By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under five different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
Attorney General Loretta Lynch opposes request for changes in the consent decree on Cleveland police reforms made by the Cleveland NAACP amid a squabble between branch lawyers against Mayor Jackson and National NAACP President Cornell Brooks
- 08 July 2015
- Kathy
Last Updated on Friday, 10 July 2015 02:59
Black GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson fares well in polls for the primary election, but his unabashed criticism of President Obama could hurt his chances among Blacks
- 06 July 2015
- Kathy
By John Michael Spinelli, contributing writer. Spinelli is a seasoned independent writer stationed in Columbus, Ohio who covers people, politics, government matters, and beyond.
Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's leaders in Black digital news. Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
In separate polling news, Dr. Ben Carson does not fare as well nationally for next year's Republican presidential primary as he does in the state of Iowa, according to a recent CNN poll.(Editor's note: Another national poll on the Republican primary commissioned by the University of Monmouth and announced by Carson's campaign team late last month, has Carson in the top three of all declared GOP candidates. Carson is Black and an ultra-conservative Tea Party favorite and former John Hopkins neurosurgeon who is the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins in America. But some Blacks have called him an 'Uncle Tom' for his unabashed criticism of President Barack Obama, America's first Black president, including his alleged comment that the president is a "psychopath." Black voters though, are overwhelmingly Democrats, and many that are Republican support Obama, data show).
In a new CNN/ORC national poll taken on July 1 , Carson finds himself in fourth place at 7 percent, far behind leader Jeb Bush at 19 percent. Behind Bush, a former governor of Florida and a brother of former president George Bush, is Donald Trump at 12 percent, up from 3 percent before his recent entrance into the race.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee scores 8 percent in that poll with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 7 percent to round out the top five.
Presidential polling this far out from the national political party conventions schedule for late summer next year should rightfully be viewed with a very skeptical eye.
Guaranteed to change in the months to come as candidates and their succeed or stumble, early polls are like pre-game warm ups, they give voters a glimpse at how these professional political athletes are performing before the game starts for real.
Carson, however, shows favorably in Iowa, the state that holds its caucuses early on and is an indicator of how presidential candidates will fare in general.
A June poll performed by Quinnipiac University asked Iowa Caucus goers to weigh-in on the long list of Republican candidates for president, both declared and unannounced. Conducted June 20 - 29, the poll surveyed 666 likely Iowa Republican Caucus participants. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leads the pack in the Iowa Republican Caucus, but his support is shrinking among likely Republican Caucus participants, as six other contenders battle for second place, according to poll results.
Walker has 18 percent of likely GOP caucus participants, compared to 25 percent in a February 25 poll and 21 percent in a May 6 survey. Competing for second place at ten percent each are Carson and Trump.
Sen. Paul and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas both hit 9 percent, Bush topped out at 8 percent and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida registered 7 percent. Huckabee has 5 percent, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who set July 21 to make his announcement, could only muster 2 percent.
New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie, who made his announcement last Monday, is in 15th place with 1 percent.
Asked of likely GOP caucus goers if Carson has strong leadership qualities, 56 percent overall said yes, with 66 percent of self-identified Tea Party advocates saying yes, while his lowest rating of 44 percent came from those who identified as "moderate/liberal."
Is Carson honest and trustworthy or not, the poll asked? Nearly three-fourths [or 74 percent] said yes, with 85 percent of Tea Party goers approving. White, born-again evangelicals were in line at 74 percent with the totals. Those who said no ranged from 2 to a high of 7 percent. Among the seven categories of likely voters—Tea Party, Born Again Evangelical, Very Conservative, Somewhat Conservative, Liberal, Men, Women—not knowing Carson or having enough information about him ranged from a low of 13 percent with Tea Party and Very Conservative to a high of 34 percent with liberals.
