Pres. Obama's New Year's Message

Sources: Whitehouse.gov, NY Daily News

Anwar Al-Awlaki Is Alive; Yemen Becomes New Terror Hot Spot

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"I'm Alive" Says Yemen Radical Anwar Awlaki Despite U.S. Attack


A week after U.S. and Yemeni officials said the radical Yemen cleric Anwar Awlaki may have been killed in a U.S.-backed Christmas eve air strike, a Yemeni journalist says Awlaki has surfaced to proclaim, "I'm alive."

"He said the house that was attacked was two or three kilometers away from him and he was not there," the journalist, Abdulelah Hider Shaea, told ABC News. He said he talked to Awlaki on the phone and recognized his voice from previous interviews.

One week ago, officials said the Christmas Eve attack had targeted a suspected meeting of al Qaeda leaders in Rafd, a mountain valley in eastern Shabwa province.

A statement from the Yemeni embassy in Washington said Awlaki was "presumed" to have been at the site of an al Qaeda meeting south of the capital city of Sanaa.

Friends and relatives of Awlaki immediately discounted reports the cleric was killed in the raid but the journalist is the first to claim to have spoken with him since the attack.

Awlaki is considered by U.S. authorities to be an al Qaeda recruiter through his popular website and was in contact with the accused Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan. American authorities also believe he was in contact with the accused Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Awlaki is "emerging as the central focus" of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest flight over Detroit.

Awlaki denies he is part of al Qaeda and told the Yemeni journalist, in an interview published in the Washington Post, that while he considered Major Hasan "a hero" he did not pressure him to take any action.

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The Menace of Yemen



The attack on Flight 253 shows the growing strength of al Qaeda’s Yemen branch. Bruce Riedel on al Qaeda’s latest training ground for terror and the new threat against American airlines.

The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of al Qaeda's Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year. Since merging with the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi Arabia last January and renaming itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it has stepped up operations in Yemen itself, struck into Saudi Arabia, and now operates on the global stage. The weak Yemeni government of President Ali Abdallah Salih, which has never fully controlled the country and now faces a host of growing problems, will need significant American support to defeat AQAP.

Al Qaeda has long been active in Yemen, the original homeland of Osama bin Laden's family, and one of its first major terror attacks was conducted in Aden in 2000, when an al Qaeda cell nearly sank the USS Cole. A year ago, the al Qaeda franchises in Saudi Arabia and Yemen merged after the Saudi branch had been effectively repressed by the Saudi authorities under the leadership of Deputy Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayif. The new AQAP showed its claws last August, when it almost assassinated the prince with a suicide bomber who had passed through at least two airports on the way to his attempt on Nayif.

The same bombmakers who produced that device probably also manufactured the bomb that Omar al Farooq Abdulmutallab used on Flight 253. In claiming credit for the Detroit attack, AQAP highlighted how they had built a bomb that "all the advanced, new machines and technologies and the security boundaries of the world's airports" had failed to detect. They praised their "mujahedin brothers in the manufacturing sector" for building such a "highly advanced device," and promised that more such attacks will follow.

Yemen has sought to repress al Qaeda off and on for the last decade, with little success. The Saleh government has other more immediate problems on its plate, in particular a rebellion among Shia Zaydi tribes known as Houthis in the north that has escalated in the last two months with attacks by the rebels into Saudi territory. The southern part of the country, which only merged with the north in 1990 and fought a bitter civil war in 1994 when it tried to break away, is hostile to the Saleh government and is looking for a chance to split off again. The economy is weak and heavily dependent on dwindling oil reserves, and the majority of the 23 million Yemenis are illiterate and poor.

The Obama administration has offered Saleh additional military assistance, and has encouraged the government to strike hard at al Qaeda hideouts in the last few weeks. The attacks have killed some AQAP leaders, but it is unclear exactly how serious a blow these attacks have inflicted on the group as a whole. AQAP has vowed revenge for the strikes, which it blames on an alliance between America, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Saleh government.

AQAP has also provided refuge for the Yemeni-American cleric Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki was in contact with U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas on November 5, 2009. In an interview with Al Jazeera released on December 23, Awlaki said he had encouraged Nidal to kill his fellow soldiers because they were preparing to go to Afghanistan and were part of the Zionist-Crusader alliance that al Qaeda says it is fighting. The next day, December 24, Awlaki was reported to be among those killed in a Yemeni-American strike on the AQAP leadership, but that is still unconfirmed. In claiming credit for the Christmas Day airline attack, AQAP also lauded the Fort Hood massacre and urged other American Muslims to emulate Nidal Hassan.

Al Qaeda has always found weak and failing states like Yemen to be its best staging bases and sanctuaries. Along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, Yemen offers an ideal location to operate with little outside interference. The president has been right to focus additional resources on combating AQAP, but the battle has just begun. If the Yemeni state becomes further destabilized, bin Laden’s cadre in the Arabian Peninsula will have more room to operate.

The attack on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight also shows that al Qaeda remains obsessed with striking the American airline industry, a target it has gone after repeatedly since 1999. If AQAP has now been told by the al Qaeda core leadership to take on the job, we can probably assume that other al Qaeda franchises in North Africa, Iraq, Southeast Asia and elsewhere have also been pressed to attack.



