Cosby lawyer releases statement on latest rape allegations

In light of the spate of several women coming forward and accusing Bill Cosby of rape his lawyer, Martin Singer has released the following statement:

"The new, never-before-heard claims from women who have come forward in the past two weeks with unsubstantiated, fantastical stories about things they say occurred 30, 40, or even 50 years ago have escalated far past the point of absurdity.

These brand new claims about alleged decades-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous, and it is completely illogical that so many people would have said nothing, done nothing, and made no reports to law enforcement or asserted civil claims if they thought they had been assaulted over a span of so many years.

Lawsuits are filed against people in the public eye every day. There has never been a shortage of lawyers willing to represent people with claims against rich, powerful men, so it makes no sense that not one of these new women who just came forward for the first time now ever asserted a legal claim back at the time they allege they had been sexually assaulted.

This situation is an unprecedented example of the media's breakneck rush to run stories without any corroboration or adherence to traditional journalistic standards. Over and over again, we have refuted these new unsubstantiated stories with documentary evidence, only to have a new uncorroborated story crop up out of the woodwork. When will it end?

It is long past time for this media vilification of Mr. Cosby to stop."

Video: Obama, Don’t Use (Ferguson) Verdict as ‘Excuse for Violence’

As a grand jury debates whether or not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, President Barack Obama today — in an exclusive interview with ABC News — urged the residents of the city and all others to “keep protests peaceful.” Watch that excerpt below:

Queen Latifah's Talk Show Has Been Canceled

Production on The Queen Latifah Show, which is currently in its second season, will wrap by the end of the year. Original episodes of the show will continue to air on CBS-owned stations through March of 2015.

The host posted this goodbye on the show's Facebook page:

Post by Queen Latifah.

Steps President Obama is taking to fix Immigration System

Here's how President Obama is using his executive authority to increase accountability and fix our broken immigration system. Learn more at WhiteHouse.gov/Immigration-Action.

Al Sharpton rails against report that he owes $4.5 million in unpaid taxes

Civil rights leader Al Sharpton sharply denounced an extensive New York Times report that he and his companies are subject to $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens.

Racial gap in U.S. arrest rates: 'Staggering disparity'

When it comes to racially lopsided arrests, the most remarkable thing about Ferguson, Mo., might be just how ordinary it is.

Police in Ferguson — which erupted into days of racially charged unrest after a white officer killed an unarmed black teen — arrest black people at a rate nearly three times higher than people of other races.

At least 1,581 other police departments across the USA arrest black people at rates even more skewed than in Ferguson, a USA TODAY analysis of arrest records shows. That includes departments in cities as large and diverse as Chicago and San Francisco and in the suburbs that encircle St. Louis, New York and Detroit.

Those disparities are easier to measure than they are to explain. They could be a reflection of biased policing; they could just as easily be a byproduct of the vast economic and educational gaps that persist across much of the USA — factors closely tied to crime rates. In other words, experts said, the fact that such disparities exist does little to explain their causes.

Read more: Racial gap in U.S. arrest rates: 'Staggering disparity'

Cedric the Entertainer: Neither Side Trying to Find Truth in Ferguson

During an interview with the Wall Street Journal , Cedric the Entertainer discussed several issues in the black community including diabetes, education, and Ferguson Missouri on which he had a very interesting take. Watch the interview below:

Dwight Howard investigated for child abuse

Authorities in Georgia are investigating child abuse allegations against National Basketball Association star Dwight Howard, a center for the Houston Rockets who is among the league's marquee performers, police said on Tuesday.

Police declined to elaborate on the details of the Howard investigation, which followed a prior probe of the same accusation in Florida. Entertainment news website TMZ said Howard is accused of beating his 6-year-old son with a belt buckle.

"The Cobb County Police Department's Crimes Against Children Unit reopened their investigation into the allegations against Mr. Howard," said Dana Pierce, a spokesman for the suburban Atlanta police department.

Read more: Dwight Howard investigated for child abuse

FBI Warns Ferguson Decision 'Will Likely' Lead to Violence By Extremists Protesters

As the nation waits to hear whether a Missouri police officer will face charges for killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the FBI is warning law enforcement agencies across the country that the decision “will likely” lead some extremist protesters to threaten and even attack police officers or federal agents.

AUDIO: Bill Cosby Refuses To Answer Sexual Assault Questions On NPR

Bill Cosby remained silent after being asked on NPR to respond to claims that he allegedy sexually assaulted several women. Listen to that interview below:

The suicide letter sent to MLK by the FBI.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was called “an evil, abnormal beast” in an anonymous letter FBI agents sent the civil rights leader in 1964 in an effort to get him to commit suicide, a newly published, unredacted version of the note, shows. Readvthe letter below. Click the letter to enlarge.

