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A Dallas woman has been searching for her granddaughter who ran away from home at age 14 in 2010 and ended up mistakenly deported to Colombia after giving Houston authorities a fake name. She remains in Colombia today. It’s a nightmare for Lorene Turner, who looked daily for her granddaughter, Jakadrien, until Dallas Police helped her discover that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Houston deported her, despite taking her fingerprints and despite the fact she spoke no Spanish

Rima Fakih's beauty pageant sash declares that she is Miss USA, but journalists want to find other labels for her. Questions about Fakih's ethnic and religious identity have been nearly as frequent as questions about photos of her dancing against a stripper's pole. "I'd like to say I'm American first, and I am an Arab-American," Fakih said. "I am Lebanese-American, and I am Muslim-American." Fakih, 24, was born in Lebanon, but her family moved to New York when she was 7 years old. She later moved to Michigan, where she went to college. The rarity of a woman born in...

WASHINGTON, March 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The United States Commission on Civil Rights announces that it will hold a public hearing on this investigation on April 23, 2010. This meeting is open to the public and the media. DATE AND TIME: Friday, April 23, 2010; 9:30 a.m. ET PLACE: 624 9th St., N.W. Room 540 Washington, DC 20425 The Commission will hold a hearing regarding an incident on Election Day 2008 at a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania polling place involving members of the New Black Panther Party. The hearing will collect facts related to civil charges brought by the Department of Justice and...

BRISTOL, Va. – Nineteen-year-old Keshia Canter handed three burgers, fries and milkshakes to a car-load of Tuesday afternoon customers at the Hi-Lo Burger’s drive-though window. A lady sitting in the backseat leaned forward, between the two men in front, and handed her a leaflet: “Women & Girls” it said across the top. “Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly,” Canter recalled the woman telling her. “You make men want to be sinful.” Canter was wearing boots pulled up over jeans, a pink zebra-print shirt with a black jacket zipped up over it. She has blond hair, dark eye make-up...

Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said Monday he regretted comments comparing people who take public assistance to stray animals, but the incident continued to draw fire. In a phone interview, Bauer said he regretted the remarks "because now it's being used as an analogy, not a metaphor. "Do I regret it? Sure I do. I wouldn't have to be taking this heat otherwise." In a speech at a town hall meeting in the Upstate, Bauer revisited instructions he said his grandmother had given him when he was a small child. Bauer said his grandmother, who was not highly educated, had...

Washington (CNN) - In a move that could help position him in the political center by sharpening his credentials on fiscal discipline, President Obama will announce in Wednesday's State of Union address that he's proposing to save $250 billion by freezing all non-security federal discretionary spending for three years, according to two senior administration officials. The senior officials said the budgets of the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs along with some international programs would be exempt from the spending freeze. "We are at war, and we're going to make sure our troops are funded adequately," said one...

ATLANTA — The South has become the first region in the country where more than half of public school students are poor and more than half are members of minorities, according to a new report. The shift was fueled not by white flight from public schools, which spiked during desegregation but has not had much effect on school demographics since the early 1980s. Rather, an influx of Latinos and other ethnic groups, the return of blacks to the South and higher birth rates among black and Latino families have contributed to the change. The new numbers, from the 2008-9 school...

The anxiety and anger have been building all year. In March, a national coalition of Islamic organizations warned that it would cease cooperating with the F.B.I. unless the agency stopped infiltrating mosques and using “agents provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A school resource officer had to go to the hospital Tuesday after an 8-year-old student attacked him with a pen. The incident started at Dupont-Hadley Middle School where some students and staff said they saw the boy kicking a dog. SRO Randy Fowler caught up with the boy at his nearby home, and placed him in handcuffs. That's when Fowler said the boy's mother, 31-year old Rachel Swafford, pushed her son inside and scuffled with the officer.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - More than seven in 10 Americans think Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president, according to a new national poll. Seventy-one percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday morning believe the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee is not qualified to be president, with 29 percent saying she does have the credentials to serve in the White House. Republicans appear split, with 52 percent saying she's qualified and 47 percent disagreeing with that view. The poll indicates that about half of the country, 51 percent, has an unfavorable...

http://www.tomoveanation.com/2009/10/yep-theres-rep-for-that.html Half of the things this video says are actually GOOD qualities to have in a representative and the rest are taken out of context. Liberals don't understand real American values. We need to make a response video using Dim congressmen. Unfortunately, being old fart, I don't possess the requisite knowledge of computers to pull it off. I'm posting this in the hopes that someone here will.