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Sources: MSNBC, The Daily Beast, Google Maps

"Why Am I On The Watch List?" Flagged!

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Sources: MSNBC, The Daily Beast

Fired Charlotte Police Officer Had Prior History Of Violence Toward Women

Fired Charlotte Police Officer Had History Of Domestic Violence


A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting two women in his patrol car had previously been accused of domestic violence, and in 2005 was ordered not to own or carry a firearm, according to court documents.

Court records show that two women previously accused Marcus Ramon Jackson of attacking and threatening them, before he became a police officer. Judges granted both women restraining orders, forbidding Jackson from contacting or going near them. One judge prohibited Jackson from carrying a firearm during the two weeks of the restraining order.

He wasn't convicted of any crimes in those cases.

CMPD hired Jackson in September 2008, and assigned him to patrol the Eastway Division in east Charlotte.

Police said they conducted a criminal and civil background check on Jackson, and were aware of a domestic complaint from 2003.

A court found him not guilty of violating a restraining order and his arrest record was expunged, police said. Until Thursday, CMPD was unaware of the 2005 incident.

Jackson, who is being held on $360,000 bond, made his first appearance in court by video Thursday. He asked the judge to unsecure his bond so he could get out of jail without putting up any money.

"Is there any way you can uplift the secured bond for sake of being near loved ones?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't do that," Mecklenburg District Judge Tom Moore replied.

A woman who told reporters she was Jackson's mother left the courtroom with three men after the hearing. "We don't have nothing to say - nothing at all...," one of the men told an Observer reporter.

On Wednesday, Jackson, 25, was arrested after two young women told investigators he had pulled them over on traffic stops and sexually assaulted them. He was on duty in a marked patrol car at the time, according to police.

The first incident allegedly occurred on Dec. 18 but wasn't reported until Monday. Police Chief Rodney Monroe said Jackson - wearing his uniform and driving his police cruiser - pulled over a 17-year-old girl, forced her into his car, drove to another location and forced her to commit sex acts.

CMPD began its investigation after a relative of the girl called police Monday.

As detectives investigated the allegations, Monroe said, a 21-year-old woman reported Tuesday night that she too had been assaulted by Jackson under similar circumstances. That assault, she said, occurred on Monday.

Police would not say what time on Monday they received the first complaint, or how much time passed before the second attack occurred.

"We worked the investigation around the clock with our Internal Affairs Division and Sexual Assault Unit," said police spokesman Capt. Brian Cunningham. "Within 24 hours of identifying Mr. Jackson as the suspect, evidence was collected, he was interviewed and arrested, and his employment was terminated. ... We believe that we acted in a swift and appropriate manner."

Arrest warrants obtained Thursday provide some details of the crimes Jackson is accused of committing.

Jackson offered not to write one of the victims a ticket in exchange for her performing oral sex on him, according to one of the warrants. Jackson and the victim did engage in the sex act, the warrant says.

Court documents reveal that Jackson's past included two allegedly violent episodes in Mecklenburg County. The first was in 2003 when Jackson, then 19 and a student at UNC Charlotte, was dating a 15-year-old Harding High School student.

The girl's mother sought a restraining order against him in May 2003. "The defendant threatened my daughter by telling her 'she was going to get hers and catch one,'" the mother wrote.

Jackson tried to hit the teen with a car and pushed her into a locker, according to the mother's complaint. He was later summoned to court after being accused of violating a restraining order, but was found not guilty in August 2003.

In 2005, Jackson was working at Off Broadway Shoes on South Boulevard and still studying at UNCC when his 21-year-old girlfriend sought a restraining order against him.

"The defendant grabbed me by the face several times, screaming and yelling...," the girlfriend wrote in her complaint. "The defendant hit me in the back of the head, slapped my face, pushed me down in the floor, forcing (me) in (a) walk-in closet."

The judge ordered Jackson to stay away from the victim and not own or carry any firearms. But no criminal charges were brought.

On Wednesday, Chief Monroe said "it would be naïve" to believe Jackson hadn't assaulted other women while on duty, and asked anyone who believes they were victimized by him to contact police.

Police spokesman Cunningham said Thursday no other women had come forward.

"We continue to look into Mr. Jackson's past traffic stops, in-car video, and citizen contact data for potential issues," he said. "This is part of our ongoing investigation."




















Forbes List Of America's Most Dangerous Cities...Charlotte Is No. 14!

To determine our list, we used Charlotte's Violent Crime statistics from the FBI's latest uniform crime report, issued in 2008. The violent crime category is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

We evaluated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas--geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics--with more than 500,000 residents.

No. 14 Charlotte, N.C.

(Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C. metropolitan statistical area)

Population: 1,635,133

Violent Crimes per 100,000: 721



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, CMPD, Forbes, Fox News, Youtube, Google Maps

Pres. Obama To Continue Terrorist Attack Probe After Vacation

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Obama Gets Initial Reports On Bomb Attempt

U.S. Security Chiefs briefed President Barack Obama on Thursday about missteps in the lead-up to the attempted Detroit jetliner bombing as lawmakers joined the White House in racing to find out what went wrong.

