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Blog and Media Roundup - Thursday, November 11, 2010; News Roundup
Topic Started: Nov 11 2010, 05:19 AM (302 Views)
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http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story_news_durham/10247394/article--10-Year-Plan--an-issue-for-Council?instance=main_article

'10-Year Plan' an issue for Council
The Herald Sun
11.10.10 - 10:27 pm
Proper leader of homelessness effort is debated

By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- City Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden has blocked a push to have the county's top mental-health agency, the Durham Center, take the lead in coordinating local anti-homelessness efforts.

During a joint meeting of city and county officials this week, Cole-McFadden parried the idea by suggesting that the city take the lead instead. She favors establishing a "mayor's special initiative" to work on obtaining grants, deal with nonprofits and other service providers, and run public outreach efforts.

Cole-McFadden's move -- supported by a soon-to-be-ex-Durham Affordable Housing Coalition staffer who's worked on the so-called "10 Year Plan to End Homelessness" -- took City Manager Tom Bonfield, County Manager Mike Ruffin and other officials by surprise.

Her written counterproposal "was one we had not seen, and had not discussed," Ruffin said.

"I felt like I was moving forward into backward land," added City Councilman Eugene Brown.

But other elected officials joined Cole-McFadden in saying they weren't sold on the Durham Center-led management structure Ruffin and Bonfield had proposed.

They instructed the managers to confer with Cole-McFadden and County Commissioners Chairman Michael Page about the two governments' options.

The governments need some sort of fallback plan because Ruffin has been dead-set against continuing to employ the nonprofit affordable housing coalition for the job.

He signaled this spring that he doubted the group's competence, citing as reasons missed reporting deadlines and the group's inability to quell infighting among area housing providers.

Because of his stance, the city and county are ending the coalition's 10-Year Plan contract Nov. 18.

The two coalition employees who work on the program, Lanea Foster and Lloyd Schmeidler, have already received layoff notices, coalition Interim Executive Director Lorisa Seibel said.

Ruffin and Bonfield favor putting the Durham Center in charge of the 10-Year Plan because the agency already has lots of experience in coordinating the work of nongovernment care providers.

They suggested giving the city's Community Development Department the job of writing an annual grant application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for anti-homelessness funds. Community Development and the Durham Center would each have to add an employee to handle their new responsibilities.

A job description for the city post identified Foster as the likely hire for that job. She and Schmeidler are wrapping up a $786,725 grant application to HUD that represents the housing coalition's final 10-Year Plan chore, Seibel said.

Foster, however, has been talking to Cole-McFadden on the side. She said Wednesday that she helped the councilwoman write her counterproposal.

Cole-McFadden herself said she had "worked closely with Lanea, who does all the research I need" on anti-homelessness policy.

Foster's current boss apparently was just as surprised as the two managers. "I haven't read that report," Seibel said, referring to the Cole-McFadden counterproposal. "It was not done in my office."

Cole-McFadden said she considered the managers' Durham Center proposal "limited in detail," and flawed because the center itself is a major service provider to the homeless. Putting it in charge, she said, would blur the lines of accountability.

She also said she didn't think the county board that oversees the Durham Center could provide sufficient oversight. The problems the homeless face are different enough from those of other center clients that they require people keeping watch who "have a passion for" that specific issue, she said.

Cole-McFadden's proposal would relegate the Durham Center to a supporting role, subordinate to a city-hired project director. An organization chart envisioned needing up to six employees to run the program, not the two the housing coalition has used and that the managers had proposed.

It suggested filling a couple of those positions with Americorps volunteers. And Cole-McFadden said she thinks officials would "be able to work something out with the resources we have," avoiding large additional expenses.

She added that a mayor-led effort against homelessness is the approach the Obama administration seems to prefer, and the approach that's worked in cities like Denver.

But Brown -- whose twin brother Charlie is a member of the Denver City Council and former member of its anti-homelessness commission -- said the debate in Denver came down to funding once its mayor, John Hickenlooper, embraced the cause.

