Free Republic

A farm in every Pittsburgh neighborhood would be one of the goals of a Franco Dok Harris administration, the independent mayoral candidate said today, as his campaign sounded its final notes before Tuesday's election. The novel proposal -- which would have the city assemble vacant lots and help gather the expertise needed to transform them into farms Read more: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/09303/1009555-100.stm#ixzz0VRy1TKRj

KNOXVILLE - A Knox County jury this afternoon sentenced convicted torture-slaying ringleader Lemaricus Davidson to death by lethal injection for the January 2007 murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. The jury of five women and seven men deliberated about four hours before returning its decision to a packed courtroom. “The punishment is death,” the jury foreman said.

KNOXVILLE - A Knox County jury this afternoon sentenced convicted torture-slaying ringleader Lemaricus Davidson to death by lethal injection for the January 2007 murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. The jury of five women and seven men deliberated about four hours before returning its decision to a packed courtroom. “The punishment is death,” the jury foreman said. The victims' families gasped at the verdict, but Davidson showed no reaction. Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner admonished those in the courtroom to control any outburst. “The murder was especially heinous, atrocious and cruel,” the foreman said, reading from the verdict form....

A Knox County jury delivered the death sentence this afternoon to the ringleader in the torture slayings of a young Knoxville couple following a carjacking. The same panel of seven men and five women who convicted Lemaricus Davidson, 28, in the 2007 attack on University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend Christopher Newsom, 23, decided his fate. Davidson was found guilty of more than 30 counts, including felony murder and premeditated murder of each victim. The jury had a choice of a life sentence mandating a minimum of 51 years in prison, life without parole with no...

DETROIT – Like the rundown houses and shuttered storefronts in his Detroit neighborhood, bleakness abounds in LeRoy Taylor's future. He is among tens of thousands reaching adulthood in a city where the American Dream appears just outside their reach. Taylor, 20, spends empty hours on basketball courts, zoned out in front of a television or aimlessly pedaling through streets he desperately wants to leave, but doesn't have the work skills, education or money to do so. "I fill out applications. No one will call me back," said Taylor, stopping his bike long enough to hustle change for cigarettes near a...

A late-night disagreement between two men in a bar becomes a stare-down. One side throws fists, and a brief brawl breaks out. Customers scatter. Tables are overturned. Friends on the sidelines straighten their postures and walk tough. Others grab their coats and head for the door. Some physical commotion is not uncommon at evening establishments where alcohol is served. But it's what happened next on Thursday evening inside the Route 66 Kitchen in West Toledo that has unsettled some Toledoans. With surveillance cameras rolling, several figures pulled out handguns and engaged in a shootout that raged inside and outside the...

Last week in Cook County, Illinois, Derrion Albert, 16, was murdered after being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a gang fight broke out. What a tragic death for a kid who had a promising future. As a father, my heart goes out to his family - I couldn't even imagine what they must be going through. Unfortunately, Derrion wasn't the only black child killed last week in Cook County - an estimated 159 unborn children of color were also murdered last week - not by street gangs, but by gangs of doctors and nurses.[1] Like Derrion,...

PICTURES OF HIROSHIMA CIRCA 1945 DETROIT IN THE LATE 40's and EARLY 50's ======================================================================================= HIROSHIMA TODAY ============================================================================ DETROIT TODAY ============================================================================ Who the hell won the war!

LOS ANGELES — The chickens have come home to roost for Los Angeles city dwellers who keep roosters. The City Council on Tuesday passed an ordinance that — with few exceptions — allows only one rooster per property. It was spurred by complaints over noise and hygiene and concerns over illegal cockfighting. Janice Hahn, who authored the bill, says it will give residents of her district some peace and quiet.

Feral Youths: How A Generation of Violent, Illiterate Young Men Are Living Outside The Boundaries Of Civilised Society By HARRIET SERGEANT 19th September 2009 The first time I saw Tuggy Tug, he was standing on a street corner in Brixton with half-a-dozen other 15-year- old boys. They were scowling at anyone who walked past Every now and then, they shrugged up their hoodies to make themselves look more threatening. 'Everyone who bumps into us says sorry,' boasted Tuggy Tug. [Pics in URL] His tracksuit was so big that he seemed lost inside it. Under his black hoodie, he wore a...

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline... Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country. Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their...

Chicago leads list for second year; housing woes weigh on nation.

There are, however, other reasons why minorities seem to be more at risk of swine flu. Low-income parents have a harder time keeping their sick children home from school. "For some parents in lower-wage jobs, if they don't show up at work, they don't get paid, and people may already be on the economic margins," Barry says. "So parents were desperate to get some of these children back in school." As a result, there were many sick, contagious kids in Boston classrooms this spring. Because of the economic pressures and demographics of the Boston school system, most of them turned...

