Scarf Or No Scarf!

Are we westerners intimidated by the scarfs
that muslim women wear? I'd have to say yes
since we view the covering of the face as a way
of hiding ones identity. Well the story below
deals with a case in Georgia where a woman was
denied access to a courtroom. Check it out and then
feel free to comment.


A Muslim woman seeking to contest a simple speeding ticket in this south Georgia city says she was denied access to a municipal courtroom last week for wearing a traditional Islamic head scarf.

Aniisa Karim, 20, said she was stopped after entering Valdosta's municipal court building Tuesday and told she would not be permitted to enter the courtroom wearing her scarf.
"I said, 'No, I'm Muslim ... I wear this for religious reasons and if you don't allow me in the courtroom with my scarf on basically you are violating my civil rights and my right to a free religion,' " Karim told the Valdosta Daily Times.

Karim said an officer told her the denial was due to "homeland security reasons" and that allowing her to enter would show disrespect to Judge Vernita Lee Bender.
She said she offered to walk through a metal detector and allow officers to use a handheld metal detector to scan the scarf.

A national Islamic civil rights group has taken up the case. In a letter to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, the Council on American-Islamic Relations asks Baker to "take appropriate action to ensure that the legal, religious and civil rights of Georgians of all faiths be maintained."

Baker's office and the Valdosta municipal court were unable to be reached by The Associated Press for comment on Sunday.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington D.C.-based group, said neither Baker's office nor the Valdosta city attorney had responded to his group as of Sunday afternoon.

The letter from CAIR argues that barring Karim from the courtroom violated Georgia's code of conduct for judges and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which guarantees access to public facilities based on religious beliefs or practices.





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Magic Still Has Magic!

Congratulations are in order for Magic Johnson as
a recipient of the Freedom Award. Take a gander
at the article below and put in your two-cents.


Former NBA star Magic Johnson leads the list of people named Tuesday as recipients of the National Civil Rights Museum's annual Freedom Awards.
Also named were historian John Hope Franklin and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

The museum, on the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, will hand out the awards Oct. 23. It said it was honoring Johnson for his work since leaving the NBA on promoting economic development, improved health care and educational opportunities in low-income urban neighborhoods and other "underserved communities."

Johnson, 47, retired from the NBA after contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and campaigned for AIDS awareness. His Magic Johnson Foundation supports HIV/AIDS prevention and health care education in low-income communities.

"A committed philanthropist, Johnson continually finds time to support worthy causes," the museum said.
Franklin, 92, a chronicler of civil rights history, was part of a legal team from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that helped develop the Brown v. Board of Education case. The case led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Black Projects For Blacks Only?

Some people believe that if a project is of a black
subject then that project ought to be handled by
a black person. If tat were the case there would
be alot of black people sitting around twiddling
ther fingers. So let us stop entrapping ourselves
with selfish notions. What do you think? Read the
article below.



Someday, a great monument in Washington may bear the name of Lei Yixin. For now, you can find him down a pockmarked road in a grungy industrial suburb of this Chinese provincial capital.The monument won't be built to honor Lei, who is scarcely famous in his own hometown, much less the United States. It is being built in memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and will rise along Washington's Tidal Basin, between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials.

Lei's role will be to carve the statue of King that will be the centerpiece of the tribute. His selection as sculptor for the prominent memorial honoring the civil rights leader has outraged some who believe that an African American, or at least an American, should have gotten the job."This is an AMERICAN monument — not a Communist Chinese one!!" declared one entry in a website, kingisours.com, that is devoted to the controversy. Said another, "Can I just say one word? 'Outsourcing.'

"The outcry over the King statue recalls an earlier uproar over the choice of a young Asian American sculptor, Maya Lin, to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In the case of the King statue, critics of Lei have received a boost from CNN's Lou Dobbs, who recently asked David Hamilton, a member of the committee who picked the sculptor, "What in the world were you folks thinking?"A prominent African American sculptor who says he was pushed aside in favor of Lei believes he knows the answer.

The sculptor, Ed Dwight, who also holds the distinction of being America's first black astronaut, says the backers of the King memorial told him they hoped the choice of a Chinese sculptor would persuade the Chinese government to give $25 million to the King memorial fund, which has a target of $100 million





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Calling All Jews!

Well this seems to be a first, imagine putting out a call
for more jews. That's just what New Orleans is doing to
build it's jewish community. This ought to get the local
klan up in arms. Check out the article below and then
voice your opinion on this novel idea.