The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Jan. 21 hearings as part of an investigation to begin sooner. “We will be following the intelligence down the rabbit hole to see where the breakdown occurred and how to prevent this failure in the future,” said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, top Republican on the committee. “Somebody screwed up big time.”

Few questioned that judgment, even if Obama’s fellow Democrats rendered it in more measured tones. Vacationing in Hawaii, Obama received an preliminary assessment ahead of meetings he will hold in Washington next week on fixing the failures of the nation’s anti-terrorism policy. Administration officials said the system to protect the nation’s skies from terrorists was deeply flawed and, even then, the government failed to follow its own directives.

Obama spoke separately with counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who announced she was dispatching senior department officials to international airports to review their security procedures.

Despite billions of dollars spent to sharpen America’s eye on dangerous malcontents abroad and at home, the creation of an intelligence-information overseer and countless declarations of intentions to cooperate, it was already clear that the country’s national security fiefdoms were still not operating in harmony before the attempted bombing Dec. 25.

New VISA steps possible

The preliminary assessment is part of a continuing, urgent examination that officials said Thursday is highlighting signals that should not have been missed. One likely outcome, they said, was new requirements within the government to review a suspicious person’s visa status.

Officials are tracing a communications breakdown that would have had grave consequences except for the attacker’s fumbling failure to detonate an explosion and the quick response of others on the flight. Now Obama, like George W. Bush before him, is struggling to get the nation’s disparate intelligence and security agencies on the same page.

In the heat of hindsight, even Obama and some fellow Democrats are excoriating a system they thought was on the mend in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Democrats are joining a chorus led by Obama in declaring the government’s intelligence procedures in need of repair. Among them, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said that when the government gets tipped to trouble as it did before a Nigerian man boarded a Detroit-bound jet with explosives, “someone’s hair should be on fire.”

Instead an anxious father’s pointed warning that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had drifted into extremism in Yemen, an al-Qaida hotbed, was only partially digested by the U.S. security apparatus and not linked with a visa history showing the young man could fly to the U.S.

That was one prominent lapse the review is addressing, said U.S. officials familiar with the process. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public.

The State Department has said it followed the procedures laid out in regulations adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that require it to share potential threat information in an interagency process led by the National Counter Terrorism Center.

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In this case, the potential threat was in the form of the father’s warning expressed to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on Nov. 19, that Abdulmutallab was falling under the influence of extremists in Yemen. The information was passed to Washington the next day in a so-called Visas Viper cable identifying potential terrorists.

While meeting the standards set out in the regulations, the cable did not contain supplementary information, such as the fact that Abdulmutallab held a valid U.S. visa, the officials said. Although that detail could have been found by looking in other databases, officials said the review is likely to make the reporting of a subject’s visa history mandatory.

The State Department received no request to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa, spokesman Ian Kelly said. He said that in the post-Sept. 11 era, State normally relies on an interagency screening system to advise the department of visas that should be revoked based on terrorism-related concerns, although it has the authority to do so on its own.

The department’s visa and reporting procedures are being examined as part of the government’s review, Kelly said.

Other clues were missed too, such as conversations between the suspect and at least one al-Qaida member that U.S. authorities are studying now. The form of the conversations, whether written or by phone, has not been disclosed and it is not known whether U.S. officials intercepted them before the attack or found them later.

For the second time in two months leaders are acknowledging “systemic” security lapses due in part to the government’s failure to sift through and fully share intelligence.

In the year before the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting rampage in November that killed 13 people, a joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI learned of the Army suspect’s repeated contact with a radical cleric in Yemen who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops but did not relay the information about the major to superiors.

The government overhauled the intelligence system in 2004, creating the office of national intelligence director as part of it. The goal was to ensure that information pulled from a multitude of intelligence sources and sometimes hoarded by one agency reaches authorities who are capable of penetrating the white noise of information and acting on genuine threats.

“The act set up a process to transition from a ’need to know’ culture to a ’need to share’ culture, but the Christmas bomb incident is evidence that we have much work to do,” said Harman, who leads a House homeland security panel.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: “The Christmas Day incident revealed some serious failures in our nation’s system of security.”



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Sources: MSNBC, Politico, Fox News, Google Maps

TSA Agents Issue Subpoenas To Bloggers For Leaking Secret Gov't Info.

TSA Threatens Blogger Who Posted New Screening Directive


Two Bloggers received home visits from Transportation Security Administration agents Tuesday after they published a new TSA directive that revises screening procedures and puts new restrictions on passengers in the wake of a recent bombing attempt by the so-called underwear bomber.

Special agents from the TSA’s Office of Inspection interrogated two U.S. bloggers, one of them an established travel columnist, and served them each with a civil subpoena demanding information on the anonymous source that provided the TSA document.