Poverty in Our Cities. City, State, % of People Below the Poverty Level 1. Detroit , MI 32.5% 2. Buffalo , NY 29.9% 3. Cincinnati , OH 27.8% 4. Cleveland , OH 27.0% 5. Miami , FL 26.9% 6. St. Louis , MO 26.8% 7. El Paso , TX 26.4% 8. Milwaukee , WI 26.2% 9. Philadelphia , PA 25.1% 10. Newark , NJ 24.2% U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, August 2007 What do the top ten cities (over 250,000) with the highest poverty rate all have in common? Detroit , MI (1st on the poverty rate list)...

Gunman Still on the Loose; 5 Remain in Good Condition, 1 in Serious Reporting Suzanne Le Mignot CHICAGO (CBS) ― Six people were shot August 1 during a funeral service outside a West Side church. Police say the incident is gang-related. Gunfire erupts outside a funeral, police think they might know why. The service was just starting at a West Side church, when someone opened fire outside – shooting six people. The reverend was shocked to see his service interrupted by that kind of violence. "This is broad daylight and anybody could have been hurt. This is very unfortunate," said...

The social and economic costs of lost productivity and wasted fuel from traffic-choked streets are estimated to be $87 billion a year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report. So far, federal, state and local efforts — focused mostly on expanding road capacity — have been largely unsuccessful at slowing the growing congestion on U.S. roads. Transportation experts now advocate a different approach, changing the emphasis from increasing supply to reducing demand. To reinforce smart growth policies, plug mounting transportation funding gaps and achieve immediate traffic relief, London, Stockholm, Singapore, Milan and three cities in Norway have...

All Wrought From White Liberal Pride - Not Guilt According to our Akron Beacon Journal, "Dozens of black youths" shouted, "This is a black world," and, "This is our world," as they beat up a white construction worker, his family and friends as they were viewing a June 27 fireworks display. Police officials are, " not ready to call it a hate crime," and "is not classifying it as a racial hate crime." Fortunately, the family and friends are OK and are considering acquiring personal defense weapons to protect themselves in this once beautiful area in Akron, Ohio, named after...

An NAACP official has demanded the governor of Pennsylvania call out the National Guard, suspend civil liberties and impose martial law to deal with a recent wave of shootings. Stanley Lawson, president of the Harrisburg Chapter of the NAACP, urged Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell deploy the National Guard for at least one month and enforce a curfew after more than a dozen shootings rocked the city, according to the Patriot News. Many of the shots were fired during daylight hours, and one man was killed at a busy intersection in the middle of the afternoon June 24. "The Guard is...

Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted: * A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors. * A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average. * A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members. * A powerful government employee union that does the same for its members. * A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the...

In Troy, New York, where a quarter of the children live below the poverty level and the average household makes less than $30,000 a year, the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000 taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant. They call it economic development. What it is is a sin. What it is is welfare for the wealthy, proof positive that raping the taxpayer is what the government does best. Meet George Soros. He owns Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. He also owns a...

GARY – Gary officials are seeking nearly $25 million in federal money to tear down more than 900 abandoned houses and 200 empty commercial buildings.......

Shootings claimed the lives of six men in the city over the weekend. The first shooting happened around 8:20 p.m. Friday, when Tijuan Edwards, 18, was talking to a 25-year-old man in the street at 1916 S. Trumbull Ave. when multiple gunmen approached on foot and shot both men. Edwards was dead on the scene, and the 25-year-old was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital with gunshot wounds to the left arm, chin and thigh, police said.

Chicago has the dubious distinction of holding four places on a list of the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation.Using crime data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, NeighborhoodScout.com made a list of areas with the highest predicted rates of violent crime in the United States.The nation's worst neighborhood, according to the study, is in Cincinnati.The study's author, geographer Dr. Andrew Schiller, said the calculation gives people a better way to understand the "climate" of crime in particular in sections of cities."It's better to understand the climate rather than the weather. It's very important to have a sense...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― "At Myra Bradwell Elementary School, 44 out of 77 students did not pass the eighth grade. A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn't even pass the eighth grade. As CBS 2's Jim Williams reports there is fierce debate about who's to blame. It is a debate that has gone on for years in poor communities: do you blame the schools for the students' poor performance or do you blame their parents?"......

A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn't even pass the eighth grade. As CBS 2's Jim Williams reports there is fierce debate about who's to blame. It is a debate that gone on for years in poor communities: do you blame the schools for the students' poor performance or do you blame their parents? The mother of a one student who failed eighth grade says she got no warning her son was struggling. The school says she was notified, and other parents insist she did...

Many cities in the US’s so-called “rust belt” have been in decline for years—losing both jobs and population. Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan has proposed leveling portions of these cities in order to reach a more optimal balance between living accommodations and needs. “The idea is that rather than continuing to waste society’s resources maintaining unnecessary housing, we demolish the surplus units and move people closer together to gain economies of scale,” Kildee said. While Kildee’s focus is on cities already in a decaying state, the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, sees a...

