February 21st, 2009
President has confidence of 2 out of 3 Americans. Two-thirds of the nation supports the leadership of President Barack Obama, if a CNN poll is correct. Released on Friday, the survey’s results also show that six out of 10 people support the economic stimulus proposal Obama signed into law this week. The first Black president’s approval rating of 67 percent is down 9 points from the last CNN survey weeks ago. “Since nearly all of the decline came from among Republicans, this doesn’t indicate that the honeymoon is already over,” says CNN spokesman Keating Holland. “Among Democrats, Obama’s approval went from 96 percent to 92 percent; among Republicans, it dropped from 50 percent in early February to 31 percent now.”
Kym Worthy keeps pressure on Kilpatrick. Don’t send out the Dallas welcome wagon for Kwame Kilpatrick just yet: The former Detroit mayor who just got out of jail has a tenacious opponent in Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. Worthy, who helped put Kilpatrick behind bars for corruption last year, asked a judge not to let Kilpatrick leave Michigan for job training, as Kilpatrick requests. They’ll appear in court next week when a court decides if the ex-mayor can go on with his plan to re-locate to Dallas and take a six-figure sales gig there. Worthy argues that Kilpatrick deceived the court when he said traveling to Texas was necessary for his job interview. She also says that the $3,000 monthly rent Kilpatrick reportedly plans to pay for his new home should go toward the $1 million restitution he agreed to give the Detroit finance department.
TAGS: CNN, confidence, Kilpatrick, Kim Worthy, Poll, presidents, Pressure, two thirds
August 19th, 2008
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College presidents: Let young people drink earlier
The presidents of many of America’s most prominent universities say it’s time to lower the drinking age a few years. The campus honchos, who hail from such institutions as Colgate, Duke, Dartmouth, Kenyon, Morehouse, Ohio State, Syracuse and Tufts, say that banning young people from drinking only encourages them to binge drink on campus, which the contend is much more dangerous. “This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.” But not everybody agrees. The activist anti-drinking group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) says that it only stands to reason that dropping the drinking from 21 to 18, as the 100 college presidents are pushing for, would only mean more automobile deaths. “It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD. The Associated Press cites statistics showing that more than 40 percent of college students reported at least one symptom of alcohol abuse or dependence. “One study has estimated more than 500,000 full-time students at four-year colleges suffer injuries each year related in some way to drinking, and about 1,700 die in such accidents,” the news agency reports.
Georgia man is jailed for beating dog
DeKalb County Police in Georgia say that Lawrence Peterson is one mean sucker. He’s so mean, they say, that he grabbed a broken table leg and pummeled his roommate’s puppy to a pulp … because it wouldn’t stop barking. In fact, the 58-year-old Peterson beat the 6-week-old pit bull so badly that the dog had to be put to sleep. As of Monday afternoon, Peterson was in the DeKalb County Jail. He was charged with one count of animal cruelty, definitely the wrong crime to commit in Michael Vick country.
TAGS: age, animal, beat, college, cruelty, drinking, euthanize, georiga, lower, madd, man, ohio, presidents, puppy, sleep, state