psychology in Flint, Michigan, traces her lineage from two of more than 120 black slaves before the end of the Civil War at Teoc, the Mississippi plantation owned by the family of Republican nominee John McCain's great-great-grandfather.

"I think that since we can't undo what has been done, that the most effective thing for us to do is figure out how to put things in perspective and go from there.

"To harbour anger and hostility and all that is counterproductive," she told the Wall Street Journal.

A cousin of Mr McCain still owns 1,500 acres of the original 2,000.

Mr McCain's younger brother, Joe, and other white McCains have attended family reunions organised by the African-American McCains.

Lillie McCain's family is descended from two slaves, named Isom and Lettie, according to interviews and examinations of family documents, county files and U.S. Census Bureau records.

According to members of the white McCain family, the plantation was purchased by Mr McCain's great-great-grandfather, William Alexander McCain, in 1851.

"We've had the pleasure of meeting Joe McCain," she said, "He attends the reunions at Teoc ... I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Senator McCain.

"I heard him say on, I believe it was Meet the Press, that his ancestors owned no slaves. Well, I certainly have carried the name McCain from the beginning of my life, and I've known the ties to John McCain, and have tried to get him to communicate with me about that, but he has been unwilling at least to date."

Miss McCain urged John McCain to "acknowledge the reality of the relationship that we hold."

"I am absolutely supporting Obama, and it's not because he's black," said Lillie. "It's because he is the best person at this time in our history."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselecti
on2008/barackobama/3232080/Descendents-of-slaves-owned-
by-ancestors-of-John-McCain-will-vote-for-Barack-Obama.
html

Denied black relative urges McCain to accept ancestry

Raw Story- David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Published: Monday October 20, 2008

The McCain family has a proud tradition in the United States. They fought for integration of the south, resisted the Ku Klux Klan, led civil rights campaigns and left a lasting mark on the politics of Mississippi.

But, despite contradictory statements made by Sen. John McCain, that branch of his family was once owned as slaves by the candidate’s ancestors

On Monday morning’s CNN Newsroom, reporter Kyra Phillips talked with Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta Bureau Chief Douglas Blackmon and Lillie McCain, a black relative of John McCain.

“We’ve had the pleasure of meeting Joe McCain,” explained Lillie. “He attends the reunions at Teoc [Mississippi] … I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Senator McCain.”

“Do you think it could make a difference with regard to diversity issues, issues of race, if John McCain did participate [in the reunions]?” asked Phillips.

“I think it probably could,” said Ms. McCain. “It would give him an opportunity to know us. I e-mailed him back in 2000 to remind him of his ties to Teoc, Mississippi.

“I heard him say on, I believe it was Meet the Press, that his ancestors owned no slaves. Well, I certainly have carried the name McCain from the beginning of my life, and I’ve known the ties to John McCain, and have tried to get him to communicate with me about that, but he has been unwilling at least to date.”

“The McCain campaign told me, when I talked to them about this, that he hasn’t been to any of the family reunions simply because of scheduling conflicts,” said Blackmon. “There’s not a decision not to do that.”

Lillie McCain urged John McCain to “acknowledge the reality of the relationship that we hold.”

“Why he hasn’t come [to the reunions] is anybody’s guess,” said Charles McCain Jr., 60, a distant cousin of John McCain, in a report published in the South Florida Times. “I think the best I can come up with, is that he doesn’t have time, or he has just distanced himself, or it doesn’t mean that much to him.”

“I am absolutely supporting Obama, and it’s not because he’s black,” said Lillie. “It’s because he is the best person at this time in our history.”

This video is from CNN’s Newsroom, broadcast October 20, 2008.

---

Also:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/10/2
3/carroll.black.mccains.cnn

 

 

By Sharon Stevens, Education Reporter

KSDK -- Some students face possible disciplinary action, including possible suspension, following a school prank that ended with one child being slapped in the face.

It happened Monday at Parkway West Middle School. Some kids called it 'Hit a Jew' Day. At least three children were hit during the incident, all of whom were Jewish. Two were tapped on the shoulder or arm, but one child was slapped in the face.

School principal Linda Lelonek said it started last week. The sixth graders decided to have a 'Hug a Friend' day. Then it was 'High-Five Day,' but teachers did not know what was going on until several kids were hit.

Lelonek called a school assembly Tuesday morning to talk about religious diversity and inappropriate behavior. And school officials promised there would be consequences for those responsible.

Educators said they do not believe the incident was done with hatred or prejudice.

There are fewer than 30 Jewish students at Parkway West Middle School, which has an enrollment of 850 students.

 

KSDK http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=1582
18

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY.com) -- A young Navy wife is dead, strangled to death by her own pet python.

Police say the woman's husband came home Tuesday night and found his wife, 25-year-old Amanda Black, dead on the floor and the snake, a 10-foot reticulated Tiger Python named Diablo, was missing.

Animal control officers responded to the townhouse off Witchduck Road and found the snake hiding behind another snake pen with a Boa Constrictor in it, only a few feet away from the body of the owner it had just suffocated.

"What I saw first was the victim lying on the floor next to the empty snake pen," said Animal Control Officer Douglas Humphrey.

