More Groups Using Net to Spread Hate

White supremacists, anti-Semites and homophobes have found an effective vehicle for spewing hatred and helping to recruit others to their often violent organizations, according to a new report by a Jewish human rights group.  The Simon Wiesenthal Center, named for the renowned Nazi hunter, found that social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are being used by hatemongers to perpetuate their rhetoric. Read more.

NAACP Calls for N.C. School Official to Resign

The North Carolina branch of the NAACP is demanding the resignation of a Burke County School Board who sent racist, curse-word-laced emails from his personal account. Between September 2008 and February 2009, Rob Hairfield fired off numerous emails that contained the “N”-word, taunted Black victims of the Hurricane Katrina, and showed President Obama as a big-eared shoe-shine boy. Read the rest.

Prosecutors release former Detroit mayor’s emails. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick bragged that he occasionally liked to ditch his full-time security, sneak out of the Manoogian Mansion to meet his former mistress and spent city money lavishly to globe-hop and lease cars, according to a Detroit Free Press analysis of emails prosecutors released on Wednesday. The jet-setting Kilpatrick charged $286,000 to city for his travel – $126,000 on his city-issued credit card since 2004 for trips to the Bahamas, South Africa, France, Jamaica, and the Cape Verde Islands – and multiple trips to Texas in his final months, records show. He and former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty sometimes messaged each other about whether he could get free of prying eyes for a rendezvous, which often happened late at night, according to some of the emails released as part of the prosecution’s authentication motion in its case to nab Kilpatrick for misusing city funds. But the motion contains some messages that reveal tension between Kilpatrick and Beatty on March 18, 2004, over Kilpatrick’s relationship with his wife, Carlita Ebony Kilpatrick. In a surprise move, Kilpatrick also sends a message while on travel that indicates how he’d like to “jump [the] bones” of a woman that wasn’t his wife or Beatty. Go here to read the details of the email.
U. of Mich. Black enrollment is up. Almost two years after Michigan had to give up on using affirmative action to increase college admissions, the University of Michigan has 12 percent more African Americans in its freshmen class than the previous year.  Other minority groups were squeezed out, though, as the White freshmen enrollment grew from 55 percent to 62.4 percent of this year’s 5,783 students. Targeted recruitment of underrepresented minorities was the key to the increase from 334 Black freshmen in fall 2007 to 374, said Senior Vice Provost Lester Monts. “Proposal 2 doesn’t prohibit targeted outreach,” Monts said of the 2006 measure that changed the state constitution. Though the change banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions decisions, it doesn’t apply to the university’s outreach efforts, he said.

General Motors Corp has stopped matching payments to employee 401K plans as the nation’s No. 1 automaker attempts to keep its doors open in one of the worse economies it’s ever faced, officials say. The move was made as it figures out its staff needs through November as part of efforts to conserve cash amid a deep downturn in sales, the automaker said on Thursday. GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said the company could reinstate matching payments into the 401K program if business conditions improve. GM has lost $51 billion over the past three years because of poor auto sales.

Hackers tap Sarah Palin’s e-mail account.

The real question is why Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin decided to conduct official state business using two Yahoo e-mail accounts.  That decision is now under scrutiny since the e-mail became  public by hackers who decided to take a peek. Get more at Pamela on Politics.