A reputable poll out of Tennessee this morning shows how mere evidence and facts aren't enough to deter the perseverance of false beliefs. The quarterly Middle Tennessee State University Survey finds that 34% of adults believe that President Obama was born in another country. 47% of Republicans hold that belief. About a third -- 30% -- say Obama is a Muslim. 46% -- and this includes many Democrats and independents -- say he's a socialist. Put aside the socialist finding for a second. The first two claims -- that Obama is a Muslim and/or was born outside the U.S. --...

(CNN) -- Like a lot of people, Anna Owens began using MySpace more than four years ago to keep in touch with friends who weren't in college. Our real-world friendships are often a reflection of who we connect with online, experts say. Our real-world friendships are often a reflection of who we connect with online, experts say. But soon she felt too old for the social-networking site, and the customizable pages with music that were fun at first began to annoy her. By the time she graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Owens' classmates weren't on MySpace -- they...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- For a second time in a few months, a 9-year-old girl took a relative's car on a joyride from police. Police said the girl took her mother's keys early Wednesday morning and drove off with her 1-year-old sister, who was unrestrained in the front seat. The mother woke up when she heard the girl leave the apartment where they were staying, according to police. The mother's boyfriend then saw the car leaving the parking lot of the complex. The mother flagged down a driver, who happened to be an undercover Metro police officer. That officer called in...

The Congressional Black Caucus' growing power has drawn scrutiny. Several members are facing questions from the House Ethics Committee, and two are under federal investigation. Still, the CBC annual conference this week is a chance for black leaders to celebrate their power, and for a younger generation to look toward a bright political future.

In a column published yesterday, Newsmax's John L. Perry wrote that there is a "gaining" possibility that the military will stage a coup to "resolve the 'Obama problem.'" Newsmax has apparently removed the column from its site. Links are now redirected to the homepage, and Perry's author page has no mention of his latest work. You can read the full text here.

MOORESVILLE, NC (WBTV) - Authorities across the country are on the look out for two Iredell County girls -- including one who is 9-months pregnant -- who disappeared with their step-father last week. Janette Hess says her 12-year-old pregnant daughter Keara and 11-year-old Sierra, vanished with their stepfather, Matthew Hess, on Thursday, Sept. 24. Janette Hess said she hasn't seen her daughters since they went to bed on Wednesday around 9 p.m. "It's been a nightmare, I've been living in a nightmare," Hess said.

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. -- Two teenage girls walking home from school in Clarksville had a pistol pointed at them over a bag of oregano. Timothy Ogburn, 19, and two other teenage boys have been arrested on charges they robbed the girls Friday afternoon. Apparently, someone spotted a baggie of oregano in one of the girls' purses and told the boys she had marijuana. Police said a pistol was pointed at the 17-year-old girl and that she gave the trio her purse and said, “Is this what you want? It’s just oregano." Clarksville police said the oregano was a prop used in...

If there's room in your home for just one more, the animal rescue group All About Rescue and Fixin’ Inc. is holding an adoption of black animals Saturday in Putnam County.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Census Bureau said the number of uninsured Americans increased in 2008 to 46.3 million, compared to 45.7 million in 2007. The bureau also said the U.S poverty rate of 13.2% in 2008 was an increase from 12.5% in 2007. This was the largest annual poverty rate increase since 2004, the bureau said. The statistics released Thursday cover the first full year of the current recession. The median -- or midpoint -- household income declined slightly to $50,303. The data underscore the need to revamp the U.S. health-care system, President Barack Obama said, adding that more recent...

