The head of the National Urban League Wednesday praised President Obama’s choice of Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.  The civil rights and social-justice organization said that the seriousness of the post meant that Obama had a responsibility to nominate a candidate with a history of protecting civil rights, particularly those of people of color. “Judge Sotomayor appears to be an eminently qualified judge with the intellectual heft, strong record and common touch that is needed in a Supreme Court justice,” Urban League President Marc Morial said in a statement. “We believe the President has made an outstanding choice. …[W]e have a unique responsibility to our constituents to carefully evaluate and influence important national issues, including nominations to the United States federal courts, which play a critical role in protecting the civil rights of African Americans.” He said that Sotomayor had demonstrated a “commitment to upholding civil rights, equality of opportunity and social justice,” and he urged the U.S. Senate to waste no time in confirming her. “We are pleased that the President took such great thought and care in this tremendously important appointment and sought the input of the National Urban League and many other diverse groups,” he added. “The result is the selection of a highly qualified nominee whom we believe will make an outstanding Supreme Court Justice.”

Although President Obama is still tight-lipped about whom he will choose to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, the public is getting a little glimpse of his thinking. The Associated Press is reporting that among those being considered for the nation’s highest court are at least five women and two Hispanics. Who are they? Read more

Sen. Jim Bunning scrambled Monday to clean up for his seemingly cold-blooded prognosis of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “I apologize if my comments offended Justice Ginsburg,” the two-term Kentucky Republican said in a statement. “That certainly was not my intent.” The former Major League pitcher said Saturday that Ginsburg, who recently underwent surgery to remove a small tumor, has “bad cancer. The kind that you don’t get better from,” the Courier-Journal of Louisville reported. “Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live” with pancreatic cancer. The 75-year-old justice was back in court Monday, less than three weeks after her affliction was made public. “It is great to see her back at the Supreme Court today and I hope she recovers quickly,” the 77-year-old Bunning said. “My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.” Bill Clinton appointed Ginsburg to the high court in 1993. She is the only woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. If Ginsburg or another justice were to leave the court, President Barack Obama would be responsible for naming her successor, who would be subject to Senate confirmation.

A lawsuit focusing on an alleged mystery about whether or not President-elect Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen has been tossed. The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would not hear the case and refused to intervene in Obama’s move to the White House. The case was one of several, fueled by Internet rumors, that have been filed over the issue. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has provided an Internet link to Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate on its website for months. Legal experts have said the case had little chance of success.

 See Also: Clarence Thomas Challenges Obama’s Citizenship

Ohio Veterans group to honor Black soldiers. The Dayton African American Legacy Institute will for the first time honor Black soldiers at an Armistice Day memorial  program. The program honors local Blacks who died while serving their country, reports The Dayton Daily News. “Each year, I see celebrations for our veterans, but I never see observances for the Black soldiers who sacrificed for us,” said Bill C. Littlejohn, Dayton Municipal Court Judge and board president of the institute. “African-Americans fought in every war from the Revolution to the present day. The group recognizes that for decades Black soldiers returning from war were ostracized.  “We want to honor their heroism and their perseverance,” Littlejohn said. The group will hold a reception and program this evening called “African-American Veterans: A History of Service and Sacrifice.” They will present medals they received from the government posthumously to families of deceased veterans and to living veterans, Littlejohn said.  . 

Laura Bush and Michelle Obama meet. First lady Laura Bush shared some tips with Michelle Obama on how to survive in the White House – particularly with young daughters, according to Reuters. As she gave Michelle Obama a tour of the mansion that will soon be her home. “It was a bit of a momentous day,” Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on a flight from Washington to Chicago about the Obamas visit to the White House Monday, less than one week after Barack Obama won a historic election to succeed President George W. Bush.  “I don’t know that I would characterize him as awestruck.” Read the rest here.
The High Court upholds “victims’-impact” evidence. By a slight majority the Supreme Court said on Monday that the lives of the victim can be weighed as evidence in determining the fate of the accusers. The justices turned down appeals from two Los Angeles convicted murderers who said it was unfair that videotapes of the victims’ lives were played for jurors before they decided the killers should die.  Defense lawyers had argued that this “cinematic evidence . . . designed to play on the jury’s emotions” should be excluded from a sentencing hearing in a capital case. In the first case, the justices rejected an appeal from Douglas Kelly, who was sentenced to death for the 1993 rape, robbery and murder of Sara Weir. She was found dead in a North Hollywood apartment after being stabbed 29 times. The justices turned down a similar appeal from Samuel Zamudio, who was convicted in 1997 of murdering an elderly couple in South Gate. In both cases, video of the victims were played for their jurors. However, Stevens wrote, “the videos added nothing relevant to the jury’s deliberations.”  Justices David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer agreed the court should take up the issue, but it takes four votes in the high court to grant an appeal.

.  More than half of the working-age African-American males in greater Milwaukee are not employed, according to a university report released Sunday.  Milwaukee’s Black male joblessness is second only to Buffalo’s among 35 large metro areas, according to the report from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development. But Milwaukee is second to none in the gap between Black and White joblessness, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The rate of African-American males, ages 16 to 64, without a job in metro Milwaukee jumped to 51.1 percent last year from 46.8 percent in 2006 – probably its highest ever, according to the report’s author. “What we’ve been trying to do in this community to address this issue clearly isn’t working. The numbers continue to get worse, not better,” said Marc Levine, founding director of the economic development center. “And given perilous economic conditions on the horizon, we have every reason to fear that conditions may get even worse.” For every age category, Black males in the four-county Milwaukee area had high jobless rates and big disparities compared with rates for White males and Hispanic males, Levine found. Within racial groups, Milwaukee residents had higher jobless rates than their suburban counterparts. Compared to Milwaukee, the jobless rate for African-Americans in the Buffalo area was 51.4 percent. Metro Detroit ran third, at 50.6 percent. But the unemployment rate for White males in Milwaukee was the third-lowest in the country, at 18.6 percent, creating the biggest gap by far between Blacks and Whites. In his doctoral dissertation for Cardinal Stritch University, Lenard Wells found that Milwaukee-area employers are more likely to hire a White man with a criminal past than a similarly qualified Black man with no record.

