Detroit’s Kilpatrick Loses Bid to Keep Law License
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick lost his bid to keep his law license, which a judge revoked last year. Kilpatrick is serving a four-month jail term for lying in court about his extramarital affair with his former chief of staff. His attorney, Philip Thomas, said Tuesday that the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board decided it does not have the authority to override a judge’s order that snatched Kilpatrick’s license. Thomas petitioned the board last month, arguing that Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner didn’t have the authority to revoke Kilpatrick’s license earlier.

Black Online Community is Growing
More and more Black folks are getting online. A new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that in 2008 two in three African Americans were connected to the net, compared to about one in two a year earlier. Comparatively, three in four Americans overall were Internet users in 2008, about the same as in the previous year. Between 2000 and 2008, the proportion of Blacks using the Internet rose by 22 percent, compared with 21 percent among the total U.S. population, the study showed.

Kilpatrick hopes to save his law license. Attorneys for jailed former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick say they want to salvage his law license. As part of the bargain, in which he pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of justice charges, Kilpatrick agreed to disbarment, but noted that he was doing so “under protest.” Now, his attorneys are appealing the decision to the state’s lawyer regulatory board, The Detroit News reported Tuesday. “What happened was totally unprecedented,” Kilpatrick attorney Phillip Thomas told the newspaper. Thomas, a former administrator for the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, added, “There are lawyers out there convicted of manslaughter and very, very serious felonies that this doesn’t happen to.”  The state’s Attorney Discipline Board has given Kilpatrick until the end of November to file an argument as to why the disbarment order shouldn’t be finalized, the News said.