SMYRNA, Tenn. -- Two parents have said the juvenile court system treated their son like a killer instead of an honor student who got a traffic ticket. Police arrested, handcuffed, shackled and jailed the teenager because he didn't show up for court. Zachary Dubwe is a Smyrna High School honor student and not a habitual offender. "Our child was leading our subdivision to go to school, and he didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign in our subdivision," said Steve Townley, the boy's father. The couple told the teen to keep track of his court date. They...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former first lady Laura Bush is defending President Obama's decision to address the nation's school children, telling CNN Monday that it is "really important for everyone to respect the President of the United States." "I think that there is a place for the President of the United States to talk to school children and encourage school children, and I think there are a lot of people that should do the same," she told CNN's Zain Verjee. "And that is encourage their own children to stay in school and to study hard and to try to achieve the...

(CNN) -- A Georgia man allegedly slapped a toddler at a Walmart store because she wouldn't stop crying, authorities said. Roger Stephens, 61, was arrested Monday and charged with first-degree cruelty to children. An incident report obtained from police in Gwinnett County indicated Stephens did not know the 2-year-old girl he stands accused of hitting. The confrontation happened shortly before noon at the Walmart in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta. According to the arresting officer, the child's mother said her daughter was crying as they walked down one of the aisles. The mother said a stranger later identified as...

A Phoenix-area pastor has started to draw protesters to his congregation after he delivered a sermon titled, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," and told his parishioners that he prays for President Obama's death. Pastor Steven Anderson stood by his sermon in an interview with MyFOXPhoenix, which reports that the pastor continues to encourage his parishioners to join him in praying for the president's death. "I hope that God strikes Barack Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy and I hope it happens today," he told MyFOXPhoenix on Sunday. He called his message "spiritual warfare" and said...

A handful of students were sent home from Florida schools this week after showing up in shirts proclaiming that "Islam is of the Devil," part of a fiery church campaign to "expose" Islam as a religion of violence. Three high schoolers were forced to leave Tuesday for wearing the shirts made by the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., where school officials say violated the district's dress codes. A middle schooler was also asked to change clothes because of the shirt, which got a 10-year-old fifth grader sent packing on Monday, when the incidents began. "Students have a right...

Jesse Ray Beard said he was constantly in trouble, even when he behaved. It took being accused of the racially charged attempted murder of a white classmate in the Deep South to turn his life around. Beard, 18, now interns at a New York law firm as he prepares for his senior year next month at Canterbury School, a Connecticut prep academy where Beard is highly regarded among peers and teachers. "I didn't change the way I act. I didn't do nothing different. It was just that I was at Canterbury instead of Jena," he said. "It was like Jena...

IMAGINE GETTING A bee sting; then imagine getting six more. You are now in a position to think about what it means to be poor, according to Charles Karelis, a philosopher and former president of Colgate University. In the community of people dedicated to analyzing poverty, one of the sharpest debates is over why some poor people act in ways that ensure their continued indigence. Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when...

A South African teenager will be forced to take a test to prove she is a woman after storming to victory Wednesday in the 800-meter sprint at the world championships. Caster Semenya's dominating run, which she won by a massive 2.45 seconds, came on the same day track and field's ruling body said she was undergoing a gender test because of concerns she does not meet requirements to compete as a woman. About three weeks ago, the international federation asked South African track and field authorities to conduct the verification test. Semenya had burst onto the scene by posting a...

SURPRISE, Ariz. - Blame it on the honey mustard. Police say it all started when a disgruntled customer didn't get condiments with her Kentucky Fried Chicken order. Police arrested a 26-year-old woman who they say tried to run over a KFC employee, all because the employee failed to provide condiments with her meal. Surprise Police say that Monique Aguet was going through a KFC drive thru near Bell and Reems Roads Wednesday night when the argument began. The argument escalated when Aguet went inside the store. When she was ordered to leave the building, a KFC employee followed her out...