Police tell us the snake had an infection and Amanda was trying to give him a dose of antibiotics through a syringe, when the snake turned on her.

"I know it's a very strong and very long snake and after a couple of twists around the neck area, it's hard to fight that off," said Officer Humphrey.

An autopsy shows the python crushed Amanda's neck and she died of asphyxiation.

Officer Humphrey, with help from the medical examiner who was on the scene, both wrangled the snake back into its cage.

"The doctor grabbed the tail and I had the mid-section and I was using snake tongs on it. The snake was actually trying to strike at me and once we got him in the cage he tried to strike at the doctor through the aquarium. He was a little upset."

The couple has several other pet snakes, including several more pythons. Police say it's legal to have snakes like that in your house.

Right now Animal Control Officers have custody of the snake, but they say they are not sure yet what they are going to do with it.

"The husband wants nothing to do with the snake, obviously," said Officer Humphrey. So for now, Animal Control Officers say they are keeping the python fed and happy with live rats.

Stay tuned to WAVY.com and WAVY News 10 for the very latest.

http://www.wavy.com/global/story.asp?s=9226755&srvc=l
eadstory

Commentary: Instead of Whining, GOPers Should Thank Powell
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 3:44 pm  
By: Deborah Mathis
 
Had Colin Powell sat down with Tom Brokaw on Sunday morning and announced that he was supporting John McCain’s presidential bid, the Republican apparatus would have feted him as a semi-prodigal son come home again.
 
To hear them tell it, it would have been a ponderously important thumbs-up for the .struggling McCain candidacy, a green light to queasy independents and wavering others, a permission slip to support a man who is neither who he used to be, nor what many in his party want him to be, and, therefore, a man who needs all the help he can get. Colin Powell’s endorsement would have been a lot of help.
 
Instead, Powell’s visit to the set of NBC’s “Meet the Press” raised a different headline. He spoke 1,961 words before flipping the script, but there it was -- that amazing declaration, “I’ll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.”
 
Thus, with those seven words, did Colin Powell -- former secretary of state, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former national security adviser, former prince of the Republican Party -- become a pariah in the eyes of the GOP.
 
Not Republicans who are reasonable, rational and more patriotic than partisan -- not the ones who, like Powell, are willing to own up to reality when it stares them in the face -- but, the ones who get a kick out of hating on Democrats generally and Obama particularly. You know, the ones who take Sarah Palin seriously. She’s probably cooking up a mess of new insults just for this occasion. Her acolytes will lap them up.
 
Subtler slights at Powell are in the offing. For instance, hours after Powell made his news, one conservative pundit portrayed him as something of a traitor who had turned on the party that “made” him. Powell’s endorsement of Obama “smacks of ingratitude,” said the pundit, who happened to be none other than Pat Buchanan, the three-time presidential wannabe whose chronic bigotry keeps cropping up like a bad rash (Apparently, Buchanan has a fixation about black people and gratitude or what he sees as the lack thereof. Remember his where’s-the-thanks jeremiad after Obama’s famous Philadelphia speech on race?).
 
If Republicans were fair and sober-minded about this, they would at least consider Powell’s compelling rationale for supporting Obama, whom he credited with  “steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge;” and with “showing intellectual vigor.”
 
“Mr. Obama,” Powell said, “has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people,” while McCain’s vision and outline for the country has “become narrower and narrower.”
 
No rancor. No zingers. No winks and you betchas and doggone-its from Powell. Just a distinguished, experienced, grown-up man laying out his case. 
 
And, might I add, how much more gracious can you get than Colin Powell? Who, other than a true-blue gentleman, could refer to Palin as “a very distinguished woman and she’s to be admired” in the same breath that he pronounces her unfit for the job she is trying to jive her way into?

Rather than curse him for his choice, Republicans should be thanking him, if not for his superb public service, then for having not gone full brother on them.

Other men might have let them have it long ago for making a liar out of him over weapons of mass destruction, treating him dismissively when he dared to throw in words of caution and concern just as the war party was warming up in the White House, and showing him the door when they realized he was not going to go along to .....
..... get along anymore.

But Powell, a soldier to his core, bowed out and saved his powder all these years. Though he has fired off a few salvos here and there -- hinting that the Bush administration had been wrong rather than asserting that -- not until Sunday morning did Powell loose both barrels.

Calmly. Steadily. Methodically. And devastating

Thanks Colin Powell for reminding America what it stands for....thanks for asking the question what if Obama were a Muslim anyway...so what? Thanks for the story about the mother visiting the grave  IN ARLINGTON, of her twenty year old son who died in Iraq WHILE FIGHTING FOR AMERICA...and the headstone bears the crescent and the star...
 
All this to point out that America is and should be a land of diversity, the premise on which it was founded...life liberty and justice for ALL!
 
So for those who kept harping on "Obama is a Muslim" followed by the deduction that, then he must be a terrorist, they need to remove their heads from their posterior and see the light. The days of divisiveness are over, America is yearning for a "new day"...John McCain, and sidekick Palin need to see and acknowledge this, and step away from the George Wallace era....
 
 
I will leave Powell's endorsement of Obama to others...tempus fugit 

Peace.