Free Republic

Oprah Winfrey's poke at the short-sighted materialism of some low-income students has delighted conservative commentators, but that doesn't mean she's wrong. Liberals love to "speak truth to power," but the powerless need to hear the truth, too. Knowledge, after all, is power. Don't keep it to yourself, I say. Spread it around. That's why the Queen of Daytime Talk did poor folks a favor when she candidly explained in a Newsweek interview why she decided to build her lavish new school for impoverished teenagers, the $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, in South Africa instead of the United...

ALBANY State Senator Ada Smith has been found guilty of harassment stemming from an altercation with a staffer. The Queens Democrat was accused of throwing hot coffee in a staffer's face at her Albany office in March. She was also accused of pulling a hairpiece from the woman's head. Smith was originally charged with misdemeanor assault, but the charged was reduced to harassment, a violation, in July. Smith will have to pay a $250 fine and any medical expenses for the former staffer, Jennifer Jackson. She will also have to enroll in anger management courses. Jackson says she feels justice...

The Herring family is all too familiar with the ruthless, unimaginably violent actions of a girl gang that has taken to terrorizing Dorchester in recent months. In March, 8-year-old Daryus Herring - that’s right, a little 8-year old boy - was surrounded and stomped by the girls that call themselves the Crown Path gang. The attack left the child unconscious with four broken ribs. Days later, the same girls tried to beat up the boy’s big sister - 13-year-old Shaquice Herring - after she asked them, “Which one of you jumped my brother?” The wannabe girl gangsters responded by throwing...

It is time to call a spade a spade. This is a letter to my generation, to my country. The great American experiment is failing. It is not because of a criminal president and a corrupt regime as some would have you believe. It is because we are allowing a great enemy to infiltrate our country because we are too afraid to call him out for what he truly is. Islam’s irreconcilable wing of fascists are the greatest threat America has ever known, and they have come here. A picture has been painted for these people as freedom fighters. And...

A heartsick Southie neighborhood is mourning the senseless slaying of a 24-year-old father of three who friends and family say took a bullet for a young woman who’d been beaten up. Alberto Duarte of Roxbury was dedicated to his tots and is the last person one would expect to die in street violence, said his friends and family, who erected a memorial in his honor at the Old Colony housing projects, where he was shot and killed at 1 a.m. yesterday. Duarte stood up to a group of thugs who’d pointed a gun at a female friend who was so...

Actress/singer Jada Pinkett Smith is horrified by increasing gun crime in the United States, declaring the country must look to third world countries to rediscover its values. The Wicked Wisdom frontwoman and her actor/rapper husband Will Smith have travelled to Africa on several occasions for charity work and have been humbled by citizens' appreciation of the basic things in life - like education. The Smiths will fund and appear at Charles 'Charlie Mack' Alston's annual Party 4 Peace in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this weekend, which aims to raise awareness of street crime. Pinkett Smith says: "It's pretty bad everywhere. I think...

The four teenaged punks who chased an NYU student into the path of an oncoming car looked and laughed as he lay on the street dying, a prosecutor revealed yesterday. "They didn't call for an ambulance. They didn't call for help. Rather, they stood on the street corner and laughed," prosecutor Joel Seidemann said of the 13- and 15-year-olds who chased Broderick John Hehman into traffic. Hehman, 20, died four days later from his massive head injuries. And the wolf-pack thugs, who allegedly laid in wait for their victim, could have even more to smile about now. Prosecutors lost their...

Lawyers for Baltimore public housing residents are asking a federal judge to order the creation of 3,000 new low-income housing units and an additional 3,750 housing vouchers, mostly in well-off suburban neighborhoods with good schools and access to jobs. The request comes 14 months after the judge found that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development violated fair housing laws by failing to take a regional approach to the desegregation of city public housing. It asks the federal agency to provide tenants with 675 new "housing opportunities a year over the next decade to reduce the effects of decades...

Mandisa likes Abercrombie & Fitch, not FUBU. She speaks proper English, not Ebonics. She takes honor classes and belongs to the Beta Club and National Arts Honors Society at Parkview High. She plays the violin and has danced and sung in area productions of “The Nutcracker” and “My Fair Lady.” Mandisa Surpris, a 15-year-old sophomore, is all this. And she’s black. Some of the other black students don’t know what to make of her. The way she dresses, the way she talks, the grades she earns. She’s an anomaly. To them, she’s more white than black. They’ve even told her...

The teenagers all know what the "stop-snitching" T-shirts mean - even if their parents don't. Waiting outside John F. Kennedy High School after class Thursday, 10th grader Victor Arellano said that even though he doesn't own one, his classmates are still wearing the shirts that were a hot summertime fad. "That means stop telling on other people what goes on the streets - hustling," Arellano said. Some adults, including 1st Ward Councilman Anthony Davis, have voiced concern about the fashion that they say promotes drug dealing and discourages people from cooperating with the police. "It's not a positive thing to...