"DO you have a pioneering spirit?" read the recent ad in the Jewish Week newspaper of New York. "Are you searching for a meaningful community where YOU can make a difference?"To generations of American Jews, the pitch had a familiar ring. But this was not an invitation to settle the Promised Land. It was a call to repopulate New Orleans, a city known less for its Jewish culture than for its shellfish, sin and pre-Lenten carnival.

New Orleans' Jewish population, in fact, has long been a subtle but important ingredient in this curious dish of a city. But its numbers, though always small, have declined precipitously since Hurricane Katrina. Of the 10,000 Jews in the area before the storm, 7,000 remain.With fewer dues-paying members, some synagogues and Jewish service agencies have been kept afloat by donations from Jews around the country. But the bulk of that largess, provided by the nonprofit United Jewish Communities, dries up at the end of the year.

The Jewish community is by no means New Orleans' most afflicted demographic. But Jewish leaders do not want to see a single Jewish institution closed. They don't wish to consolidate any of the seven synagogues and two Chabad centers that offer a full range of religious observance.

The issue is plain."We need people," said Jackie Gothard, president of Congregation Beth Israel, a modern Orthodox synagogue that has seen more than 40% of its members move away.So Jewish New Orleans has cooked up a novel solution: a recruitment drive. With an ad campaign crafted by an Israeli public relations firm, the city's Jewish leaders are hoping to attract at least 1,000 Jews to the city over the next five years. They will appeal to potential pilgrims' better natures, stressing the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, Hebrew for "healing the world" — or, in this case, healing a broken city.





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Keeping An Eye On You!

Soon your city or town will have a new device that
can scan and read licence plates with incredible
speed and accuracy. Check out the article below
and feel free to ring in on the subject.


A symphony of bleeps inside the police cruiser drowned out nearby traffic on a recent morning as Sgt. Bill Dodge pulled into a public parking lot. The pace of the bleeps quickened when he passed the first row of cars. "There's nothing in here," Dodge said. "Let's head out into the street."

Turning into traffic on Beech Street, Dodge passed dozens of cars before the bleeps gave way to an alarm, then a robotic voice telling him about a parked van whose registered driver has a suspended license. "It just did in 30 seconds what usually takes an officer an entire day," he said. New York's Long Beach Police Department is among a growing number of law enforcement agencies using the roof-mounted license-plate reader, the Mobile Plate Hunter.

Bleeps and alarms are emitted as the device's two infrared cameras scan license plates at a rate of 15 to 25 a second, said North Carolina-based manufacturer Remington Elsag. Those plate numbers are sent to a database in the police car trunk and compared with a digital list of vehicles wanted for crimes, traffic violations, reported stolen cars and vehicles linked to alerts for kidnapped children, authorities said.

The infrared cameras, which work like supermarket scanners, can record the plates of moving or stopped cars. Such systems are more widely used in Europe. "We live in a post-9/11 world," Remington Elsag President Mark Windover said. "When you look at many domestic terrorism incidents, many times, a vehicle is involved."





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Remembering Ladybird

Surely any decisions that a president makes on
major policies probably first starts in the bedroom.
Thats because no matter who sits on the prez's
cabinet his closest advisor will more than likely
be his wife. With that said Lyndon Baines Johnson
was greatly influenced by his wife Ladybird when
it came time to pass civil rights legislation. Only
now is it being revealed how much of a role this
great lady played in the civil rights movement.
Thank you Ms First Lady for standing tall.


Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of Lyndon B. Johnson, whose tumultuous presidency often overshadowed her considerable achievements as an activist first lady, environmentalist and founder of a multimillion-dollar media business, died Wednesday at her home in Austin. She was 94.Johnson had been in failing health for several years, weakened by a series of strokes and other ailments, including a low-grade fever that kept her in the hospital for a week last month. A family spokeswoman said the former first lady's daughters, Lynda Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson, were by her side when she died at 2:18 p.m. PDT.

As the wife of the 36th president, Johnson was often portrayed by contemporaries and some historians as a meek woman who silently endured her husband's volcanic outbursts and infidelities. Yet she, perhaps more than any presidential wife since Eleanor Roosevelt, expanded the terrain of the first lady by taking a visible role in her husband's administration, most memorably in her national beautification efforts.

Her love of nature was enshrined in law when her husband signed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Conceived primarily to restrict junkyards and unsightly signs along the nation's highways, it was the first major legislative campaign launched by a first lady.Although often eclipsed by protests over the Vietnam War and civil rights — the dominant issues of President Johnson's tenure from 1963 to 1969 — her effort to replace urban blight with flowers and trees prepared the way for the environmental movement of the 1970s."I think there is no legacy she would more treasure than to have helped people recognize the value in preserving and promoting our native land," Luci Baines Johnson said in a statement shortly before her mother's death.

