Free Republic

How a new report on HIV infection in the Big Apple scared a health reporter into getting tested and having a frank discussion with her "boo." By Tomika Anderson My longtime lover and I were driving through Harlem when we passed a billboard that made me want to slam on the brakes and pull the car over. On it were two women -- one black and one Latina -- their pretty, youthful faces in lights. But under their pictures was a statistic that sucker-punched me: 93.4 percent. As in, 93.4 of all new HIV cases among women in NYC occur...

I congratulate Congressman Rangel on his victory in the Democratic primary and look forward to facing him in the November election for New York’s 15th Congressional District seat. Although he’s done good work in Washington over the past 40 years, we must realize that the Charlie Rangel I face today is not the Charlie Rangel we voted for 40, 30, or even 20 years ago, proven by the fact that nearly half his former supporters voted against him in the primary. Rangel lost not only the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, but also the respect of his colleagues....

Harlem pol braces for public trial, crowded primary raceOne week from today, one of the most talked-about New York political races this year will play out at the voting booths—but not before Rangel is scrutinized at a public hearing. By Kim Kirschenbaum Published September 7, 2010 True to the wild and whimsical world of Rep. Charles Rangel, the night of his birthday bash this summer started out with an unexpected gesture: a highly public display of the middle finger. One-time New York Mayor David Dinkins, known for flying under the radar, made headlines the moment his car rolled up to...

Many Harlem voters say their two top contenders for Congress - incumbent Charles Rangel and Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV - leave them with a choice between bad and worse. "Everybody wishes there were better options," said Pax Williams, a 33-year-old party promoter who plans to vote for Rangel because "you don't want to get anyone worse." Rangel faces a House trial on 13 ethics charges, including tax evasion, and, as the Daily News reported Thursday, Powell took thousands in campaign cash - which he is returning - from an ex-con strip-club king. "You don't know what else is...

It was a gentle but unmistakable nudge President Obama gave Representative Charles B. Rangel recently, suggesting in an interview three weeks ago that Mr. Rangel, 80, should retire to “end his career with dignity.” At a tense and sometimes fiery candidates’ forum Monday night, Mr. Rangel shot back that it was not his dignity the president should be worried about. “Frankly, he has not been around long enough to determine what my dignity is,” Mr. Rangel said of the 49-year-old Mr. Obama. “For the next two years, I will be more likely to protect his dignity.” The unexpected eruption seemed...

For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of “the Savory Collection.” Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory... only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique. After 70 years that wait has now ended. This year the National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of inspired performances by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan,...

There goes the neighbourhood: change sweeps black America's cultural homeFor much of the last century Harlem was the heart of the black community, but now some locals fear that whites and Hispanics are invading their turf Paul Harris in New York The Observer, Sunday 28 March 2010 Franco the Great, responsible for a lot of the frescoes on storefront gates along Harlem's 125th Street, outside its greatest landmark, the Apollo. Photograph: Mike McGregor There was a time when the sight of Sandra Schulze's blond hair in the middle of Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park would have been a shock. But last...

What better message to send to Washington than to defeat an old bull like Charlie Rangel? Rangel is one of the principal symbols of the tolerance Washington has for corrupt insider politics. He is Chairman-in-school-detention of the House Ways and Means Committee pending efforts of Democrats to avoid the most devastating mid-term election defeat in history. Because he usually doesn't have a serious challenger, Rangel is able to funnel in the neighborhood of a half million dollars every election cycle to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Such political largesse protects corruption. Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats dole out...

Gov. David Paterson has been given a reprieve of sorts and it came from a normally friendly, familiar faction of the state's body politic. A group of New York's senior African-American political leaders had gathered Thursday night at the storied Sylvia's soul food restaurant in Harlem to discuss the fate of the governor, the scion of one of their members. They concluded that, despite the calls for his resignation, people should wait for the investigations surrounding the governor to play out before any rush to judgment. "We should not have a mentality that would rob him of the rights he...

