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Judge Takes Money to Jail Children
Two Luzerne County, Pennsylvania judges admitted to taking money from juvie centers to hand out longer sentences to youth. Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan collected payoffs from PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare for at least three years. The companies that run juvenile detention centers allegedly receive state funds. So the more juvies incarcerated,…
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He's Just Not That Into It
On a day when President Barack Obama spoke in Springfield, Illinois and Washington, D.C. about Abraham Lincoln’s legacy, shared sacrifice, and the importance of national unity, noting that history teaches us, “There are certain things we can only do together,” Sen. Judd Gregg, Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, and the third Republican slated to…
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Exit Interviews With My Exes
A year ago, I decided to go back and ask all of the men in my past why they ultimately did not want to be with me. My girls were concerned. “Isn’t it just rehashing painful memories?” “Couldn’t you end up feeling awful about yourself?” But I was tired of the “it’s not you, it’s…
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The Prose of Passion
Cultural observer James Baldwin once compared love to a battle; he also said that love is growing up. Writer Zora Neale Hurston said it “makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place,” while poet Nikki Giovanni declared it an adventure. Novelist Harriet Wilson called love an “arbitrary and inexorable tyrant.” Me? I think it…
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My African Sister
THE FIRST TIME I VISIT my father’s bungalow at the University of Nigeria, I perch on a vinyl settee in the parlor and drink milky tea while my father rambles on about the student riots, the military government’s Structural Adjustment Program, his college years with my mother, what he recalls her saying about the family…
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Got Bank?
In this economy, having a well-off friend who constantly says “I’ll get it” when the check arrives after dinner, or the movie tickets have to be paid for or you both spot a really cute bracelet but only one of you can afford it sounds like a little slice of heaven. But after awhile, it…
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NAACP: We Are 100
On Feb. 12, 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, a “call” went out inviting all “believers in democracy” to a national conference dedicated to “the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.” Thus began the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The impetus for its founding occurred five months…
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Juan Williams' Hot Water
The Buzz is really starting to worry about Fox News commentator and NPR analyst Juan Williams. As if his unfounded criticism of Gwen Ifill’s Obama book last fall weren’t bad enough, he shocked us again with his comments on Faux News about Our Belle Michelle: “Michelle Obama, you know, she’s got this Stokely Carmichael in a…
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Salma Hayek's Got Milk
While on a humanitarian mission to Sierra Leone, the actress Salma Hayek met a baby whose mother was unable to breastfeed. So Hayek, who is still nursing her own daughter, decided to breastfeed the child, a tender moment that was of course caught on tape. Was this a publicity stunt designed to top Madonna and Angelina,…
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Alfred Brock and The Whispered Fear
Alfred Brock arrived in DC with a special delivery for President Obama—-a rifle and many rounds of ammunition. This underscores for me the fear alot of folks have about President Obama but will only speak of in whispers: will he he make it through his term without someone taking a shot at him? It seems…