The document, which the two Bloggers published within minutes of each other Dec. 27, was sent by TSA to airlines and airports around the world and described temporary new requirements for screening passengers through Dec. 30, including conducting “pat-downs” of legs and torsos. The document, which was not classified, was posted by numerous bloggers. Information from it was also published on some airline websites.

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” says Steven Frischling, one of the Bloggers. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said in a statement that security directives “are not for public disclosure.”

“TSA’s Office of Inspections is currently investigating how the recent Security Directives were acquired and published by parties who should not have been privy to this information,” the statement said.

Frischling, a freelance travel writer and photographer in Connecticut who writes a blog for the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, said the two agents who visited him arrived around 7 p.m. Tuesday, were armed and threatened him with a criminal search warrant if he didn’t provide the name of his source. They also threatened to get him fired from his KLM job and indicated they could get him designated a security risk, which would make it difficult for him to travel and do his job.

“They were indicating there would be significant ramifications if I didn’t cooperate,” said Frischling, who was home alone with his three children when the agents arrived. “It’s not hard to intimidate someone when they’re holding a 3-year-old [child] in their hands. My wife works at night. I go to jail, and my kids are here with nobody.”

Frischling, who described some of the details of the visit on his personal blog, told Threat Level that the two agents drove to his house in Connecticut from DHS offices in Massachusetts and New Jersey and didn’t mention a subpoena until an hour into their visit.

“They came to the door and immediately were asking, ‘Who gave you this document?, Why did you publish the document?’ and ‘I don’t think you know how much trouble you’re in.’ It was very much a hardball tactic,” he says.

When they pulled a subpoena from their briefcase and told him he was legally required to provide the information they requested, he said he needed to contact a lawyer. The agents said they’d sit outside his house until he gave them the information they wanted.

Frischling says he received the document anonymously from someone using a Gmail account and determined, after speaking with an attorney, that he might as well cooperate with the agents since he had little information about the source and there was no federal shield law to protect him.

The Gmail address consisted of the name “Mike,” followed by random numbers and letters. Frischling had already deleted the e-mail after publishing the document but said he had learned from previous correspondence with the source that he had been hired as a screener for the TSA in 2009.

The agents searched through Frischling’s BlackBerry and iPhone and questioned him about a number of phone numbers and messages in the devices. One number listed in his phone under “ICEMOM” was a quick dial to his mother, in case of emergency. The agents misunderstood the acronym and became suspicious that it was code for his anonymous source and asked if his source worked for ICE — the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agents then said they wanted to take an image of his hard drive. Frischling said they had to go to WalMart to buy a hard drive, but when they returned were unable to get it to work. Frischling said the keyboard on his laptop was no longer working after they tried to copy his files. The agents left around 11 p.m. but came back Wednesday morning and, with Frischling’s consent, seized his laptop, which they promised to return after copying the hard drive.

Frischling wrote on his blog that he decided to publish the TSA directive to clear up much of the confusion and speculation that was circulating among the public about changes that were being instituted in airport security procedures after a passenger unsuccessfully tried to ignite a bomb Dec. 25 using a syringe and explosive chemicals hidden in his underwear.

“We are a free society, knowledge is power and informing the masses allows for public conversation and collective understanding,” Frischling wrote on his blog. “You can agree or disagree, but you need information to know if you want to agree or disagree. My goal is to inform and help people better understand what is happening, as well as allow them to form their own opinions.”

A former federal prosecutor who asked not to be identified told Threat Level that the TSA is being heavy-handed in how it’s handling the matter.

“It strikes me that someone at TSA is apoplectic that somehow there’s a sense that they’re not doing their job right,” he told Threat level. “To go into this one reporter’s house and copy his computer files and threaten him, it strikes me that they’re more aggressive with this reporter than with the guy who got on this flight.”

Christopher Elliott, who is based in Florida and writes a column for the Washington Post, MSNBC and others, received a visit from a TSA special agent named Robert Flaherty around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Elliott wouldn’t discuss the details of the visit with Threat Level, due to pending legal issues, but he describes in his blog post how he got a knock on his door shortly after finishing dinner and putting his three young children in the bathtub.

Flaherty showed him a badge and said he wanted information about the source of the document he published. When Elliott told him he’d need to see a subpoena, Flaherty pulled one out and handed it to Elliott.

Elliott told Threat Level they talked for 10 to 20 minutes, but he refused to cooperate. Flaherty left but called Wednesday to remind Elliott that he had until the end of the business day to comply with the subpoena.

“I really don’t think they thought this one through,” said Elliott about the TSA tactics.

Elliott could face a fine and up to a year in jail for failure to comply, according to a statement on the subpoena.

The TSA directive was issued Christmas Day, the date of the attempted attack on Northwest Flight 253, and indicates that the directive will expire Dec. 30. The directive applies to anyone operating a scheduled or charter flight departing from a foreign location and destined for the United States.

It requires all passengers to undergo a “thorough pat-down,” which should concentrate on their upper legs and torso, at the boarding gate. It also requires physical inspection of all “accessible property” accompanying passengers at the boarding gate, “with focus on syringes being transported along with powders and/or liquids.” It also indicates that restrictions against liquids, aerosols and gels should be strictly adhered to. Heads of state can be exempted from the special screening.

