Support NorthStar News - Make a Donation

video icon  Video of the Week

US to hold direct peace talks with Taliban

Search Past Issues

August 16, 2012

  • NASA Plans Second Mars Mission

    NASA Plans Second Mars Mission Human mission set for the 2030s Charles F. Bolden, Jr.

    More
  • An Innocent Man Tries to Rebuild His Life

    An Innocent Man Tries to Rebuild His Life Sedrick Courtney, who spent 16 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, has been exonerated as a result of DNA evidence.

    More
  • Jackson is Being Treated for a Bipolar Disorder

    Jackson is Being Treated for a Bipolar Disorder U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., is being treated for a bipolar disorder, officials of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., announced on Monday.

    More
  • Mississippi Has the Most Obese Residents

    Mississippi Has the Most Obese Residents Here are the states of fatness The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Monday that 12 states have very high obesity rates and that African Americans really need to step away from the table. The 12 states, where at least 30 percent of the adult population is obese, are: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. Mississippi, which is home to the nation’s largest black population, has the highest adult obesity rate.

    More
  • Fisk to Share Stieglitz Art

    Fisk to Share Stieglitz Art Fisk University has received a payment of $30 million as part of an agreement to share the Stieglitz Art Collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.

    More
  • FAMU to Provide Alternative to Band Performance During Halftime

    With its famous Marching “100” band prohibited from participating in this season’s football halftime shows, officials of Florida A&M University said they will provide alternative entertainment.

    More
  • Report: Schools Suspend Black Students at a High Rate

    Report: Schools Suspend Black Students at a High Rate by Frederick H. Lowe As students prepare to return to class for a new school year, a major university has released a blistering report that paints African Americans as poster children for out-of-school suspensions.

    More
  • Miss. District Runs School-to-Prison Pipeline

    Miss. District Runs School-to-Prison Pipeline The U.S. Justice Department on Friday reported that Meridian, Miss., operates a school-to-prison pipeline in which police arrested black students and jailed them for minor infractions such as dress-code violations.

    More
  • Drug Trafficking Explodes in 'Coup-Prone' Guinea-Bissau

    Drug Trafficking Explodes in 'Coup-Prone' Guinea-Bissau Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from GIN (TriceEdneyWire.com) – A massive drug trade in the West African coastal nation of Guinea-Bissau is worrying world leaders at the United Nations.

    More
  • Report: Sikh Temple Shooter Was a Skinhead

    Report: Sikh Temple Shooter Was a Skinhead Wade Michael Page, who shot and killed six members of the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin before turning the gun on himself, was a member of the Northern Hammerskin, one of the oldest, most-violent and most-dominant skinhead organizations in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

    More
  • Albert C. Freeman, Jr., 78

    Albert C. Freeman, Jr., 78 Albert C. Freeman, Jr., an actor and Howard University professor has died, university officials recently announced. He died Aug. 9. He was 78 years old.

    More
  • Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte, 78

    Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte, 78 Dr. Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte, a scholar of the African diaspora and black migration, died July 30 in a Maryland assisted-living center, where he had lived for the past two years after suffering a series of strokes.

    More
  • NYC Police Kill Man in Times Square

    New York City Police shot and killed on Saturday a knife-wielding man with a history of mental problems in Times Square. Police fired 15 shots at Darrius Kennedy, 51, hitting him at least seven times before he died.

    More
  • Defensive Player of the Year Kicked Off LSU Football Team

    Defensive Player of the Year Kicked Off LSU Football Team Last year’s Heismann Trophy finalist Tyrann “Honey Badger” Mathieu has been dismissed from the Louisiana State University football team for violating school and team rules.

    More
  • SuperPAC Calls President Obama a Bigot

    by Zenitha Prince (TriceEdneyWire.com) - A new SuperPAC has launched an ad campaign that accuses President Barack Obama of supporting racist behavior against whites.

    More
  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History August 16 through August 22 August 16 1963 ----- The U. S. Postal Service offered for sale on this date a postage stamp, featuring the image of a broken chain, issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

    More
  • Romney Picks Ryan, Creating an All-White Male Team

    Romney Picks Ryan, Creating an All-White Male Team Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, creating an all-white-male team, which looks like an anachronism in the age of diversity.

    More
  • NAACP Gives Ryan All 'Fs'

    NAACP Gives Ryan All 'Fs' The "Comeback Team" Is the "Thowback Team" (TriceEdneyWire.com) - U. S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has received consistent Fs on the NAACP Civil Rights report card, is Republican Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president.

    More
  • Police Release “Re-enactment” Video

    Police Release “Re-enactment” Video The video is designed to back their claim that handcuffed man shot himself in the head Jonesboro, Ark.

    More
Your Vote Counts
Your Vote Counts

Advocates Will Appeal Photo-ID Ruling

by Frederick H. Lowe
Voting-rights advocates said they will appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court a lower court decision upholding the commonwealth’s restrictive voter photo-ID law. If implemented before November’s presidential election, the requirement would disenfranchise as many as 750,000 mostly black and elderly residents.

Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of  Advancement Project, one of the organizations litigating the challenge to the law, called the law an affront to a core American value, which if implemented, takes us back to a dark time in our nation’s history.

“Attorneys from Advancement Project, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, and the Washington, D.C., law firm of Arnold & Porter, plan to file the appeal tomorrow  [Thursday] and request expedited review from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court,”  said Browne Dianis. The Advancement Project is a Washington, D.C.-based policy organization.

The website ThinkProgress.org said the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is split three-to-three between Republicans and Democrats. Joan Orie Melvin, a seventh justice and a Republican, has been suspended as part of a corruption investigation.

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, in a 70-page decision Wednesday, did not rule on the full merits of the case, titled Vivette Applewhite v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but instead limited his decision to the issue of whether the Pennsylvania legislature properly exercised its authority in passing the law.

“Petitioners’ counsel did an excellent job of putting a face to those burdened by the voter ID requirement,” Simpson wrote. “At the end of the day, however, I do not have the luxury of deciding this issue based on my sympathy for the witnesses or my esteem for counsel. Rather, I must analyze the law, and apply it to evidence of facial unconstitutionality brought forth in the courtroom, tested by our adversarial system.”

Simpson’s ruling followed a trial in which voting-rights advocates sought an injunction to block the law from taking effect. Pennsylvania is an important swing state with 20 electoral votes in November’s presidential election.

The Republican-led legislature said they enacted the photo ID law to prevent voter fraud, but there has not been a single case of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas Corbett on March 14 signed the legislation into law. Pennsylvania State Sen. Vincent J. Hughes said that Gov.Corbett, who served as Pennsylvania attorney general from 2005 to 2011, never prosecuted a single case of voter fraud while in office.

Pennsylvania is one of 10 states that require residents to produce specific types of photo identification before they can cast a vote that will count, Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, told reporters during a recent conference call. Weiser said the restrictions represent a significant rollback in voting rights.

If implemented, the legislation would have a disparate impact on African Americans, Hispanics, women, the elderly and other groups, Penda Hair, co-director of Advancement Project, told reporters during a recent conference call.

The Northstar News & Analysis, Inc.
Chicago, IL | 312.504.0223
Copyright © The Northstar News & Analysis, Inc.
Contact Us: info@TheNorthstarNews.com
Privacy Policy

My statusContact Us on Skype