Saturday, February 5, 2011

Justice Thomas’s Wife Sets Up a Conservative Lobbying Shop

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: February 4, 2011

WASHINGTON — The wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has raised her political profile in the last year through her outspoken conservative activism, is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed “ambassador to the Tea Party movement.”

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Virginia Thomas.

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Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens” who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.

Ms. Thomas’s effort to take a more operational role on conservative issues could intensify questions about her husband’s ability to remain independent on issues like campaign finance and health care, legal ethicists said.

Justice Thomas “should not be sitting on a case or reviewing a statute that his wife has lobbied for,” said Monroe H. Freedman, a Hofstra Law School professor specializing in legal ethics. “If the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that creates a perception problem.”

Ms. Thomas’s founding of her own political consulting shop, Liberty Consulting, was first reported Thursday byPolitico, which said she had begun reaching out to freshmen Republicans in Congress.

The move comes a few months after she gave up the top spot at Liberty Central, a conservative Web site that she founded in 2009 and that has strong links to the Tea Party movement.

An anonymous $500,000 donation to start up Liberty Central came from Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate investor and Republican financier, Politico reported.

Mr. Crow, reached by phone Friday, would not say whether he was the source of the money. “I disclose what I’m required by law to disclose,” he said, “and I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”

Ms. Thomas did not respond to telephone and e-mail requests for an interview on Friday. The Daily Caller reported in December that she had said in an interview that she was looking forward to a new role involving “lobbying on Capitol Hill” and a variety of other hands-on operational duties.

Arn Pearson, a vice president at Common Cause, a liberal group that has been critical of potential conflicts at the Supreme Court caused by Ms. Thomas’s work, said her new position, combined with Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent address before a closed-door seminar of the Tea Party Caucus, provided further evidence of “the politicization of the court.”

“The level of bias we’re seeing is really troubling,” Mr. Pearson said.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 5, 2011, on page A11 of the New York edition.

Long Beach Tells Teens To Pick Up Saggy Pants

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Call for ‘respect’ during Black History Month

February 3, 2011 12:17 PM

LONG BEACH (CBS) — City leaders want young people in Long Beach to do two things this February: pick ‘em up and keep ‘em up.

Bishop William Ervin along with Carson City Councilman Mike Gipson are calling on black children and teens to “pull up their pants on their waist” as a sign of respect during Black History Month.

KNX 1070′s Ron Kilgore reports their message to young men who wear their pants down around their knees is simple: “You can have the swag without the sag”.

Community leaders say the plan is not just for cultural purposes, but may have legal benefits as well: sagging pants are often used for profiling purposes by law enforcement agencies.