The District ranks highest in the country for cocaine use and alcohol dependence, and has the third-highest percentage of marijuana usage, according to a new study. The study by the federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is the result of national drug survey results from 2006 and 2007 of residents of the District and 50 states, compiled through interviews and calculated estimations.

Whoa … this isn’t a study that paints teachers in a positive light, but it doesn’t paint minority students in one either. We’re faced with some tough questions here. Do teachers prefer non-black students, or are black students more difficult for teachers on average? It should be noted that even black teachers are relocating, and it doesn’t completely focus on just black students. Other minorities are discussed as well as economic class.

Desmond Hatchett's children have 11 different mums and their ages range from a newborn to 11-years-old. The prolific father even boasted of fathering four tots by different women in the same year His giant brood came to light after authorities in Tennessee took Hatchett to court for non payment of child support. [snip] Hatchett, who earns minimum wage, told reporters he knows the names and ages of all his children. [snip] Hatchett's lawyer Keith Pope said: "The children can't all be supported by Desmond, so the state of Tennessee has had to step in."

The 18-year-old accused of gunning down a middle school student at a bus stop earlier this month allegedly shot him twice and then continued on his way to high school, police and prosecutors said today at a press conference announcing his arrest. "This was a cold-blooded assassination of a middle school student," said Assistant District Attorney Joshua Wall at the press conference at Boston police headquarters. Xzeniyeju Chukwuezi is accused of walking up to Soheil Turner, 15, as he waited for a bus on Dudley Street at 7:20 a.m. on May 7 and firing two bullets into his head. Boston...

The law finally caught up with an alleged gang member who police say held down his 7-year-old son while a fellow gang-banger tattooed the boy's belly with the group's insignia. Police say 26-year-old Enrique Gonzales held down his 7-year-old son while another gang member tattoed the group's insignia on his belly. Fresno cops arrested Enrique Gonzalez, 26, at hotel in the Sierra foothills and booked him for investigation of mayhem, child abuse, false imprisonment, battery, participating in a criminal street gang and committing a crime for the benefit of a gang, Police Chief Jerry Dyer said. Gonzales, a member of...

Chicago - busy putting on its best face to garner a 2016 Olympics bid and basking in the afterglow of President Obama's election - has become the nation's most violent city for youths. With three weeks left before summer break, a record 36 Chicago Public Schools students have been killed this school year, marking the third straight year that youth homicides have climbed into double digits. Chicago has surpassed New York City and Los Angeles for having the highest youth homicide rate in the nation. "I think people in Chicago have almost gotten numb to the statistics," said Dexter Voisin,...

The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains. That’s why I was startled when I received an e-mail message from Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist. It included this sentence: “The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.” Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools...

Same thing happened in MN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ruzKsfSd24&NR=1

As he approaches 100 days in office, the President faces a grim reality check. Buddleia has taken over large parts of downtown Gary, Indiana. The city, once home to 300,000 people, is down to just a third of that. There are mile after mile of deserted, derelict and abandoned homes; sub-zero winds blow in off Lake Michigan. "Gary, Indiana is like an eagle poised to fly," mayor Rudy Clay tells me, "All we need is the air of the fiscal stimulus beneath our wings and we'll soar once again and make America proud." The mayor has applied for $400 million...

In March 2008, Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with eight felonies, including perjury and obstruction of justice. In August, he violated his bail agreement and was thrown in jail. His actions were deplorable for anybody, but Kilpatrick was no Average Joe--he was the mayor of Detroit. Unfortunately for the Motor City, Kilpatrick, 38, is just one ripple in the area's sea of crime. Detroit is the worst offender on our list of America's most dangerous cities, thanks to a staggering rate of 1,220 violent crimes committed per 100,000 people. "Detroit has, historically, been one of the more violent cities in the...

Does anyone remember the white couple that got abducted, raped, and killed by the three African American guys somewhere in the south? I think they found some of the couple's body parts in a garbage can at one of the alleged criminal's house. Does anyone have any follow up info or a link?

Charlene David walked through her ghost town last week, past empty driveways, rusting playgrounds, abandoned basketball courts, the overgrown community garden, the management office that closed months ago. This is what remains of Ujima Village, a sprawling complex of mostly government-subsidized apartments in Willowbrook, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County south of Watts.

A group of young men severely beat a Kent man late Tuesday at the Federal Way Transit Center after he told one of them to lower his voice, police said Wednesday. The Kent man, 32, was waiting for a bus about 11 p.m. when he asked a loud youth to quiet down, police said. In response, several males in their teens or early 20s walked up to the man and one hit him in the face. The two began to fight and others in the group joined in. After the Kent man was knocked to the ground, the attackers ran...