Johnson also broke new ground by campaigning independently of her husband. During the 1964 presidential campaign, she undertook a courageous whistle-stop tour of the South, where his civil rights agenda was widely reviled. Two months later, President Johnson won one of the largest landslides in U.S. history. She held the Bible at his swearing-in, a precedent followed by all her successors.





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Bush Doesn't Miss A Beat!

In the scheme of things it looks as if instead
of upholding the constitution of the United States
the prez seems only interested in upholding
the political views and interest of the Republican
party. Thats what I get from the article below.
You check it out for yourself and then let's compare
notes.


President Bush's first surgeon general testified Tuesday that his speeches were censored to match administration political positions and that he was prevented from giving the public accurate scientific information on issues such as stem cell research and teen pregnancy prevention."Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who was surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, told a congressional committee.

"The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation — not the doctor of a political party."Early in the administration, when the issue of federal funding for stem cell research arose, Carmona said, he felt he could play an educational role by discussing the latest scientific research. Instead, he said, he was told to "stand down" because the White House already had made a decision to limit stem cell studies. He said administration appointees who reviewed his speech texts deleted references to stem cells.

Carmona's remarks were the latest in a series of complaints from government scientists about what they say are administration efforts to control — and sometimes distort — scientific evidence in order to support policy decisions.NASA scientists have complained, for example, of political pressure to tone down warnings about global warming. Environmental Protection Agency officials have complained that technical information on such subjects as power plant emissions and oil drilling have been ignored.

Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently dissented from the administration's position by saying its restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research were holding back progress and should be lifted.Scientists outside the government also have complained about what some call the administration's "war on science."In the case of the surgeon general, Carmona told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, "the reality is that the nation's doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas.

"His testimony drew a pointed rebuke from the White House. Officials suggested that any breakdown in communicating health information to the public was ultimately a failure on his part. "Dr. Carmona was given the authority and had the obligation to be the leading voice for the health of all Americans," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.






This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Bond Takes Bush To Task!

Julian Bond chairman of the NAACP has taken the
prez to task. In the article below Bond says Bush has
done very little for blacks since taking office. How do
you feel about the way blacks have been treated by
Bush?


The NAACP is needed now more than ever because the Bush administration has done little to support blacks, the civil rights organization's national chairman said Sunday as its 98th annual convention opened.

Speaking before an audience of 3,000, Julian Bond, the NAACP board chairman, cited a range of concerns including the administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and its handling of immigration issues.

The number of Americans living in poverty since President Bush took office has increased by more than 5 million, to 37 million, Bond said.
"And the gap has grown between the haves and the have-nots," he said. "Almost a quarter of black Americans nationwide live below the poverty line, as compared with only 8.6 percent of whites."

Bond called present-day inequality and racial disparities cumulative and the result of racial advantages compounded over time.
"Many Americans maintain . . . that racial discrimination has become an ancient artifact," he said. "At the NAACP, we know none of this is true, and that's why we are dedicated to an aggressive campaign of social justice, fighting racial discrimination."





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Sweeping Changes Are Comming!

In just one session of the Supreme court there have
been major changes in personal and civil rights. This
current panel of justices is expected to remain that way
for at least the next twenty years. So get ready for a
major shift to the right on many issues. How do you think
this will affect your everyday life and future?


In what may signal a generational shift in power, new Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a confident conservative majority at the Supreme Court this year and moved the law to the right on abortion, religion, campaign funding and racial diversity.Working with a 5-4 majority, Roberts prevailed in nearly all the major cases.

In just his second term, the 52-year-old chief justice wrested control from the 87-year-old John Paul Stevens, the remaining justice who served on the court during its liberal era. Roberts was able to prevail because of the key votes cast by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., 57, who last year succeeded centrist Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.Roberts and Alito were appointed by President Bush.And though Bush may fall short of creating a permanent GOP political majority in Washington, his selection of the two justices appears to have cemented his legacy of a long-term conservative majority on the high court.

Conservatives saw the rulings as historic and overdue."These are the most important decisions on the use of race since Brown vs. Board of Education," said Sharon Browne, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento. "The high court has decided correctly that children must not be stereotyped by the color of their skin, but treated as individuals."Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saw the campaign funding decision as "a victory for the 1st Amendment and political debate.

"Liberals, including some on the high court, sounded an alarm."It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 68, said in the courtroom on the final day of the term.





This Article Continues Here





Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/