Passengers are also required to remain seated during the last hour of flights, and cannot access carry-on baggage or have blankets, pillows or other personal belongings on their lap during this time.

Aircraft phones, internet service, TV programming and global positioning systems are to be disabled prior to boarding and during all phases of flight. Flight crews are also prohibited from making any announcements to passengers about the flight path or the plane’s position over cities or landmarks.

The TSA was embarrassed earlier this month after a contract worker posted an improperly redacted sensitive screening manual on a government site.

That document revealed which passengers are more likely to be targeted for secondary screening, who is exempt from screening, TSA procedures for screening foreign dignitaries and CIA-escorted passengers, and extensive instructions for calibrating Siemens walk-through metal detectors.

Five TSA workers were put on leave pending an internal investigation into how that document got posted.



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Sources: AP, Wired, Google Maps

U.S. State Dept. Changes VISA Policy

U.S. State Department Changing How Visa Information Handled, Source Says


The U.S. State Department on Thursday is directing its embassies around the world to include information on whether a person has a U.S. visa when they send special cables to Washington containing information on potentially suspect individuals, CNN has learned.

The order comes in the wake of a failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a U.S.-bound jetliner. The change was prompted by preliminary reviews ordered by President Obama of the terror attack.

The reviews are due to the president by Thursday.

A State Department official told CNN the information to be included in so-called "Visas VIPER cables" currently is not required by department guidelines. In the case of the attempted December 25 bombing, crucial information that the suspect -- 23-year-old Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab -- had a two-year multiple-entry visa was not relayed in the cables.

Although other government departments could have accessed that information if they wanted to search State Department databases, they were not required to do so.

The official, who spoke on background because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the department also is looking at the possibility of notifying airlines that a person has had his or her visa revoked. Currently, there is no electronic connection between airline passenger records and State Department records concerning revoked visas.

The official said one proposal is to put an electronic note in airline records that the visa has been revoked. This would prevent such a person from flying with a revoked visa.

Currently, a State Department employee would have to personally notify the airlines directly if he or she wanted to make that information known. The new approach would automate that process with an electronic notification.

Making such a change is important, observers note, especially when a person could be flying on an international airline with a paper sticker visa in their passport. Under current rules, an airline would not know whether that visa had been revoked unless it contacted the State Department directly.


Sources: CNN, U.S. State Dept., Wikipedia

CNN Sums Up Obama's First Year...Wall Street Loves Him!

CNN Panelists sum up President Barack Obama's first year and previews what his second year's priorities should be. Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! and help for Main Street.




A look at Obama's Economy at years' end 2009. Wall Street Bankers were the ONLY group that prospered. In fact 2009 was their best year yet!





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Sources: CNN, Google Maps

Black Voters Don't Believe Obama Ushered In "Change"

Poll: Obama Still Very Popular Among African-Americans, But "Thrill Is Gone"



African-Americans are extremely supportive of President Obama, but their enthusiasm appears to have dramatically dropped from earlier this year, according to a new national poll.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, released Tuesday, also indicates that Obama's presidency appears to have made blacks more optimistic about race relations, but less than one in five believe the new president has ushered in a new era of race relations in the country.

More than nine in 10 blacks questioned in the poll approve of the job Obama's doing in the White House, far higher than 42 percent of whites who approve of his performance as president.

But when asked how they personally feel about Obama's presidency, only 42 percent of black respondents say they're thrilled, with nearly half of those questioned saying they are happy but not thrilled.

The 42 percent who are thrilled is down from 61 percent in January, when Obama was inaugurated.

"African-Americans are still big fans of the first black president in U.S. history, but the thrill is gone," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

According to the poll, 51 percent of African-Americans say Obama's presidency has brought some improvement in race relations in the U.S., but only 18 percent feel it's the start of a new era. Another 23 percent say they've seen a real change in race relations over the past 11 months and 7 percent say things have gotten worse.

The survey indicates that three-quarters of blacks believe race relations will improve eventually, which is up from 49 percent of blacks who felt that way a year before Obama was elected.

"Whites take a dimmer view of Obama's effect on race relations, with a third believing that the new presidency has not changed race relations in the country and 15 percent of whites saying that Obama has made race relations worse," Holland added. "Not surprisingly, whites are less supportive of Obama, although for a notable number of whites, their negative view of the president is due to the perception that he's not been liberal enough."

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted December 16-20, with 1,160 adult Americans, including 259 African-Americans and 786 whites, questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points and plus or minus 6 percentage points for the African-Americans sample.



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Sources: CNN, Google Maps

Cyan Brown vs NYPD: Is It About Race, Gender Or Crime?

Is Cyan Brown a Killer?


When a New York homeless man was stabbed to death on Christmas Eve, a 16-year-old student seemed like a hero. Then she was charged with manslaughter.

The first version of the Christmas Eve killing of Thomas Winston, a homeless man from Queens, went like this: Cyan Brown, a beautiful, 16-year-old high-school student, was buying a snack at a fried-chicken restaurant. Winston, 29, and several other men began to harass her. Brown fled into the subway. When Winston and some of his friends followed her there and tried to grope her, Brown stabbed Winston in the chest.