Lots of Republicans are running for president, but not many Democrats. For Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the odds on favorite to be the nominee next year, leads [or is in a too-close-to-call-match-up, primarily against Bush]
all GOP candidates in head-to-head matches. (Editor's note: Clinton now has a credible contender for the Democratic primary next year in Democratic U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of New York, who announced his candidacy in May). (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
Last Updated on Saturday, 25 July 2015 05:24
Tamir Rice's mother fires her attorneys, community activists applaud the firing....The family hires Attorney Subodh Chandra to prosecute wrongful death lawsuit, Chandra is a former law director under former Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell
- 03 July 2015
- Kathy
Pictured are 12-year-old Tamir Rice and his mother Samira Rice, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Ronald Adrine and Attorney Subodh Chandra
|
From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's leaders in Black digital news. Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com |
CLEVELAND, Ohio-The mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, the Black kid who was gunned down last November by Cleveland police for sporting a toy gun at a public park on Cleveland's west side, has fired Florida Attorney Benjamin Crump and Akron, Ohio Attorney Walter Madison relative to a wrongful death lawsuit pending in federal district court before chief federal court Judge Solomon Oliver, who is Black.
Samaria Rice, Tamir Rice's mother, filed her request to the court last week to replace her current attorneys, while her proposed new attorneys of the New York firm of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady the Chicago firm of Firm Equity, and the Chandra Law Firm, of Cleveland simultaneously filed their motion for leave from the court to appear as new counsel in the case.
Before hiring Attorneys Crump and Madison, whom she now wants gone, Samaria Rice had hired greater Cleveland attorney David Malik to prosecute the lawsuit, whom she also fired.
At issue also are court appointed administrators of the estate of Tamir Rice in the wrongful death lawsuit, at least two of them put on or off the civil case thus far, and what monies they deserve to get.
And Samaria Rice wants Tamir Rice's biological father, whom she says allegedly did not raise him, to stop holding press conferences without her knowledge, the grieving mother said in her written request to the court for substitute counsel.
Activists said that they are pleased that Samaria Rice fired her current attorneys.
"She is Tamir's mother and is doing what is best for her son and her family, and we support the decision," said community activist Al Porter, the vice-president of Black on Black Crime Inc.
Kathy Wray Coleman, a local journalist who leads the Imperial Women Coalition and edits Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper, went even further in her assessment.
"These attorneys are often getting more money than the victims families in these excessive force police murder civil cases, and this is on top of what the court awards the administrator of the estate," said Coleman. "And in too many instances of legal representation in criminal cases, many of them malicious, they are selling out Blacks that they represent to kiss up to biased and unfair judges and prosecutors such as County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, who is pro-police and anti-Black,"
Coleman said that Attorney Madison should not be trusted, and had allegedly threatened activists with indictments on frivolous criminal charges by the county grand jury without a case in the common pleas court or even before a grand jury, and with the alleged intent of getting exorbitant and unnecessary monies for legal representation.
Judge Oliver held a hearing Tuesday morning in the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland on Samaria Rice's request for new attorneys, but the court has not yet ruled on her request, or the accompanying motion filed by her attorneys.
It is likely, data show, that her attorneys' motion will be granted since the lawsuit is in the early stages and new counsel has appeared in the case.
Subodh Chandra, of the Chandra Law Firm, which is among the new law firms seeking to now represent Samaria Rice and the Tamir Rice estate, is a former law director under former Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, who was ousted from office in 2005 by current three-term Black Mayor Frank Jackson, a former city council president. He subsequently ran unsuccessfully for county prosecutor, losing the Democratic primary in a crowded field to current County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, also a former common pleas judge.
Cuyahoga County, which includes the largely Black city of Cleveland, is the largest among 88 counties in Ohio.
Chandra sent out a press release two weeks ago after Cleveland Judge Ron Adrine found probable cause for criminal charges against the officer that killed Rice, and his partner, including murder charges against the cop that pulled the trigger. The longtime judge had refused then, and still now, refuses to issue an arrest warrant as required by state law regarding citizen's affidavits for criminal charges.
The chief and presiding judge of the 13-member largely Black Cleveland Municipal Court, Adrine claims that the criminal rules require a complaint from a prosecutor to issue an arrest warrant. An American-Indian by nationality, Chandra begs to differ with Adrine and says that in this instance state law governs.
The eight activists that filed the citizen affidavit upon which the judge found probable cause have since asked the Ohio Eight District Court of Appeals to order Adrine to issue an arrest warrant against the two cops, a filing in legal terms that is dubbed a petition for a writ of mandamus.
Attorney Madison, Samaria Rice's attorney until the federal court removes him, did not take the aggressive stand that Chandra took on the dispute over whether the cops must get arrested like Blacks typically do, and actually held a press conference applauding Adrine, who is Black.
