WASHINGTON (NNPA) – As much of America prepared to celebrate the election of its first Black president and began anticipating a holiday season with family, a dubious anniversary passed quietly inside the Lee State prison in Leesburg, Ga. That was Nov. 3, 2008, the 17th anniversary of the day that William Jonathan Mayo was arrested and charged with armed  robbery - only three credits shy of graduation from Morehouse College ....

July 27, 2004 – A little-known senator from Illinois makes a speech before the Democratic National Committee that propels him into the national spotlight.
Feb. 10, 2007 — Obama declares his candidacy in Springfield, Ill. The crowd endured sub-zero temperatures to hear his views on everything from health care to the war in Iraq.
Jan. 8, 2008 – Hillary Clinton wins New Hampshire Democratic Primary after she appears to shed a tear about the personal nature of the campaign ....

... Oct. 20, 2008 – Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorses Obama; McCain counters that he was endorsed by Nixon's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and over 200 retired military leaders. McCain is also endorsed by al Qaeda, according to the New York Times.
Nov. 4 – Obama wins 349 Electoral College votes. McCain wins 162. ...

After waging what has been hailed as the largest voter-registration drive in U.S. history, the community organizing organization ACORN has suffered a series of character attacks, threats and office break-ins around the country.
The group's Burien office was robbed of $300 in cash and other valuables Friday night. Local police told The New York Times it was probably a "run-of-the-mill-burglary."
The break-in was the latest in a chain of events set off by comments made last Wednesday night by Sen. John McCain during the last televised presidential debate with Sen. Barack Obama
McCain said the 38-year-old advocacy group "may be destroying the fabric of democracy" by  "perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country."
His charges appeared to touch on reports that, out of 1.3 million voters registering with the help of ACORN members, an alleged 10,000 – less than 1 percent of the total – included falsified registration cards.
The cards had been discovered by ACORN staff and turned in to elections officials for investigation.
ACORN spokesmen said that 13,000 workers were hired to staff the registration drive, and the fake names a few workers signed onto cards constitute fraud against ACORN, not the elections process.
"ACORN has a zero tolerance policy and terminated any field workers caught engaging in questionable activity," the group said in a statement....

The stories are almost comical: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, registered to vote on Nov. 4. The entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, signed up to go the polls -- in Nevada.
But no one in either presidential campaign is laughing. Not publicly, anyway.
Republicans, led by John McCain, are alleging widespread voter fraud. The Democrats and Barack Obama say the controversy is preposterous and is just political mudslinging.
In the middle is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, a grass-roots community group that has led liberal causes since it formed in 1970. This year, ACORN hired more than 13,000 part-time workers and sent them out in 21 states to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods.....

Predicting and Preparing for Natural Disasters

LAS VEGAS (AP)  It is not the jury of O.J. Simpson's dreams, but neither does it shape up to be his nightmare.
The all-White jury that on Monday will begin judging him and a co-defendant on robbery and kidnapping charges was culled from an initial pool of 500 who answered questionnaires, and the remaining dozens who were later quizzed in the courtroom.
Prosecutors removed two prospective African-American jurors with their challenges....

(AP) Rachel Lerman is the embodiment of melting-pot citizenry: Born in 1967 in Boston to a blonde, blue-eyed, Roman Catholic White woman and a Black man from Nigeria, she was placed in foster care and shortly thereafter adopted by a White couple and raised Jewish.

After college, she met Alex Diaz-Asper, a Catholic born in Miami of immigrant parents from Spain and Cuba. At 33, she married him, then settled down in Washington, D.C., in Adams Morgan, a "multi-culti" neighborhood where folks can find Ghana on a map or, at the very least, a Ghanaian eatery around the corner. ...

More than ever, graduating college seniors are signing up to spend two years in America's poorest communities as part of Teach for America, the nonprofit organization that recruits and trains top college students for teaching jobs.
The group saw applications jump by more than a third this year from about 18,000 to nearly 25,000.
Of those, about 3,700 are expected to step up to the blackboard as new teachers this fall. That's up more than 25 percent from the 2,900 who did so last year.
Several factors appear to be behind the trend....

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.
"We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people Saturday at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."...