In fact, "Denver spent a helluva lot of money" on anti-homelessness programs, an approach that "became controversial" once it became obvious Hickenlooper -- now Colorado's governor-elect -- was squeezing public safety and other services to pay for the effort, Eugene Brown said.
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http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story_news_durham/10246670/article-Daylight-shooting-at-strip-mall?instance=main_article

Daylight shooting at strip mall
The Herald Sun
11.10.10 - 09:29 pm
Speical to The Herald-Sun | Julian Harrison<br> Police gather outside the Lighthouse Food Mart in the 2900 block of Holloway Street early Wednesday evening. Two men were shot in the parking lot at around 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Two shot, hospitalized in parking lot; children at nearby daycare OK

By KEITH UPCHURCH

kupchurch@heraldsun.com; 419-6612

DURHAM -- Two men were wounded in gunfire outside an East Durham convenience store Wednesday afternoon, police and the store manager said.

Children at a nearby daycare center in the same strip mall were never in danger, said a woman who answered the daycare's phone and declined to give a name.

Anthony Kamau, manager of the Lighthouse Food Mart at 2944 Holloway St., said that after the shootings, one of the men entered the store holding a gun, bleeding from his stomach, and asked to use a telephone.

Kamau said the other man was lying on the ground outside the store, bleeding from his head.

He said both men were transported from the scene in separate ambulances.

The shootings occurred about 5 p.m., Kamau said. He said he didn't see the gunfire, but heard "three or four shots" while working in the store.

After the shootings, he said, a man who apparently wasn't involved in the gunfire entered the store and asked him to call police. About 30 seconds later, he said, the gunman bleeding from his stomach came inside and also asked him to call 911.

Kamau said he dialed 911, then handed the phone to the first man, who talked to emergency communicators.

After the call, the gunman went outside and police arrived. Kamau said the gunman didn't drop his weapon until police pointed a gun at him.

He described both of the wounded men as young and black. He said he didn't know them.

Kamau, who has managed the store for nine years, said there were about five customers in the store at the time of the shootings.

The strip mall where the shootings occurred appears to house at least a checking cashing store, a laundry and the daycare -- The Bundle of Joy Learning Center.

Police spokeswoman Kammie Michael said no charges had been filed Wednesday evening and investigators were trying to determine the circumstances surrounding the shootings.

Anyone with information is asked to call Investigator Smith at (919) 560-4440 or CrimeStoppers at (919) 683-1200.

CrimeStoppers pays cash rewards for information leading to arrests in felony cases and callers never have to identify themselves.

Staff writer Mark Donovan contributed to this report.
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http://reason.com/blog/2010/11/10/this-week-in-innocence-why-the

This Week in Innocence: Why the Hell is Kenny Hulshoff Still Practicing Law?

Radley Balko | November 10, 2010

Last week, Missouri Circuit Court Judge Judge Warren McElwain declared Dale Helmig innocent of killing his mother in 1993. Helmig was convicted in 1996. In his ruling, McElwain declared Helmig to be "the victim of a fundamental miscarriage of justice."

Many factors contributed to Helmig's conviction, including an inept public defender, false police testimony, and snitch testimony from inmates. But McElwain went out of his way to criticize the behavior of former Missouri prosecutor Kenny Hulshoff.

In his opinion, McElwain cited numerous instances where either Hulshof or Schollmeyer presented testimony that was later shown to be false and that they should have known was false. One section is titled “Kenny Hulshof knew or should have known that the testimony presented was false that Dale Helmig tacitly admitted killing his mother.”

In another section, McElwain states that Hulshof made improper use of unsupported testimony that Dale Helmig and his mother had been in a fight in which Helmig allegedly threw hot coffee in his mother’s face. That altercation, at a restaurant, actually involved Norma Helmig and Ted Helmig, her estranged husband.

“Even though the prosecution could not find a witness to substantiate this allegation, that did not stop them from trying to put the unproven and very inflammatory fact before the jury,” McElwain wrote.

This is the second case in two years in which Hulshoff has been cited by a judge for misconduct that helped convict an innocent person. In February 2009, Missouri Circuit Court Judge Richard Callahan declared Joshua Kezer innocent of the 1992 murder of college student Angela Mischelle Lawless. Kezer was convicted in 1994. From the A.P. report last year:

[Callahan's] 44-page decision included a stinging rebuke of Hulshof, saying he withheld key evidence from defense attorneys and embellished details in his closing arguments.

Other than a statement Tuesday in which he affirmed his belief that Kezer is guilty, Hulshof has declined to comment.

The state's prosecution was based on the testimony of another suspect in Lawless' death who said he saw Kezer at a nearby convenience store on the night of the killing. But he gave conflicting testimony and three jail inmates who claimed Kezer had confessed to the killing later acknowledged lying in hopes of getting reduced sentences.