Celebrating black history as the black family disintegrates

COLBERT I. KING
Saturday, February 5, 2011; A13

Here we are, another Black History Month: time to lionize great black men and women of the past. Twenty-eight days to praise the first African American to do this and the first African American who did that. Another month of looking back with pride - as we ignore the calamity in our midst.
When Black History Month was celebrated in 1950, according to State University of New York research, 77.7 percent of black families had two parents. As of January 2010, according to the Census Bureau, the share of two-parent families among African Americans had fallen to 38 percent.
We know that children, particularly young male African Americans, benefit from parental marriage and from having a father in the home. Today, the majority of black children are born to single, unmarried mothers.
Celebrate? Let's celebrate.
Three years ago, I wrote about young girls in our city who are not learning what they are really worth, young men who aren't being taught to treat young women with respect, and boys and girls who are learning how to make babies but not how to raise them ["A Tragedy That Is Ours to Stop," op-ed, July 19, 2008].
Those conditions, the column suggested, find expression in youth violence, child abuse and neglect, school dropout rates, and the steady stream of young men flowing into the city's detention facilities.
Boys get guns, girls get babies. To buttress that point, I referred to the Web site of the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which posted maps from 2005 and 2006 identifying the location of juvenile arrests and births to 15- to 19-year-olds in the District. Neighborhoods plagued by youth violence, the maps showed, were the same neighborhoods where birth rates among teenagers were highest.
Fast-forward to 2008, the latest year for which the organization has such data. The statistics are updated, but little changed: The maps show that juvenile arrests and teen births are still clustered in the same areas of the city. The three jurisdictions leading in teen births and juvenile arrests were Wards 8, 7 and 5.
Ward 8, represented by D.C. Council member Marion Barry, is first, with a total of 1,487 teen births and juvenile arrests.
Council member Yvette Alexander's Ward 7 ranks second with 1,386 combined teen births and juvenile arrests.
Third place goes to Ward 5, represented by council member Harry Thomas Jr.; it racked up 1,186 teen births and juvenile arrests.
This isn't top-secret stuff. Nor is the pattern new. We don't need maps to tell us what the problem of teen births means to the city.
We know that most teenage mothers don't graduate from high school; that many of the youths in the juvenile justice system are born to unmarried teens; and that children of teenagers are twice as likely to be abused or neglected and more likely to wind up in foster care.
We know, too, that children of teenage parents are more likely to become teen parents themselves.
An intergenerational cycle of dysfunction is unfolding before our eyes, even as we spend time rhapsodizing about our past.
No less discouraging is the response that has become ingrained.
Sixteen, unmarried and having a baby? No problem. Here are your food stamps, cash assistance and medical coverage. Can't be bothered with the kid? No sweat, there's foster care.
Make the young father step up to his responsibilities?
Consider this statement I received from a sexual health coordinator and youth programs coordinator in the District concerning a teen mother she is counseling: "She recently had a child by a man who is 24 years old and has 5 other children. He is homeless and does not work, but knows how to work young girls very well. . . .This young man is still trying to have more children."
He's a cause. Our community deals with his consequences.
A 16-year-old mother who reads at a sixth-grade level drops out of school? Blame the teacher. Knock the city for underserving girls during their second and third pregnancies. Blast social workers for not doing enough to help children with developmental disabilities or kids in foster care. Carp at the counselors responsible for troubled youth in detention.
Sure, tackle the consequences. Construct a bigger, better, more humane safety net. I'm for that, especially where children are concerned. And the causes?
God forbid, don't mention causes.
Celebrate? Let's celebrate.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Black History Month 2011: 'Are Whites Entitled To Write Black History?' (VIDEO)

The Huffington Post Zoe Triska First Posted: 02/ 4/11 06:09 AM Updated: 02/ 4/11 06:09 AM

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Open Road Media recently released William Styron's "Confessions of Nat Turner" as an eBook, hoping to "reach a new generation of readers."

The 1967 Pulitzer Prize winning book details the 1831 Virginia slave revolt led by Nat Turner, during which 56 white people, and many more black people, were killed.

Over the years, Styron's novel has caused much controversy. Some African-American intellectuals and authors were outraged that a white man would dare to write a book about black history. After all, African-Americans had to struggle to maintain a strong identity. Countless books, such as "Autobiography of Malcolm X" and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," were written by African-American authors about the difficulties of maintaining a black identity in the midst of white culture.

In Alan Kurtz's article "Are Whites Entitled To Write Black History," he declared that race should not dictate what an author can or cannot write about. He wrote, "Ultimately, history is no one's property. It belongs to all of us; it's our collective experience."

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard professor, agreed in his video interview with Open Road Media.

He read Styron's novel shortly after it was published. Admittedly, he understood the question that many African-Americans were asking: "How could a white man have the authority, the authenticity, the moral claim, to write responsibly about an event in African-American history?"

However, Gates noted that any White racist person could make the same argument about Gates writing a book about a prominent white person. One of his final statements summed up his opinion on the matter: "Anyone has the right to write about any subject available to be written about."

WATCH:

Caught on Tape: Houston Teen Beaten By Police

Surveillance Video Apparently Shows Teen Being Kicked and Stomped; Officers Later Indicted

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BY OLIVIA KATRANDJIAN

Feb. 3, 2011

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A surveillance video shot almost a year ago apparently shows Houston police officers relentlessly beating, kicking and stomping on a teen burglary suspect was just released to the public.