(CNN) -- The guitarist stands in front of a mirror messing with his mohawk. The drummer strikes a wild tempo. The singer rips off his T-shirt and begins to scream the lyrics. Basim Usmani is bassist for The Kominas, a group that blends traditional sounds with punk rock beats. They're young. They're punk. And they're rocking both their Muslim and American worlds with their music, lyrics and style. "A lot of times people say, 'Oh wow, look, brown people playing music' [but] it's more than that," said 25-year-old Pakistani-American Shahjehan Khan, the lead singer for a Muslim punk band, The...

Last week, POLITICO asked the 11 House Republicans co-sponsoring the so-called "birther" bill — requiring presidential candidates to prove they were born in the U.S.— for copies of their own birth certificates. It is not, of course, a requirement for members of Congress to either produce a birth certificate or be natural born citizens of the United States. But we decided to ask anyway: The bill’s original sponsor, Rep. Bill Posey of Florida, is out of the country but sent this e-mail: “I do not have a copy of my certificate handy, because there is no constitutional requirement for it.”...

After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor. A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week. The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as...

CNN) -- A Boston, Massachusetts, police officer who sent a mass e-mail in which he referred to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as "banana-eating" and a "bumbling jungle monkey" has been placed on administrative leave and faces losing his job. Officer Justin Barrett, 36, who is also an active member of the National Guard, sent an e-mail to some fellow Guard members, as well as the Boston Globe, in which he vented his displeasure with a July 22 Globe column about Gates' controversial arrest. The columnist, Yvonne Abraham, supported Gates' actions, asking readers, "Would you stand for this kind...

ATLANTA The nation's bulldozer attack on crime and poverty soon will make Atlanta - home of the first public housing development - the first major city to eliminate all of its large housing projects. Cities from Boston to Los Angeles are following its lead. For more than 15 years, housing officials across the country have been razing the projects where about 1.2 million families live and replacing them with a mix of higher-rent and subsidized apartments and homes. Alexandria, La., has taken down at least 247 units. Buffalo, N.Y., has demolished about 1,000 aging homes. Atlanta expects to finish tearing...

In the middle of a sermon, Bishop Rainey Cheeks felt his medicine bottle bulging in his pocket and realized he hadn't taken his pills. He paused in the pulpit and faced the congregation in his tiny storefront church. As he washed down the pills with water, Cheeks saw some members staring with wide eyes. Everybody knew that their pastor, an imposing man with flowing dreadlocks who once competed in taekwondo championships, is gay. But not everyone knew that he is HIV-positive. "Go ahead, Rev," a few congregants urged. But most shrugged and waited for the bishop to swallow and get...

(CNN) -- John Reid, a retired businessman, came home from a Caribbean cruise a few years ago with an infected toe as a souvenir. As a diabetic, he knew it was serious, so he went to the emergency room near his home in New York City. There, he says, the first doctor he saw ordered an immediate amputation, scheduling him for surgery right then and there. John Reid, shown with his regular doctor Neil Calman, says race played a role during an ER visit. Horrified, he argued with the doctor, insisting there had to be a way to avoid lopping...

U.S. officials believe Usama bin Laden's son, Saad bin Laden, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan. Sources confirmed to FOX News late Wednesday that officials believe the younger bin Laden was killed by hellfire missiles from a U.S. Predator drone strike earlier this year. The death was first reported by National Public Radio. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told NPR that Saad bin Laden reportedly traveled to Pakistan last year after spending several years under house arrest in Iran.

MINNEAPOLIS — Ahmednur Ali's family fled the chaos and violence of their East African homeland Somalia in the 1990s, eventually making their way to Minnesota like thousands of their compatriots. While many of the estimated 32,000 Somalis who settled in the state have struggled to adapt, Ali flourished. By age 20, he had blazed a path to Minneapolis' Augsburg College, where he played soccer, studied political science and aspired to a political career modeled on President Barack Obama's. He was shot and killed last September outside a busy community center where he worked part-time as a youth counselor, and prosecutors...

