... if blacks are the ones doing the discriminating...

Black Caucus: Whites Not Allowed

By: Josephine Hearn
January 22, 2007 08:33 PM EST

Freshman Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, D-Tenn., is not joining the Congressional Black Caucus after several current and former members made it clear that a white lawmaker was not welcome.

The bylaws of the caucus do not make race a prerequisite for membership, a House aide said, but no non-black member has ever joined.

Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who is white, tried in 1975 when he was a sophomore representative and the group was only 6 years old.

"Half my Democratic constituents were African-American. I felt we had interests in common as far as helping people in poverty," Stark said. "They had a vote, and I lost. They said the issue was that I was white, and they felt it was important that the group be limited to African-Americans."

iTunes is currently playing: The World Isn't Fair from the album Bad Love by Randy Newman.

... to leave the reservation and assimilate into American society ...

Tribe banking on bird's-eye view of Grand Canyon

HUALAPAI INDIAN RESERVATION, Arizona (AP) -- A struggling Indian tribe is hoping to change its fortunes by luring tourists out over the edge of the Grand Canyon on a glass-bottom observation deck 4,000 feet above the Colorado River. It's called the Skywalk, a horseshoe-shaped walkway that will jut from the canyon's lip and offer the kind of straight-down, vertigo-inducing views that had previously been available only to the likes of Wile E. Coyote.

"We have to do something, and this is something spectacular," said Sheri Yellowhawk, a former tribal councilwoman overseeing the project.



But the $30 million Skywalk, financed by a Las Vegas businessman and set to open in March, has also ignited a debate among Hualapai elders who question whether the prospect of riches is worth disturbing sacred ground. The Hualapai (pronounced WALL-uh-pie) believe their ancestors emerged from the earth of the Grand Canyon, and the area surrounding the project is scattered with the tribe's sacred archaeological and burial sites.

"We have disturbed the ground," said Dolores Honga, a 70-year-old tribal elder who regularly travels to the rim to perform traditional dances. She said workers on the Skywalk site often complain to her about nightmares. Our people, they died right along the land there. Their blood, their bones were shattered. They blend into the ground. It's spiritual ground. This is why you're awakened," Honga said.

But other elders say the Hualapai have to do something to end the despair and joblessness that plague the tribe's 2,200 members, more than a third of whom live below the poverty line.

In 1995, the tribe's only casino folded after foundering for seven months. Tourists were in no mood to travel 21 miles over an unpaved road to gamble on the reservation -- especially not when Las Vegas is just 2 1/2 hours away by car.

iTunes is currently playing: Lost You In The Canyon from the album Burning The Daze by Marc Cohn.

John Edwards' attempt to pit one socio-economic group against another didn't work out in '04, so he apparently has decided to take the opposite approach and talk about "unity" this time around. Don't you love it when someone knows what he thinks and stands his ground!

WASHINGTON - Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards intends to enter the 2008 race for the White House, two Democratic officials said Saturday.

Edwards, who represented North Carolina in the Senate for six years, plans to make the campaign announcement late this month from the New Orleans neighborhood hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina last year and slow to recover from the storm. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Edwards’ announcement.

Edwards chose a stark backdrop for a campaign expected to focus on ways to build “One America” and bridge the economic inequality clearly evident in the still devastated Lower Ninth Ward. His campaign is likely to emphasize ways to unite the country and would mark an evolution from his 2004 campaign stump speech that focused on the “Two Americas” of haves and have-nots.

iTunes is currently playing: Make Up Your Mind from the album Guilty: 30 Years Of Randy Newman (Disc 4) by Randy Newman.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The mother of a high school senior who posed in chain mail and held a medieval sword for his yearbook picture sued after the school rejected the photo because of its "zero-tolerance" policy against weapons.

Patrick Agin, 17, belongs to the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international organization that researches and recreates medieval history. He submitted the photo in September for the Portsmouth High School yearbook.

But the school's principal refused to allow the portrait as Agin's official yearbook photo because he said it violated a policy against weapons and violence in schools, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by the Rhode Island branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The complaint says there is nothing in the weapons policy that would apply to the picture Agin submitted. It also says the weapons policy is arbitrarily enforced, noting theatrical plays at the school have included prop weapons and that the mascot — a patriot — is depicted on school grounds and publications as carrying a weapon.



iTunes is currently playing: Teach Your Children from the [bootleg] album Greenpeace Benefit Disc2 by Crosby Stills Nash & Young.

Apparently, some idiots in Chappaqua, NY, look at the flags that a very generous local business owner purchased for their town and they see DREIDELS covered with Stars of David. (I won't even get into the issue of why it would matter if the flag did include those images, because it so obviously DOES NOT.)

What a world.

iTunes is currently playing: Stars To Share from the album Winter Solstice On Ice by Samite.

(c) AARP Magazine 2006.

iTunes is currently playing: Candy Everybody Wants from the album MTV Unplugged by 10,000 Maniacs.

EASTON, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A man who pleaded guilty to molesting two girls told a judge he did it because of his wife's excessive bingo playing.

"My wife was never home," Floyd Kinney Jr. said during his plea hearing Friday.

Kinney's explanation did not sit well with Northampton County Judge F.P. Kimberly McFadden. "Some people, when their wives are not home, decide to do other things, like clean their living rooms," McFadden said.

Defense attorney Richard Yetter said his client was not articulate and may not have been doing a good job of conveying his rationale to the judge. But McFadden said she found Kinney capable of explaining himself. "I think he is telling me exactly what was going on," the judge said.

iTunes is currently playing: Don't Talk from the album MTV Unplugged by 10,000 Maniacs.

... an $800,000 dress???

(AP) -- The black Givenchy gown worn by Audrey Hepburn in the film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" sold at auction Tuesday for $807,000.

The price, paid by a telephone bidder, was almost six times the highest pre-sale estimate. The iconic garment had been expected to fetch between $98,000 and $138,000 as part of a sale of film and television memorabilia at Christie's auction house in London.

Proceeds from the sale will go to the charity City of Joy Aid, which helps India's poor.

iTunes is currently playing: That Girl Belongs To Yesterday from the album Anthology 1961-1968 by Gene Pitney.

Sen. Clinton asks Dems for help with ’08 bid
Former first lady ‘actively considering a presidential run,’ aide says

ALBANY, N.Y. - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun active consideration of a 2008 run for president and has personally asked some fellow top New York Democrats for their support in the event she goes ahead with such a campaign, a top adviser said Sunday.

"As Senator Clinton said, she was going to begin actively considering a presidential run after the election. That process has begun," said Howard Wolfson.

© 2006 The Associated Press.

iTunes is currently playing: Left of Center from the bootleg album Live - Warfield Theatre (San Francisco) by Suzanne Vega.

... Ms. Paltrow is starring in a movie at your neighborhood Cineplex:

Oscar-winning US actress Gwyneth Paltrow feels dinner talk is far more interesting in her adopted homeland Britain than back in her native country.

"I love the English lifestyle, it's not as capitalistic as America. People don't talk about work and money, they talk about interesting things at dinner," she told "NS," the weekend magazine supplement of daily Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias on Saturday.

"I like living here because I don't fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans," the 34-year-old added.

iTunes is currently playing: America from the album West Side Story- Original Broadway Cast by Chita Rivera & Marilyn Cooper.