End the end though, Ohio municipal court judges, that hear traffic and misdemeanor cases and small time civil cases, cannot hear felony cases like court of common pleas judges, and have jurisdiction only to hold preliminary hearings and to have such cases bound over to the common pleas court upon a finding of probable cause, or they can dismiss them after a preliminary hearing. And only a county grand jury can indict Ohioans, and other of course, on felony charges in state courts.
Community activists say that the state law relative to the filing of a criminal affidavit by a citizen for criminal charges allows people to bypass the prosecutors, while Adrine says that the criminal rules mandate a criminal complaint to arrest on a probable cause finding and only the prosecutor can file such complaints in Ohio trial courts. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
Last Updated on Sunday, 05 July 2015 16:27
Cleveland NAACP demands changes in consent decree between Cleveland and DOJ on police reforms, including barring police from policing themselves, bias free policing, and an inspector general that does not report to Police Chief Calvin Williams
- 30 June 2015
- Kathy
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under five different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
Last Updated on Friday, 03 July 2015 15:54
President Obama talks gun control, racism, Jim Crow Laws in eulogy speech for nine Black parishioners gunned down in Charleston, South Carolina, America's first Black president demands a conversation on race relations in America....Hillary Clinton attends
- 29 June 2015
- Kathy
By Kathy Wray Coleman is a community activist, legal and political reporter, and a 22- year investigative journalist who trained for 17 years under five different editors at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio.
Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
Charleston, South Carolina (Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's leader in Black digital news(www.clevelandurbannews.com)-President Barack Obama (pictured) delivered the eulogy on Friday afternoon for the home-going service of the Rev Clementa Picnkney and eight other Black parishioners gunned down earlier this month by suspected serial killer and White supremacist Dylann Storm Roof during a church revival at the prominent Emmanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The 21-year-old self-confessed killer said at the time of the unprecedented shooting that has taken the country literally by storm, that he was "there to kill Black people."
"Over the course of centuries, black churches served as hush harbors, where slaves could worship in safety, praise houses, where their free descendants could gather and shout," preached Obama to a “Hallelujah…”
Among other matters, the president also discussed Jim Crow Laws that were state and local laws relative to racial segregation that were enacted after the Reconstruction period in Southern United States that continued in force until 1965 in Southern U.S. states.
"The imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, and the resistance to Civil Rights for all people was wrong,'" said Obama, who political experts say will go down in American history as one of the nation's great president.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president was there too, an indication, said sources, that she is more aggressively, or more cleverly, courting the Black vote this time around and after losing the Democratic nomination to Obama, a two-term president, in 2008. She did not speak on the platform though.
America' first Black president touched on a number of other hot-topic issues during his 30-minute eulogy, that critics say had political undertones, and he said that racism is alive and well in America, and that gun violence must cease.
“We have to have a conversation about race," said Obama, before adding that while gun safety measures will not prevent every tragedy, that to do nothing about the impact of gun violence on American society is irresponsible.
The Charleston killings ring true the fragile relationship between police nationwide and the Black community, and the tragedy comes as police murders of unarmed Blacks are getting heightening media attention, including the police shooting death of 12-year--old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio.
During an interview with comedian Marc Maron on Friday Obama said that the use or misuse of the n-word by those that are not African-American in particular, "is not the measure of whether racism still exists or not."
Obama launched into a solo at the end of his eulogy, leading funeral goers in the routine Black funeral song of "Amazing Grace."
The president then read aloud the names of each murder victim in addition to Rev Pinckney, namely Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel L. Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson.
The killings have outraged Black leaders and Civil Rights advocates across the county.
The president of the NAACP expressed his outrage at the violence.
National NAACP Executive Director Cornell William Brooks
“There is no greater coward than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of scripture,” said Cornell William Brooks, executive director of the national NAACP.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 01 July 2015 00:37
Obama wins again as the U.S. Supreme Court makes same sex marriage legal nationwide, a day after upholding financial aid subsidies for Obamacare....Same sex marriage advocates applaud Hillary Clinton's supports of the court ruling, and they support her
- 26 June 2015
- Kathy
Pictured are United States President Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief. Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The U.S. Supreme Court in a split 5-4 decision made same sex marriage legal nationwide today, a celebrated ruling championed not only by gay rights advocates but also by President Barack Obama, the National NAACP, and most Democratic members of Congress, including Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat out of greater Cleveland who leads Ohio's largely Black 11th congressional district.
