CLEVELAND, Ohio-Former Minnesota Timberwolves ballplayer Kevin Love is now a Cleveland Cavalier, effective August 23, 2014, and Andrew Wiggins, a first round Cavaliers 2014 draft pick, has been simultaneously traded to the Timberwolves in what many are calling the NBA's most anticipated trade of the year.

Now that Love has joined LeBron James, who returned this year to the Cavaliers as a free agent after four years and two national championship titles with the Miami Heat, and given other team talent like Kyrie Irving and Anderson Varejao, Cavaliers fans are hoping for a 2015 NBA title.

RICHMOND HEIGHTS, Ohio-Richmond Heights, Ohio Mayor Miesha Headen spoke with Cleveland Urban News.Com in a one-on-one extensive interview.

Headen has all the trappings of success, a college education that includes an MBA from the prestigious Columbia University in New York City, experience as a former auditor in private practice, an immediate family with a husband and two young children, and a legacy as the city's first Black female mayor. Still, she faces a recall election on Tuesday, September 23 after petitions were circulated at the behest of a few disgruntled residents and some city council members, including Council President David Roche, a Republican.

"Voters should vote yes in September to retain me,"  Headen told Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper.

A Democrat, Headen, 42, and then a city council member, defeated 24-year Republican mayor Daniel Ursu in a close non-partisan race in December, 2013. David Ali came in third in the race, and Eloise Henry, one of two Blacks on the eight-member city council, finished fourth. The other Black on the lawmaking city council is Headen ally Elaine Williams.

The attractive and controversial mayor said that she is wholeheartedly fighting recall for the betterment of a city that she dearly loves.

Currently the only Black female mayor in Cuyahoga County, Headen said that her accomplishments in her nine month tenure thus far as mayor include a bond rating upgrade to AA status, a new building commissioner and economic development director, and commercial renovation projects such as the Hilltop Plaza.

Also, said Headen, she has spearheaded efforts in cleaning up abandoned businesses, has enhanced environmental resources, and has initiated strategies to rid City Hall of corruption and the rift-raft that it brings, the latter, she says, of which has been met with opposition from city council, one that frequently finds her difficult as she assertively pushes for systemic changes in city government.

Headen insists that the upcoming recall election is not racially motivated. She says instead that city council wants to usurp the authority of the mayor and wants a patsy for the job like it had in Ursu, the mayor before her, and will likely get in Roche, who, as council president, would by charter become mayor if she is recalled. Both Roche and Ursu are White, though Headen still says that race is not the relevant factor in their attempts to take her $15,000 a-year job.

Simply put, Mayor Headen says the special recall election, at a cost of about $23,000 to taxpayers and nearly a week away, is a frivolous and disingenuous effort to disregard the voters will on whom they elected as mayor last year, and that voters chose her over Ursu and others at the ballot box. And she said that she has broken no laws.

"This is not about race, and we do not need any race baiting," Headen said, though she did not completely rule out the fact that her sex, female, coupled with her attempts to rid the city of the good ole boys network, may also play a role.

Opponents say that Headen should not have sought health care insurance from city council, and that she came in firing people, some 10 people in fact, including former law director R. Todd Hunt, the finance director, and city prosecutor Jonathan Greenberg.

Some four other City Hall workers quit.

Headen says that city council, and what she says is unfair and prejudicial news coverage by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, help to drive those that quit off the job.

Headen supporters say that she is ambitious, well-educated, competent, strong, and committed to making life in the city of Richmond Heights better for its residents, and that it is a mayor's purview to choose his or her administrative leadership team, maybe.

Some neighboring cities like Cleveland, by charter, give the mayor, independent of city council, authority to appoint members of his or her cabinet, and other key city positions, including the law director, chief of police and chief city prosecutor. But in Richmond Heights, city council, by charter, must approve such hiring recommendations.  It cannot though, arbitrarily block the mayor's recommendations, which is at the center of the conflict as Headen fired Hunt as law director, and Greenberg as city prosecutor, both of whom are attorneys with the powerful law firm of Walter Haverfield. City Council fought back by blocking her recommendations for replacements for Greenberg, Hunt, and some others, and is on a mission, said Headen, to continue its reign over the city in a dictatorial fashion, and in violation of the city charter.

Hunt had been law director since 1995.

Walter Haverfield has few if any Black attorneys, a Cleveland Urban News.Com investigation reveals, and those that are general counsel, law director or city prosecutor in Richmond Heights and many other greater Cleveland municipalities are influential high-paid White men. And they have traditionally gotten away with doing as they please, data show.

City Council refused to approve Headen's recommendations for a law director to replace Hunt, and then hired Walter Haverfield as its special counsel. For that Headen, on behalf of the city, filed suit claiming that she, as mayor,  has authority to choose the law director and other key administrative positions, and that certainly city council lacks authority to fill those positions independent of the mayor.

Walter Haverfield, says Headen, wants to run the city too.

"The law firm of Walter Haverfield represents most of the cities of Cuyahoga County," said Headen.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio's largest of 88 counties statewide, contains 59 municipalities, villages and townships. It is a Democratic stronghold and is 29 percent Black, U.S. census reports reveal.

Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio- The annual northeast Ohio Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure [for breast cancer] will begin and end in downtown Cleveland on Saturday, September 13, 2014 at the corner of East Ninth Street and Lakeside Avenue at Malls B and C. A survivor ceremony will be held at 8:00 am, followed by a five mile walk at 9:15 am, a one mile walk at 9:30 am, and a kids dash at 10:30 am.

Not counting some forms of skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer among  women across racial lines,  and the second leading cause of death in women, second only to lung cancer, data show.

Overall, African-American women are more likely to die of breast cancer than any other race of women, statistics show.

Pictured are suspended and convicted Bedford Municipal Court Judge Harry Jacob (in light blue shirt), Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Brian Corrigan (in judicial robe), and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty  (in red-colored polkadotted tie)

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief,

CLEVELAND,  Ohio- Greater Cleveland community activists women are joining Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty in calling for jail time for a suspended pimp-type Bedford Municipal Court judge who last week was found guilty of crimes in office, five misdemeanors in fact, including solicitation and falsification.

The unprecedented convictions came following a four-week trial before Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Brian Corrigan, who got mixed reviews for his decision to throw out all of the felony charges against Judge Harry Jacob, and several other misdemeanor charges, some saying that Corrigan was fair, and others saying he fixed aspects of the case to protect malfeasance by another White male judge.

Jacob is scheduled for sentencing on October 15, and it is unlikely that he will return to the bench, sources say. He faces a possible fine and up to 60 days on each of the three convictions of solicitation, third degree misdemeanors, and up to a year for the two convictions of falsification of public court records, a theft offense that carries up to six months in jail.

"He also did more than violate the public's trust, he raped it," said  McGinty of Jacob in a statement after the verdict. "He disgraced this city and demeaned the judiciary of this state. He deserves a stay in jail, a very long one."

McGinty also called Jacob a pimp and said that when he patronized the nearby brothel, that "the pimp and his employees naturally felt protected."

Greater Cleveland community activists agree with McGinty, a rare posture from activists that often find him overzealous and pro-police to the detriment of the Black community.

"He [Jacob] needs to be  jailed and should have been jailed a long time ago,'"said Community activist Ada Averyhart, 80, who spoke on the issue on behalf of  greater Cleveland grassroots groups the Imperial Women Coalition and the Carl Stokes Brigade. "We also want him disbarred."

Jacob, 56 and a Republican, and currently suspended from the bench but still drawing his $114,000 annual tax payer salary,  was charged in a 27-count indictment last year with a host of crimes, including felony counts of bribery, obstruction of justice, and possessing criminal tools, and misdemeanor charges of solicitation, promoting prostitution and falsification of municipal court records

Corrigan, however, threw out many of the more serious charges, including each and every felony, including bribery, obstruction of justice and possession of criminal tools, a possible favor, sources say, to a fellow judge of greater Cleveland that McGinty claims was able to erase evidence from his computer before a warrant was served, among other strategies to allegedly obstruct justice.

Corrigan instead found Jacob guilty of three misdemeanor charges of solicitation and two charges of manipulation of court records, the latter of which are serious and reveal a betrayal of the public's trust, prosecutors and community activists say. How many court records he got away with falsifying without any charges filed is also at issue, community activists say. They say that the integrity of the entire Bedford Municipal Court, which hears traffic cases, misdemeanors and civil lawsuits with damages so at or below $15,000, has been compromised and that Jacob's crimes are merely a symptom of a larger problem.

Jacob, of Solon, Ohio, was accused of manipulating , poor, drug addicted women, some of them minorities , and paying some of them in excess of $275 each whip for sex.

His lawyers told the trial court  judge that while their disgraced client did solicit sex, he did not use his influence on the bench to perpetuate his own sexual addiction, something McGinty said is an outright lie.

"He did more than sleep with prostitutes and do favors for them at court, he took advantage of poor young drug-addicted women, at least one of whom had been molested as a child," said McGinty.

The city of Bedford is a suburb of Cleveland and has a population of some 13,000 people, and is roughly 44 percent Black.

The Bedford court handles cases from 14 different diverse locations including Bedford itself, neighboring Bedford Heights, and Chagrin Falls, Bentleyville, Chagrin Township, Cleveland Metro Parks, Glen Willow, Highland Hills, Moreland Hills, North Randall, Oakwood Village, Orange, Solon and Warrensville Heights. They are all among the 59 municipalities, villages and townships of Cuyahoga County, Ohio's largest of 88 counties, and of which is roughly 29 percent Black.

Jacob, say his foes, is so flagrantly disrespectful of the law that anything that goes on in the Bedford Municipal Court, particularly where Blacks are concerned, is suspect, and wreaks of a prejudicial and hostile judicial environment detrimental to the community and to the administration of justice.

The suspended piece of a judge awaits disciplinary proceedings before the seven-member predominantly Republican and all White Ohio Supreme Court, which is led by Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, and has gained a reputation in some political and legal circles of being unfair to Black and female judges and lawyers facing discipline and traditionally lenient on similarly situated White male judges and lawyers.