What’s At The Root Of Black Mental Health Stigma?

According to Sa’uda Dunlap, Assistant Director of Social Work at Kings County Hospital Center, the stigma of mental health in the African- American community is a major deterrent for seeking treatment.

“I’ve been treating people for 6+ years and it is at the top of the list when I explore concerns consumers and families have about treatment. Many African Americans fear that they will be labeled “crazy” or will be “locked up.” As a clinician, I use my initial contacts with consumers and families to address fears of being involuntarily hospitalized by explaining the difference between typical mental health challenges and “being crazy,’ including the role of insight and self-efficacy.”

Family can be a great support system but they can also be judgmental and the reason for the stigma. This largely occurs in the African-American community. With roots grounded in religion, many view it as something that should not be discussed.

A recent podcast on Huffington Post’s website asserts that over 66% of Protestants have never heard a sermon about mental health. The lack of education in the church community and in the African-American community is a key issue for the stigma in mental health.

Read more: What’s At The Root Of Black Mental Health Stigma?

Can Ferguson's black leaders gain power next April?

In April, three of Ferguson’s six city council seats are up for grabs and African-Americans have a chance to end decades of white domination. Two-thirds of the town’s 21,000 population is black. But the mayor, more than 90 percent of the police, and all but one of the council members are white -- an imbalance that has stoked racial tensions in Ferguson long before Brown’s shooting in August.

Based on last Tuesday's turnout, winning council seats might difficult: there was little sign of an uptick in interest in local politics. Forty-two percent of registered voters in Ferguson took part in the highest profile race -- the election for St Louis County executive, which was a drop of 10 percentage points from the last such vote in 2010.

That frustrates Patricia Bynes, a local African-American official in the Democratic Party.

"Every time there’s an election we have to show up. I don’t care if we are voting what color the trash cans are, we need to show up," she said.

Putting up good candidates of its own will be crucial for the African-American community, added David Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Read more: Can Ferguson's black leaders gain power next April?

Why is Debbie Wasserman Schultz getting a pass on democratic thrashing in 2014 mid-terms

By now we all know that the democrats took a major ass kicking in the 2014 mid-terms. Many have blamed President Obama for this and maybe rightfully so. Many talking heads have said that this election was a referendum on President Obama's policies. As the President of the US, he is the head of the party so some blame goes to him the same way he would have gotten credit if the democrats had held onto the US Senate.

Many democratic candidates have been blamed for running bad campaigns or single issue campaigns. Some kept rambling about women's reproductive rights, another about income inequality, and another about Obamacare. But they didn't seem to focus on the many ongoing issues affecting voters in their states. Now even though all politics is local on a national level the democrats running for Senate, and the House of Representatives seemed to have no one coherent message. The republicans had one, and it was simple, Obama is bad. Yeah, they ran against something instead of for something but it was a simple message that was uniform across the states and worked.

The infuriating part is that the democrats had great things to talk about. Unemployment continues to drop, gas prices continue to drop, and the stock market is booming and the democrats mentioned none of that in a nationwide narrative. There was no one message that resonated across the country as the republicans had.

Democratic candidates in some states ran away from the president's policies, even attacked him on some issues and asked him not to come to their states. This resulted in losses for everyone that tried that strategy of distancing themselves from the president. No one seemed to get the idea that he could ENERGIZE and MOBILIZE the democratic base.

I'm wondering when DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz will get the blame for this? As the chair it was her job to get the message and a strategy out there like her counterpart at the RNC, Reince Priebus did. It was her job to get candidates to but into a comprehensive strategy. In my opinion, she did not, and that led to a huge failure on election night. She deserves a large part of the blame, and I'm wondering why she hasn't stepped down as chair or why President Obama hasn't asked her to step down?

Quite simply she did not get the job done and does not deserve another bite at the apple. I hope we as democrats don't intend to let her led the charge again in 2016 because, in 2014, she led us to republican control of both the House and Senate.

I'm just saying.

George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com

President nominates Loretta Lynch as attorney general

President Barack Obama on Saturday said he is nominating U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. attorney general, describing her as a "tough, fair and independent" lawyer. Watch that nomination below:

Should NAACP have acknowledged historic victories by Tim Scott & Mia Love.

First in the interest of full disclosure let me state that I am a member of the NAACP and a democrat.