As if there were not enough bogeymen – terrorism, climate change/global warming, the perils of red meat, obesity, greenhouse gas emissions, Rush Limbaugh and the evil Wall Street bankers – the Missouri Information Analysis Center has given us yet another reason to look under our beds each night. Never in my wildest dreams would I have suspected that the seemingly mild-mannered, elderly neighbor with the Ron Paul yard sign prominently displayed was a prospective militia man or urban terrorist.

They arrived to party but didn't see enough girls, so they demanded their money back. Then, the gunfire started. An Eden Prairie teen has been charged in a shooting at a Lakeville trailer home Sunday that injured four partygoers, and two men have been charged with helping him conceal a semiautomatic pistol as they drove him away. The shooting allegedly took place after the gunman and his friends were refused a refund on their entry fee at a house party, which they had left because of the lack of women. The Dakota County attorney's office Wednesday charged Mohamed Yusef Hussein,...

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― The University of Southern California Wednesday announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a driver who struck and killed one freshman student and seriously injured another. The Los Angeles County Council is offering a $75,000 reward and the Board of Supervisors will contribute $10,000, which totals $135,000. Adrianna Bachan, 19, and Marcus Garfinkle, also 19, were in a crosswalk on Jefferson Boulevard at Hoover Street about 3 a.m. Sunday when a car heading east on Jefferson ran a red light and struck them, according to police. Bachan, a freshman from...

Oakland shooter unable to escape cycle of violence By JULIANA BARBASSA – 2 hours ago OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Lovelle Mixon died at 26, hiding in an apartment, shot by police during a gun fight that left four officers dead and stunned a city already plagued by violence. Court records show a lifetime of wrong turns spent largely behind bars. Family members, angry and upset after their loss, describe Mixon as an deeply frustrated young man who likely snapped under the weight of opportunities missed or denied.

Fly fishing in fetid, polluted, urban water is catching on with cash-strapped fishermen and sporting urban outdoorsmen. But don't go hoping to catch dinner. "Their diet isn't something you want to put in your body."

... she makes chicken for her children but eats Oodles of Noodles herself... ... She is 29, with twin babies and a toddler, facing eviction because she's $300 behind on rent... ... The little girl, 15-16 months old, wears a striped top that swallows her tiny arms. Her nose is runny, her eyes empty. Hers is not the picture of hunger that Americans are accustomed to seeing. She isn't emaciated, like those living in squalid conditions in famine-stricken countries, but she is underweight and malnourished, often fed chips and sugary drinks instead of milk and formula... ... poor diets lacking...

From Vice, a post-apocalyptic photoessay of public schools left abandoned in Detroit. The above image is captioned: A box elder tree grows from a soil made of ash and pulp from science textbooks in the Detroit Public Schools' Roosevelt Warehouse. A man's body was discovered in a frozen lift shaft here. It is assumed he had been there for some months as his face had decomposed. More Detroit gothic here. More on the failure of the Detroit public education system here. More money for the city's schools here.

New York (AP) -- Prosecutors are looking into why the new White House urban affairs director hasn't paid an architect for house designs made two years ago — the same time he recommended the architect for a lucrative city contract. Adolfo Carrion, the former Bronx borough president, has said he would pay when he received the bill. But industry experts say the delay of payment is unusual. "Normally after a project is completed, we get paid," said Chris Thomas, project manager and architect at AENArchitects in New York City. "I don't understand why he waited. That doesn't make sense." It...

NEW YORK (AP) - The new White House director of urban affairs hired an architect for his own home at the same time that a project the architect was working on was up for approval by his office. Former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, tapped by President Obama last month to head the Office on Urban Policy, hired architect Hugo Subotovsky in 2006 to design a renovation for his two-family house. Subotovsky was part of a team seeking approval of a development called Boricua Village that included a 14-story college building and 679 units of housing. Carrion recommended approval of...

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) - Montgomery County police say 16 people were arrested after a fight broke out during a concert held to promote nonviolence and to remember a Silver Spring teen killed last year. The free Stop the Violence youth concert was held Saturday night on Ellsworth Street in downtown Silver Spring in memory of 14-year-old Montgomery Blair High School student Tai Lam, who was shot to death in November. Police say fighting broke out near the stage toward the end of the concert and at least one person resisted arrest. Police say 16 adults and juveniles were arrested...

HYANNIS, Mass. -- Police have accused a 13-year-old of masterminding the slaying of his 16-year-old half brother so he could take over a drug operation they are alleged to have inherited from their father. Jordan Mendes was found shot, stabbed 27 times and dumped into a pit, where his body was torched. District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said Mendes was a "significant drug dealer." Authorities said Mykel Mendes, a seventh-grader, was jealous of the money his half brother was making selling OxyContin and cocaine and wanted to take over. A 13-year-old friend and a 20-year-old cousin also are charged with murder.