The New York Daily News portrayed the girl as a plucky urban vigilante; Winston, who would die at a hospital, was a “subway thug.”

A second version of Winston’s killing emerged three days later, after Cyan Brown had surrendered to the police. “She’s no victim, after all,” the News chirped with the assuredness only a tabloid can muster after fully changing its story. A police source now said it was Brown, the teenager, who was the “main aggressor” in the altercation. Winston never made it to the subway; he died outside of the chicken restaurant. Indeed, it was Brown who fled into the subway, other sources told the News, after she leapt on top of Winston, who was lying on his back in the snow, and sunk a knife into his heart.

Brown was arraigned Wednesday on the charge of first-degree manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

I had these two conflicting accounts in mind—the heroic high-school girl vs. the cold-blooded killer—when I arrived at Queens Criminal Courthouse Wednesday morning. Cyan Brown’s attorney, Samuel Gregory, walked in a little after 9:30 a.m. He had been told that Brown’s arraignment hearing was indefinitely delayed. “I got a ticket for a show at 2,” Gregory said. “The Nutcracker. I was gonna take my kids. But that’s OK, I’ll do this instead.”

Gregory was tall with gray-white hair and a conspiratorial smile. He looked like Gary Busey if Busey had gotten his life together and become a criminal defense attorney. Gregory hadn’t offered quotes to morning papers, which I noted as odd, given that his law-office homepage was full of photos of his many cable TV appearances. “I don’t really drink anymore, but every once in a while I go out and have some fun,” Gregory explained. “Last night was one of those nights.” When the rest of the reporters arrived Wednesday, he would give them the Cyan Brown story.

We sat in a diner across the street from the courthouse, and Gregory explained his version of chicken-restaurant Rashomon. He didn’t dispute that Brown stabbed Winston in the chest—Gregory referred to an “unfortunate circumstance”—but claimed that she was acting in self-defense after Winston groped her, which he said Winston did both inside and outside the restaurant. “No doubt she was manhandled by this guy,” Gregory told me. “And he wasn’t done.”

So if Brown stabbed Winston in self-defense, what happened to her and her friends in the subway? “She was able to escape the seven or eight men with her friends and run for safety to the F Train,” Gregory explained, “where her pursuers attempted to drag her off the train, while telling her they’re going to kill her. She managed to wiggle away [from them], and the train doors shut.” As Gregory would have it, the real story of what happened at the chicken restaurant was somewhere between Versions No. 1 and 2, with Cyan Brown in the role of self-defending hero.

Back at the courthouse, Brown’s mother, Erika, and sister, Lynnea, were in a zombie-like stupor. Their Christmas Eve had come to abrupt end when a boy had arrived at their Queensbridge housing project apartment to deliver the news about Cyan. (In an irony, Brown lived in the same housing project that Winston had grown up in.) Erika Brown said she had been preparing a Christmas feast of turkey and ribs and lasagna—“no side dishes.” The sweater, hat, and gloves she bought for Cyan had already been wrapped and were sitting under the tree. “She didn’t even get a chance to open her gifts,” she said.

Cyan had been gone for 15 minutes—“Fifteen minutes!” her mom exclaimed—when the stabbing occurred. After fleeing on the subway, Brown had avoided the family’s apartment and hadn’t seen her mom for a further five days, until Dec. 29, when she appeared at the police station with Samuel Gregory to surrender. Erika Brown had spent a half hour with Cyan in the station before she was locked away Tuesday. Later that night, Cyan had called from her jail cell after 1 a.m. and talked to her sister for two hours.

About all the papers had offered about Cyan Brown was a photo in which she had the sturdy expression of a girl who could have been class president. I asked her mom what she was really like. Erika Brown said Cyan is the kind of daughter who is almost too forthcoming for her mother. “Too honest for me,” she said. “I’m like, ‘T.M.I., please!’” Erika said Cyan likes to read and dance. Cyan likes the rapper Nicki Minaj and has been known to call Minaj her sister. Cyan had often said that when she grew up she wanted to be an attorney, maybe, or a corrections officer. “My whole Christmas went out the door when they knocked on the door,” Erika Brown said. “Christmas was over for me.”

Thomas Winston’s Christmas Eve, meanwhile, was being pondered on the other end of Queens. The Big New York Fried Chicken & Pizza restaurant, near where the killing occurred, is across the street from Queensbridge projects. Big New York also sits directly on top of the subway station that Brown sprinted into on Christmas Eve. When I arrived at the scene after noon, Winston’s friends had erected a small memorial and poured Hennessy cognac onto the sidewalk. It gave the scene a sweet smell, as if a funeral were being conducted inside of a bar. “He died where the liquor’s poured,” one of Winston’s friends said.

The wake was running out of steam, the mourners had already delivered their eulogies to the press four or five times. Winston’s friends said he was a happy, goofy guy, despite some prior arrests the papers reported. Everyone called him Black Box. Winston had a 10-month-old daughter who was staying with his grandmother. According to a friend, Rasheen Harmon, Winston had been living at a homeless shelter in the Bronx. The specter of poverty hung over everything. When I asked Harmon if I could call him with more questions, he said, “You can call me if there’s a job opening, too.”