The NAACP released a statement following the 2014 mid-term elections in which the organization focused on voter suppression which is a legitimate issue. But what some have focused on (RNC, Fox News, etc.) is the fact that historic victories by both African Americans Tim Scott and Mia Love are not mentioned. Tim Scott became the first African-American elected to the US Senate from the south since reconstruction, and Mia Love became the first black republican female elected to the House of Representatives. I don't agree with the politics of either Scott or Love, but in my opinion if the NAACP represents all people of color then their accomplishments in the 2014 mid-terms should be acknowledged. What do you think? George L.Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com.

Read the NAACP's statement below:

This election was not about who won but rather the citizens who lost the right to participate. This first election post the Shelby v. Holder decision resulted in problems in every single state previously protected by the Voting Rights Act. For 49 years, these states were singled out because they had a history of discriminating against American voters. The Election Protection Hotline we manned with other concerned organizations fielded over 18,000 calls yesterday, many in those same states previously protected by the VRA. As we move forward—it is imperative that our newly elected Congress work with the NAACP and our partners to pass Voting Rights Act Amendment legislation that assures that all Americans have the franchise—our very democracy depends on it.

16-year-old Plainfield NJ student Myani Floyd missing

[SOURCE] A teen from Orange who goes to high school in Plainfield was reported missing Wednesday, Plainfield police confirmed.

Floyd, nicknamed Nini, was reported missing by her mother and was last seen in Orange (NJ) on Tuesday.

Floyd was wearing a brown leather jacket, black boots and gray sweatpants when she was last seen and frequents the area of Cedarbrook Park, Emerson School and South Avenue in Plainfield, according to the report.

The report said Floyd is 5'5'' tall, 210 pounds, with light brown skin, brown hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information about Floyd should contact Plainfield police at 908-753-3360.

Ben Carson running for President in 2016?

When I first heard this I thought it was a joke. I checked my calender just to make sure it wasn't April 1, and sadly it is not. Dr. Ben Carson, a man who is a walking and living example of how book sense does not equate to common sense is now strongly considering a run for president in 2016. Rumor has it that he will officially announce his intentions in a video airing this weekend titled, “A Breath of Fresh Air: A New Prescription for America”. George Cook African American Reports.com. Check out an ABC News release on the video below:

[SOURCE] Yes, the 2016 race for the White House has already gotten started -- and it looks like Dr. Ben Carson is first in the ring.

Carson, a famous pediatric neurosurgeon and conservative political star, will air an hour-long ad introducing himself to the American people this weekend, an aide to Carson confirms to ABC News. Carson said over the summer that he is “starting to think about” seeking the Republican presidential nomination, but has not made a formal announcement.

The documentary titled “A Breath of Fresh Air: A New Prescription for America” will air in 22 states and Washington, D.C. The paid video will detail some of his biography and family life, including his rise from being born to a single mother with a poor childhood in Detroit to director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins for almost 40 years, known for his work separating conjoined twins, to potential 2016 presidential candidate.

Check out a promo for the video.

Why Pres. Obama may be better off with republicans in control of the House and Senate.

After giving democrats, an ass whupping of epic proportions in Tuesday's election republicans will have control of both the House and the Senate starting in 2015. President Obama will have a tough time getting anything he wants done, and he had better go to Costco and load up on pens for all the vetoes he will be issuing.

But as tough as all believe the next two years will be for our president he just may be better off with the republicans in control. Why you ask? It's really very simple.

He won't have to deal with weak-kneed democrats who ran from him at the first signs of trouble. They ran even though the president had limited options when it came to hot button topics like Ebola or ISIS. They ran from Mr. Obama even though the stock market is booming; unemployment numbers are dropping, and gas prices are at a four-year low.

He won't have to deal with democrats who not only threw him under the bus but tried to back it up, all to win re-election. Some didn't even want him to campaign for them (and still lost). With "friends" like that who needs enemies? In my humble opinion, President Obama will now have a better idea of which democrats have his back and which ones are waiting to stab him in the back.

Now President Obama will have to deal with republicans and both parties know exactly where they stand, you don't like me and I sure as hell don't like you. That makes dealing with each other a lot easier, and some things might actually get done.

Well, we can hope anyway.

George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com

Muriel Bowser elected mayor of Washington D.C.

Democrat Muriel Bowser fended off a challenge from two independents on Tuesday to win election as the seventh mayor in the District’s history.

With all precincts reporting, Ms. Bowser secured 53.9 percent of the vote to defeat independent David A. Catania, who took 35.3 percent and Carol Schwartz, who earned 7.1 percent.