Violent crime has plummeted in the Washington area and in major cities across the country, a trend criminologists describe as baffling and unexpected. The District, New York and Los Angeles are on track for fewer killings this year than in any other year in at least four decades. Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and other cities are also seeing notable reductions in homicides.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A longtime civil rights leader called Sunday for the nation’s first African-American president to be more engaged with the black community and for greater government action to address the needs of the poor and unemployed — especially those in the African American community. Rev. Jesse Jackson said that he and other African-American leaders “want to engage more fully with [Obama] because there is a lot of unfinished business.” While Jackson noted that the president has met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and with some African-American mayors, Jackson said he has yet to sit down with...

Despite budgets ravaged by the recession, at least 13 states have invested millions of dollars this year to cover 250,000 more children with subsidized government health insurance. The expansions have come in the five months since Congress and President Obama used the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program to vastly increase its funding and encourage states to increase enrollment. Although the federal government covers the vast majority of the cost, states set their own eligibility levels and must decide whether to spend state money in order to draw even more from Washington.

When President Barack Obama takes the stage here Thursday night at the NAACP’s annual conference, he will be greeted by a base of black supporters who see him as the crowning achievement in the struggle for civil rights. Six months into his presidency, there are few signs that black support for Obama is softening. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25036.html#commentsform#ixzz0LSE2GsY4

SHANGHAI — Fueled by a big economic stimulus package and aggressive bank lending, China’s economy grew by 7.9 percent in the second quarter compared with a year ago, the government said Thursday, a surprisingly strong showing during the global economic downturn. The gross domestic product figures, released Thursday by the National Statistics Bureau in Beijing, suggest that the country’s stimulus policies are working and that the government will most likely achieve the 8 percent full year growth target it set early this year, analysts say. But China’s growth spurt is also presenting a new set of challenges, including questions about...

The controversial message was pulled down over the weekend by the billboard's owner, SignAd, in response to intense media coverage and criticism from activists such as Quanell X, according to the leader of the conservative grassroots group that sponsored the billboard.

NEW YORK, July 14 -- Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele continued Tuesday with the campaign he has come to call the "Freedom Tour," which is his attempt to revive the relationship between black voters and the GOP. This stop: a sales call at the 100th convention of the NAACP. "We have a connection, and it is important and appropriate to recognize that," Steele said in a speech, harkening back to his roots in his local NAACP chapter in Prince George's County. "We have a historic link." The NAACP visit was personal and professional for the first black man...

President Barack Obama plans to announce a community-college initiative designed to boost graduation rates, improve facilities and develop new technology. The effort will involve $12 billion in spending spread over the next 10 years. While small compared to the $100 billion in stimulus money the Obama administration has to spend on education, it would mark a substantive increase in direct federal spending on community colleges. A recent report by the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, estimated the federal government provides community colleges with about $2 billion a year in direct support, about a tenth of what it spends on...

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs. Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

WASHINGTON — Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials. Skip to next paragraph Paul Buck/European Pressphoto Agency The plans remained vague and were never carried out, the officials said, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month. Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles. How could the role of the United States be masked? Should allies be informed and might they block the access of the C.I.A. teams...

Louis Gill doesn't like to turn anyone away. The director of the Bakersfield Homeless Center in California has taken to laying out cots and mattresses between the shelter's 174 registered beds to cope with the rush of homeless families brought to his doors by the financial crisis. "Last year we saw a 34 percent increase in homeless families and a 24 percent increase in homeless children," he said. "Why do we go beyond capacity? Because in a just society a child should not have to sleep outside or in a car." Gill is a frontline witness to the change in...

The Educational Testing Service wanted to help graduate school applicants prove they are more than a set of test scores. So it developed a tool to rate students across a broad sweep of traits -- creativity, teamwork, integrity -- that admission tests don't measure. The Personal Potential Index, unveiled this week, looks suspiciously like another set of scores. An applicant's personality is distilled into six traits, and the applicant is rated on each of them by various professors and former supervisors on a scale of 1 to 5. Officials with the nonprofit organization, based in Princeton, N.J., say the index...