Winston’s friends were still flummoxed by the first version of the killing that circulated in the papers. That was the version which had Harmon as a would-be subway attacker or rapist. “When you read that he was a rapist, you think, Good for her. She did what she had to do. She defended herself,” said a friend of Winston’s man who was wearing a Yankees cap and sneakers but wouldn’t give his name. “But when you know the truth, you’re like”—he let out a stream of expletives.

Until the evidence comes out, a case like this was a muddle. I walked down the flight of subway stairs Cyan Brown had run down on Christmas Eve and tried to imagine the scene. Why was Brown fleeing? An 18-year-old woman who gave her name only as Rebekah and said she was a friend of Winston’s followed me.

After thinking about the evidence, I asked Rebekah, what if we stipulate that Winston didn’t chase Brown into the subway? What if we’re left with an allegedly nice girl and an allegedly nice guy, and the question of whether the guy might have attacked the girl, or she might have attacked him. What would the neighborhood think of that? The girl paused for a moment and then said, “To be honest, nobody knows what to say or do right now because it happened so fast.”



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Sources: NY Daily News, The Daily Beast, MSNBC, Google Maps

NC Senator Opposes DNC's Decision To Eliminate Superdelegates

NC Senator Dan Blue Opposed Ending Superdelegates


NC State Sen. Dan Blue offered a dissenting vote on a commission studying how the Democratic Party nominates its presidential candidate.

The Fix's Chris Cillizza reports that the Democratic Change Commission has recommended the party eliminate its Superdelegates, who can vote for any candidate regardless of how a primary election turned out. The superdelgates were mostly irrelevant until last year's hotly contested primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Clinton urged superdelegates to choose her and the fight dragged on well into the primary season. North Carolina had a rare important presidential primary last year.

North Carolina state Sen. Dan Blue, a member of the Commission, offered a dissenting voice on a call announcing the proposed changes:

"There is no escape when something unforeseen occurs," said Blue of the potential consequences of eliminating unpledged delegates.







Democratic Commission Recommends Elimination Of Superdelegates


Eighteen months removed from a protracted presidential primary fight, a Democratic group convened to examine the nominating process has recommended that so-called superdelegates be eliminated.

The Democratic Change Commission, which was formed last August by President Barack Obama, plans to recommend that superdelegates -- also known as unpledged delegates -- will be required to vote in accordance with the electoral performance of the state from which they represent.

"We need to show deference to what the party members in our state have done," said Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, one of the co-chairs of the commission.

The elimination of free-agent superdelegates comes in response to the outcry from many within the party during the 2008 primary fight when then Sen. Hillary Clinton made the argument to unpledged delegates that it was their responsibility to not vote as their state had voted but rather cast their votes for the candidate they thought would be the best person to represent the party.

Obama allies insisted this was an attempt to suborn the will of the people. Clinton loyalists shot back that the creation of superdelegates was for just such a purpose -- a close race in which the will of the people is very closely divided.

The creation of superdelegates -- members of the Democratic National Committee, House Members and Senators and former party leaders -- in the early 1980s was designed to give the establishment of the Democratic party more say in the identity of the nominee. Since their creation, superdelegates had never been a serious factor in a presidential race until the 2008 contest.

The Commission included several Obama loyalists including Jeff Berman, who spearheaded the delegate operation for the campaign, and David Plouffe who managed the then Illinois Senator's candidacy.

North Carolina state Sen. Dan Blue, a member of the Commission, offered a dissenting voice on a call announcing the proposed changes. "There is no escape when something unforeseen occurs," said Blue of the potential consequences of eliminating unpledged delegates.

The Change Commission recommendations will now go before the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee.





(Politico) Dems Move To Sack Superdelegates


Democrats are moving to eliminate from the party's national convention the Superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders whose role in the presidential nominating process came under intense scrutiny in last year’s closely-contested primary.

Those Superdelegates provided, for a time, a lifeline to then-Sen. Hillary Clinton's flagging campaign, and the effective end of their independent role would be a major step toward reshaping the Democratic Party — and its internal politics — in President Barack Obama's image.

A group created by the Democratic National Committee to examine the role of the superdelegates, the Democratic Change Commission — steered by the Obama campaign's top delegate counter, Jeff Berman — held a conference call Wednesday to recommend that these unpledged delegates cast their votes based upon the electoral results of their states rather than on personal preference.

The recommendations of the commission, co-chaired by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, will now go before the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee.

While the elimination of Superdelegates isn’t likely to have any impact in 2012, when the party is all but certain to renominate President Obama, commission members say it will help democratize future presidential primaries.

"I think the goal here was to get away from what felt like almost a disenfranchisement at some point in time to the voters and to the caucus members in the various states,” McCaskill said.