Justices hear voting-rights case. The Supreme Court Monday took up a proposed expansion of minorities’ ability to file lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act, the first of two important voting rights cases the court could hear this term, reports The Washington Post. The debate centered on “coalition” political districts, where minority voters make up less than 50 percent of the population but elect minority candidates with support from some White voters. A North Carolina court had ruled, as numerous other courts have, that an important section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that prohibits diluting minority power through redistricting decisions does not apply to such districts. North Carolina officials, acknowledging their state’s history of racial discrimination, are asking the Supreme Court to overturn the rulings, a decision that would allow lawsuits challenging “dilution” of minority voting strength in coalition areas. The court’s decision, while it might not come in time for this November’s election, will affect the redrawing of political lines after the 2010 census and is of particular concern to civil rights leaders and the Congressional Black Caucus. Nearly half of the caucus’s members were elected from coalition districts, and some worry that redistricting could threaten them or future Black candidates if states do not fear lawsuits over reapportionment decisions.

Blacks save less for retirement, survey finds. As Wall Street continues to show historic highs and lows, there is a continuing trend of Blacks saving and investing less than Whites, according to a survey released today. The difference is attributed to various social and cultural reasons, such as getting less exposure to personal finance concepts and advice. The poll by Ariel Investments LLC, a Black-owned investment management firm, and the Charles Schwab Corp. found that 62 percent of the Blacks surveyed own stocks or mutual funds, lagging behind the 82 percent of White respondents who said they do. Executives at Chicago-based Ariel Investments said Black stock ownership remains a weak spot as it has been throughout the 11 years the company has been sponsoring the annual survey. “We certainly haven’t seen the kind of progress that we had hoped for,” said Mellody Hobson, Ariel’s president. One marked change, though: The survey has shown historically that Black investors have expressed a preference for real estate investments over the stock market. This year that preference fell to a new low, with just 39 percent of Blacks labeling real estate the “best investment overall.” Their preference stood at 61 percent at the height of the real estate market in 2004. Blacks are on equal footing with Whites when it comes to accessing and enrolling in their employers’ defined contribution plans, according to the survey, which was based on interviews with Blacks and Whites with household incomes of at least $50,000. About nine in 10 of both Blacks and Whites who are working have access to a plan such as a 401(k), and of those about 90 percent of each group contributes regularly.

High Court denies famous inmate a new trial.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the journalist and former Black Panther convicted in the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia Police officer, will not get a new trial, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday. In issuing their ruling, the justices were silent, leaving intact an earlier appeals court decision that upheld Abu-Jamal’s murder conviction but granted him a new sentencing hearing. Abu-Jamal’s plight has gained international attention. Many foreign dignitaries have called for the death-row inmate either to be released or granted a new trial. Prosecutors claim that Abu-Jamal ruthlessly gunned down Daniel Faulkner, a 25-year-old cop, after the officer pulled over the defendant’s brother late one night. For many years, Abu-Jamal has argued that a thoroughly racist judicial system undermined his chance for a fair trial.Obama is outpacing McCain in the polls. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama appears to be stretching his lead against his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, in the race for the White House. After shadowing each other over the past several weeks, Obama appears be gaining some traction, as his flimsy 2- to 3-point lead in national polls is now a full 6 to 7 points in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. On Monday, the poll showed Obama ahead 49-43. “Over the past couple of weeks, McCain has absorbed a very tough, one-two punch,” says Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducted this survey with Democrat Peter D. Hart. “First, the financial crisis… Second, the debates. These two things have clearly led to a momentum shift in this campaign, where Obama has slowly started to [increase] his lead.” There is now less than one month before Election Day – a bad time to be trailing in the polls. “I think John McCain finds himself in a hole no candidate wants to be in,” Hart added.

Supreme Court Makes It easier for people to own handguns
The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday shot down the argument from D.C. officials that the city has a right to prevent ownership of handguns to protect residents from violence.

Several weeks before the high court delivered today’s 5-4 decision, ruling that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, District Mayor Adrian Fenty said, “I’m confident in our case, and our continued ability to protect residents from gun violence.” But that confidence quickly turned into disappointment. “I’m disappointed in the court’s ruling and believe introducing more handguns into the District will mean more handgun violence,” Fenty said. “But I want to emphasize that at this moment, our gun laws remain in effect. It may be several weeks before there are changes to announce. “In the meantime, I have directed the Metropolitan Police Department to implement an orderly process for allowing qualified citizens to register handguns for lawful possession in their homes,” he said.

By weighing in on the Second Amendment issue for the first time since 1791, the Supreme Court opened a door that has Black and inner-city leaders, anti-violence groups and gun-control advocates worried, at a time when gun violence is rocking major metropolitan areas nationwide. Opponents of more lax gun laws argue that the framers of the U.S. Constitution, in the Second Amendment – which says that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” – was referring to the military and not to individual citizens. But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the court’s majority opinion, said that the Constitution does not allow “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” But he noted that today’s decision should not “cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.” Joining Scalia in the majority decision were the four other conservative members of the court, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy. Dissenting were Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens, who wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.” The District of Columbia established its strict anti-handgun laws about 32 years ago. The case challenging those laws was brought by Dick Anthony Heller, a 66-year-old armed security guard, whose application to keep a handgun in his home for protection was denied. Heller won his case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C.