Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), no stranger to passive resistance, was arrested Monday as part of a protest against the Sudanese government’s humanitarian policies in that nation’s Darfur region. Arrested along with Lewis during a rally staged by the Save Darfur Coalition were Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.). They were taken into custody after crossing a police line and refusing to leave the area in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington. Read the rest.

Ex-Klansman Apologizes for Years of Hatred
Elwin Wilson, who spent his early years making life miserable for Blacks, could have gone to his grave with the truth about ugly actions of the 1960s. But, in a stunning admission following a lifetime of baggage, he fessed up about a brutal act that has haunted him for decades. The former Klansman, who now lives in Rock Hill, S.C., says that he was the member of an angry White mob who in May 1961 attacked a group of students from a local Black college as they got off a bus to try and integrate a local dime store lunch counter. “Well, at the time, it felt….I felt like somebody going to play golf and getting a hole in one,” he told The Chicago Tribune. “I’m ashamed to say that’s what I remember feeling. That’s how good it felt.” Read the rest here.

FEMA Blasted for Aid Decisions
The government’s top emergency response agency, which has been under a microscope ever since dropping the ball with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is now being blasted for the way it handled housing aid after Hurricane Ike slammed the Texas coast last September. The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied nearly 650,000 applications for housing aid after Ike struck, ruling that nine in 10 claimants were ineligible for FEMA help. Many of those people who were kicked to curb by the federal agency say they qualified for assistance and that the ones making the decisions weren’t qualified to make such judgments. Of the more than 730,000 applications for money to help with home repairs, mobile homes or other housing services needed to counter Ike’s rage, FEMA declared almost 650,000 ineligible. It paid out about $371 million to 82,000 aid applicants, according to the Chronicle. One applicant told the newspaper that he knew of a musician and short-order cook who suddenly had been deemed an aid evaluator. “It seems to me that [FEMA] hired a bunch of people, basically just anybody, and put them on the street after one day of training,” he said. A woman told the Chronicle that child welfare workers warned her that her damaged apartment wasn’t safe for her children and a condominium owner whose unit was condemned by a city building inspector. “Both the woman and the condo owner told the newspaper that FEMA inspectors said their homes were habitable,” the newspaper reported. FEMA officials acknowledged that inspectors make mistakes sometimes, encouraging claimants to file appeals if they believe they were unfairly denied assistance. “Most times, [eligibility is] obvious,” said Timothy Cannon, a FEMA inspections supervisor. “It’s not a tough question.”