Rangle is holding a news conference in 15 minutes. Will he throw in the towel? No link yet.

http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/02/28/flaherty-rangel-had-know-junkets-corporate-sponsorship (VIDEO) Fox News Channel reports on the House Ethics Committee's admonition of Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel for accepting travel from Citigroup and other corporations. NLPC President Peter Flaherty, who exposed the violation, says Rangel had to be aware of corporate sponsorship. Click here to download one-page pdf transcript.Related: Rangel Scandal TimelineSubmitted by Peter Flaherty on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 09:24 With the spotlight this week on House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), we have prepared this timeline of his current problems. Rangel has been involved in so much controversy that it is difficult to keep...

Congressman Charles Rangel was far from humbled after the ethics committee admonished him for taking corporate-paid Caribbean junkets in violation of the House ethics code. Rather, the New York Democrat berated the panel’s leaders on the House floor. The moment was characteristic of Mr. Rangel’s arrogance throughout the investigation, which continues into more serious allegations about his official behavior. It is one more reason why Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who championed ethics reform — should stop protecting him and relieve him of his crucial role as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

WASHINGTON - President Obama abandoned his defense of Rep. Charles Rangel against a raft of ethics charges Friday as a handful of rank-and-file Dems echoed GOP demands to demand that Rangel give up his chairman's gavel. White House officials have privately called Rangel "untouchable" in the past, but Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama stressed that "rules are put in place for a reason and that those rules can and must apply to each and every person." Obama also said that members of Congress "ought to be accountable," Gibbs reported, "and that applies to everyone," including the powerful 79-year-old Harlem...

An amputee missing both legs was arrested Thursday after police said he was wheeled into a busy New York City train station and planted a bomb. Police found the bomb before it could detonate, but the discovery interrupted regional train lines briefly and closed the station for several hours. The alleged device—a bag of small explosives wrapped in shotgun shells, along with bullets, glue, lug nuts, pens and a ruler—was left in a waiting area at a station in Harlem. Police later surveyed security videos to identify suspects including, Roosevelt Terry, the amputee. Police from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which...

For the past 22 years, I have dedicated my life to serving my community as a New York City pastor and spiritual leader. I have counseled the suffering, married couples, helped the grieving, fed the hungry and have acted as a liaison between my community and the government. This week, I took what I believe to be the next logical step in that commitment — by announcing my candidacy to become the next member to the United States House of Representatives for the 15th Congressional District. The system in Washington, DC, is broken at a time of enormous challenges and...

A Muslim chaplain for the city’s Department of Correction showed up for work on Wednesday as he routinely does — entering the city jail in Lower Manhattan to minister to some of the roughly 900 male inmates there. But when the chaplain, Imam Zulqarnain Abu-Shahid, flung his shoulder bag onto an X-ray machine at the entrance of the Manhattan Detention Complex, at 125 White Street, officers were alerted to the presence of metal. They found a pair of scissors and three metal blades, the kind used in box cutters, in the bag’s outer flap, the authorities said. Imam Abu-Shahid was...

In greater Harlem...blacks are no longer a majority of the population — a shift that actually occurred a decade ago, but was largely overlooked. By 2008, their share had declined to 4 in 10 residents. Since 2000, central Harlem’s population has grown more than in any other decade since the 1940s, to 126,000 from 109,000, but its black population — about 77,000 in central Harlem and about twice that in greater Harlem — is smaller than at any time since the 1920s. In 2008, 22 percent of the white households in Harlem had moved to their present homes within the...

(Video) Harlem Pastor sees pure evil in Obama

For more than three decades, they sang Mozart in Latin, Bach in German, and Cole Porter and Stevie Wonder in English, from Alice Tully Hall in New York to Royal Albert Hall in London. For the audiences that marveled at the Boys Choir of Harlem, it was an additional wonder that the young performers with world-class voices had emerged from some of the most difficult neighborhoods of New York. December was always a busy month, as the choir toured the country’s premier concert halls and appeared on television Christmas specials. But this year, the boys are nowhere to be found....

Excellent Show Today! Watch it here: http://www.therightscoop.com/watch-the-glenn-beck-show-nov-12-2009-judge-napolitano-anthony-from-harlem/