The move follows an epic 2008 Democratic primary process in which all 50 states and the territories cast votes in a race that was effectively deadlocked between Obama and Clinton. For a time, there was grave worry among some in the party that the superdelegates, who were not bound by their states’ votes, could decide the nomination in favor of a candidate who received fewer elected delegates from primary voters and caucus-goers.



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Sources: Washington Post, The Fix, Democratic Change Commission, Politico, McClatchy Newspapers, Under The Dome, NC General Assembly, Youtube, Google Maps

NYPD Prepares For Safe, Star-Studded New Year's Celebrations

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New Year's Eve Celebration In Times Square: Security Tight As New York City Is Set To Have a Ball


Expect a bright "blue moon" and a big blue wall of security tonight when revelers pack Times Square for the globe's greatest annual New Year's Eve celebration.

"I can't think of a better place and a safer place to be in the whole wide world," Mayor Bloomberg said Wednesday. "I'm going to be here with my family, and I hope you're going to be here."

The first decade of the new millennium ends with security concerns after last week's failed airplane bombing and yesterday's scare involving a van abandoned in Times Square.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said New York was still considered the No. 1 target of terrorists - and law enforcement would respond accordingly.

The hundreds of thousands of partyers expected on a night with temperatures in the 30s and a serious threat of rain are barred from bringing backpacks, large bags and alcohol.

A large number of uniformed cops will appear throughout Times Square, along with less obvious anti-terrorist measures like detectors for radiation and biological agents.

In addition to the NYPD presence, the FBI will deploy more than 100 agents throughout the night. The Joint Terrorism Task Force, involving the FBI and NYPD, will establish a command center for the evening.

The National Guard will provide security at Penn Station, PATH train stations and LaGuardia and Kennedy airports.

"We take every threat seriously," said Bloomberg, who also revealed his resolutions for 2010.

"I'm going to try to learn to speak a little bit better Spanish," said Bloomberg, who starts his third term on Jan. 1. "My mother suggests I also learn to improve my English.

"So, we'll work on both of those."

The festivities, along with the usual confetti and falling Waterford crystal ball in Times Square, will feature a rare blue moon this year - and no, it's not actually blue.

The blue moon is the second full moon in a single month, a celestial event that happens about every 21/2 years.

"If you're in Times Square, you'll see the full moon right above you," said Jack Horkheimer, host of the PBS naked-eye astronomy show "Star Gazer."

Performing live in Times Square are the cast of the Broadway show "Hair," rockers Daughtry and the Bronx's own Jennifer Lopez.

For the first time, revelers around the globe can join in the Times Square fun with a live Webcast starting at 5:50 p.m. today and running until 12:20 a.m. tomorrow.




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Sources: NY Daily News, MSNBC, NYPD.com, Zimbio, Planetgreen.discovery.com, Google Maps

Charlotte Police Officer Fired! Charged With Sexual Assault!

CMPD Officer Charged In 2 Sex Assaults


Police said Wednesday night that one of their own officers pulled over two young women in separate incidents while on duty and sexually assaulted them in his patrol car.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe said "it would be naive" to believe that the officer hadn't assaulted other women. He released the officer's photo at a news conference, he said, in hopes any other potential victims would come forward.

Marcus Jackson, 25, who has been an officer in CMPD's Eastway Division since 2008, was arrested by detectives Wednesday night at police headquarters after an investigation that began Monday.

He's charged with three counts of sexual battery, second-degree sex offense, extortion, kidnapping, indecent exposure and two counts of felonious restraint.

Monroe said Jackson was "terminated, effective immediately."

"To have one of our own involved in such a despicable act is not only a violation of the public trust, but a complete dishonor to this officer and every officer that wears this badge," Monroe said. "We work very hard to gain and maintain the public's trust, and this knocks us backward."

Both of the reported incidents happened between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. in the Eastway Division in east Charlotte.

The first was on Dec. 18. Monroe said Jackson - wearing his uniform and driving his marked patrol car - pulled over a 17-year-old girl, forced her into his car, drove to another location and committed sex acts.

A relative of the girl called police Monday night and officers began an investigation.

As detectives were collecting information, Monroe said, a 21-year-old woman reported Tuesday night that she'd been assaulted by Jackson under similar circumstances on Monday.

Monroe said Jackson didn't have any criminal record.

Said Mayor Anthony Foxx: "It is profoundly disappointing when one of our police officers engages in such heinous conduct. It obscures the fact that the vast majority of our officers are dedicated, hard-working people."

Earlier this year, former Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers Gerald Holas and Jason Ross were each sentenced to nine years in prison for conspiring to distribute cocaine.

At the time, Federal authorities said those sentences were the longest imposed on Charlotte law enforcement officers they could recall.




Forbes List Of America's Most Dangerous Cities...Charlotte Is No. 14!

To determine our list, we used Charlotte's Violent Crime statistics from the FBI's latest uniform crime report, issued in 2008. The violent crime category is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

We evaluated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas--geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics--with more than 500,000 residents.

No. 14 Charlotte, N.C.

(Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C. metropolitan statistical area)

Population: 1,635,133

Violent Crimes per 100,000: 721



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, Fox News, Forbes, Youtube, Google Maps