Images from the stricken city of New Orleans show that many of those suffering in its streets and shelters are mainly black and poor. The plight of those stranded amid the filth and the dead has highlighted a side of the city most tourists did not see - one in which two-thirds of its residents are black and more than a quarter live in poverty. Anger is mounting among African-American leaders that this section was left behind when others fled. Some say the chaos in Katrina's aftermath has exposed deep divisions in both the city and US society. "We cannot...

An inquiry into the June deaths of three boys who suffocated while playing in the trunk of a broken-down car even as the police undertook a wide search concluded today with a finding that had long been suspected: No one thought to look inside the family car. Despite the failure of police officers to check the Toyota Camry - a place where at least one of the boys had been known to play - authorities said today that no one would be disciplined in the case. "I don't think any purpose would be served to have heads roll," Vincent P....

A task force looking into potential voter fraud on Election Day said Tuesday that it found more than 200 felons voted illegally and more than 100 instances of people voting twice or using fake names and addresses. The investigators found hundreds of fraudulent votes in all and counted 4,600 more ballots than registered voters in Milwaukee - but did not uncover any proof of a plot to alter the outcome of the hotly contested presidential race in Wisconsin's largest city. They also found ballots cast using the names of dead people. Prosecutors have not filed criminal charges in the probe....

CAMDEN, N.J., Dec. 23 - If anybody was surprised that Camden was recently ranked America's most dangerous city, it wasn't the people who live here. In the past 12 months, there have been 53 homicides, including a 12-year-old shot to death on his porch for his radio, more than 800 aggravated assaults, including a toddler shot in the back of the head, at least 750 robberies and 150 acts of arson, more than 10,000 arrests and one glaring nonarrest - a serial rapist on the loose downtown. All in a city of 79,000, nine square miles small. For decades, Camden...

Grocery options tied to obesity Study shows inner-city stores lack healthy foods By ERIC BERGER Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle The world is full of assumptions, such as money equals happiness. Some assumptions are true, some are not. In science, when a researcher decides to test an assumption, it becomes a hypothesis. The basis of all scientific experiment and observation is the testing of one or more hypotheses. This makes Galileo Galilei a real hero to scientists. For nearly two millennia after the height of classical Greece and the teachings of Aristotle, the basis of "science" was theory. Galileo — shockingly...

Job loss worse than the Great Depression's in Milwaukee's urban center By JOHN SCHMIDjschmid@journalsentinel.com Posted: Dec. 4, 2004 First of three parts No major urban center in America has suffered as much as Milwaukee's from the economic upheaval of a globalizing economy, an exhaustive analysis by the Journal Sentinel has found. No other African-American community worked as intensively at manufacturing products that are no longer made here, or was less prepared for a historic shift from unskilled labor. Still Separate and Unequal Special Report Photo/Gary Porter Frank Thompson came from Alabama in 1965 to work at the industrial flagships A.O....

When I look at US presidential election results, one thing which strikes this foreigner is how uniformly left-wing the mega cities are. For instance, only 15% of votes from New York City area went to Bush. I never understand why this could take place. There must be some poeple who work in whatever jobs (finance, engineers, IT etc) and start thinking "Umm, social security system is broke and the Democrats are calling to maintain the status quo. Bush mentions he will look at ways to restructure so he should get my vote." Could anyone suggest why this is happening? Is...

Jessica Smith is a junior at Penn, and she knows a lot of people on the campus in West Philadelphia. But she says she can't think of a single one who isn't registered to vote. "It was hugely successful," Smith, a poli-sci major from Washington, D.C., said of the registration drive by the Penn Democrats that she headed. With tables on Locust Walk every day since the semester began and a floor-by-floor operation that reeked of old-time ward politics, her group registered more than 1,200 students, the majority voting here in Philadelphia. While voter registration is up across the state,...

State prison officials have sent a warning to a large number of New Jersey urban police forces, saying their officers could become targets of attacks by violent street gangs. Department of Corrections investigators say the Bloods street gang is taking an "aggressive posture toward law enforcement" and has called for an "uprising" in New Jersey's largest cities and in the jails, according to internal documents distributed by prison officials to authorities around the state. In response, the State Police will host a meeting Monday to discuss the threat with local police officials, including those from cities where the threat seems...

<p>Parents of inner-city school children locked in failing public school systems should be given school vouchers to attend private or public schools elsewhere, a coalition of black clergy leaders said yesterday.</p> <p>"For the 26 years I have been in New Jersey, there have been a host of public school reform proposals, a multitude of major state Supreme Court rulings and billions of dollars spent to achieve parity and improve test scores," said the Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council. "Yet, the fact remains, that with few exceptions, urban schools and most minority students still do not meet minimum state standards or receive a quality education," Jackson said, speaking at a news conference in Trenton.</p>