"Today we made a more perfect union," said Obama "Love is love."
The ruling, which puts to rest more than two decades of litigation, is another win for the president, America's first Black president, and comes just a day after the high court upheld financial aid subsidies under the Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act.
The Affordable Care Act, which Republican congressional leaders love to hate, is the president's signature universal healthcare law passed by Congress in 2010, and upheld as constitutional by the nation's high court in 2012.
Leading up to today's ruling on same sex marriage, the high court heard oral arguments on April Leading up to today's ruling on same sex marriage, the high court heard oral arguments on April 28 in four consolidated cases together titled Obergefel v. Hodges, the primary question before the court being the issue of whether same-sex couples enjoy a constitutional right to marry.
The liberal and conservative justices were split on the matter then, and relative to today's ruling, with Justice Anthony Kennedy holding and ultimately issuing the unprecedented swing vote in the case.
Thousands had converged on Washington, D.C. and protested in front of the Supreme Court for oral arguments, both advocates and opponents of same sex marriage.
The arguments, which went on for more than two hours, centered around gay marriage bans in the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee and Ohio that were upheld by the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio , a 2-1 decision of a three-judge panel issued late last year that created a conflict with other appellate rulings. That conflict between federal appeals courts made the case ripe to be heard by the Supreme Court of the land.
The Sixth Circuit, pursuant to its decision issued last year, upheld the trial courts ruling saying that the state legislature and voters in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee, and not the courts, should decide the issue of same sex marriage.
Obama had also said that "the equal protection clause [of the 14th Amendment] guarantees same sex marriage in all 50 states."
Former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former U.S senator representing the state of New York who served as secretary of state during the president's first term, and who announced earlier this year that she will make a second bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, supports same sex marriage, and the landmark decision just issued by the Supreme Court.
"I was proud to help launch Hillary's campaign," said same sex marriage advocate Jared Milrad in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's leader in Black digital news." She's been an advocate for equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and gender Americans."
Milrad is featured with his fiancee Nathan Johnson in Clinton's video for her announcement for president
Until today, gay marriage was legal in 37 states, and banned in 13.
About six in 10 of U.S. registered voters support gay marriage, polls show.
John J. Bursch, the lawyer for the opponents, said during oral arguments before the high court , and before its historic ruling, that same sex marriage is not a constitutional right and that it perpetuates children born out of wedlock . The attorneys representing proponents of gay marriage countered and told the justices that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, among other arguments. That denial of due process, they argued, creates an undue interference with the fundamental freedom of marriage.
Justice Kennedy asked tough questions on both sides and said that while he is concerned about changing a conception of marriage ingrained in the American way of life, he is equally uncomfortable with excluding the gay and lesbian communities from what he called "a noble and sacred institution."
The four conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas, the only Black on the high court, dissented.
Several of the more liberal justices asked the lawyers during oral arguments how extending marriage to same sex couples would harm anyone, including heterosexual couples that now enjoy the right to marry without discrepancy.
“You are not taking away anything from heterosexual couples if the state allows gay couples to marry," said Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the more liberal of the four liberal justices, the other three of whom are Sonia Sotomayer, Elena Kagan and Stephen Bryer.
Ginsburg was nominated by former president Jimmy Carter, Sotomayer and Kagan were nominated by Obama, and Bryer is a nominee of former president Bill Cinton.
U.S. Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and must be subsequently confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve. They are appointed for life.(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 July 2015 07:10
More Articles...
- U.S. Supreme Court upholds financial aid subsidies under Obamacare healthcare law, President Obama comments..... Obama's healthcare initiative was key in getting the endorsement in 2008 over Hillary Clinton from the late senator Ted Kennedy
- Boxing promoter and publisher Don King names Kenneth Miller president of the Call and Post Newspaper, Miller replaces the late associate publisher and editor Constance "Connie" Harper, and is a former editor of the Los Angeles Sentinel
- Landscaper harassed by 5 White University Heights cops at home of journalist and community activist Kathy Wray Coleman, the same 5 cops tried to gun Coleman down a week earlier per the directive of mentally unhinged Cuyahoga County Judge John O'Donnell
- Community activist and journalist Kathy Wray Coleman is the guest on the Art McKoy radio show on WERE 1490 AM in Cleveland on June 21 at 5:30 pm....The radio show call in number is 216-578-1490, and topics include racism, sexism, and police brutality