Back in 2008, the A.P. found five other cases in which Hulshoff was accused of prosecutorial misconduct. So what has happened to Hulshoff? For starters, he parlayed his tough-on-crime record as a prosecutor into a run for Congress, where he served for six terms. In 2008, he was the GOP nominee for governor of Missouri. He nearly became the president of the University of Missouri at Columbia. Currently, he has offices in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. as a lobbyist for the white shoe law firm Polsinelli Shughart.

A couple weeks ago, a Reason commenter wrote that convicting an innocent person of murder ought have a similar effect on a prosecutor's career that, say, amputating the wrong limb would have on a doctor's. That sounds about right. At minimum it demonstrates a degree of negligence that ought to bar a prosecutor from ever prosecuting a case again. He has destroyed an innocent person's life, prolonged suffering for the victim's family and, of coruse, allowed the actual murderer to get away with the crime. If it can be shown that a prosecutor's deliberate misconduct contributed to a wrongful conviction, he should lose his license to practice law.

Hulshoff has done it twice. That we know of. And it's not like no one in Missouri knew about his aggressiveness. Yet he not only gets to continue practicing law as a jet-setting lobbyist, thanks to absolute immunity he'll never have to pay a dime of the fat salary those aggressive tactics won him to Joshua Kezer or Dale Helmig.
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/40109028

Cam Newton Presumed Guilty?
CAM NEWTON DARREN ROVELL, SPORTSBIZ, SPORTS, CNBC, CNBC.COM, BLOG, SPORTS BUSINESS
Posted By: Darren Rovell | CNBC Sports Business Reporter
CNBC.com
| 10 Nov 2010 | 11:14 AM ET

There's a lot of hearsay regarding Auburn quarterback Cam Newton, the Heisman frontrunner who has led the team to an 10-0 record and a No. 2 ranking.

Reports have suggested that a representative for Newton, who left University of Florida and attended junior college before coming to Auburn, shopped his services to the highest bidder.

There is no paper trail suggesting that Auburn won that bid at asking prices that were reported to be in the $200,000 range. But there's plenty of attempts to try to connect the dots. Like his father Cecil's church, based in Newnan, Ga., that found the money to make necessary renovations. It may not prove anything, but the timing has people wondering.

Here’s the problem: No matter what Cam or his father say his record will always be smeared with this. Even if it turns out that these are all false leads.

Why? Because of the record of those that have come before him.

What we have right now is the non-denial denial. That’s his father Cecil calling the crusade against his son “a witch hunt.” The problem is, in similar witch hunt situations, witches have been found.

Blame Tiger Woods. Blame Brett Favre.

The general public, as well as the media for that matter, knows from experience now that non-denial denials haven’t meant much. It’s not enough to say it’s an unfair attack or that you’re not thinking about it.

Tiger Woods asked for privacy before the floodgates opened on his relationships. Brett Favre said he was concentrating on the game ahead before later admitting that the voicemails that were released were in fact his.

As for the flat out denial that hasn’t yet come from the Newton camp? News bulletin. That won’t do anything either.

Blame Marion Jones and all the track stars who denied they have taken performance enhancing drugs only to admit to it later. Blame Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing, who upon testing positive for a hormone in his system, said he had something called Overtrained Athlete Syndrome. Cushing still denies he took hormones, but the fact that the definition of the syndrome didn’t exist on the Internet before Cushing mentioned it makes his denial pretty hollow.

Cam and Cecil Newton can hold a press conference and show all the documents they want to show and the pressure won’t stop. The presumption of guilt will continue. It will forever be in his Wikipedia entry and will fill pages and pages of Google searches. That’s the society that we live in today. Unfortunately, when it looks and walks like a duck, it often is. That leaves the people who are presumed guilty until the very end (see Duke lacrosse players) and come out innocent with a virtual lifetime scar that will never go away. If Newton’s record comes up clean, he’ll still be living with this cloud for the rest of his life.

Questions? Comments? SportsBiz@cnbc.com
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http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-york-times-ideology----not-the-internet----is-destroying-new-york-times-according-to-new-book-by-william-mcgowan-107059308.html

New York Times: Ideology -- Not The Internet -- Is Destroying New York Times, According to New Book by William McGowan


Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America

By William McGowan

"As American journalism is roiled by technology and financial pressures, McGowan succeeds in reminding us that arrogance and a limited worldview are also to blame for the troubles of even our most celebrated newspapers."- Juan Williams, Fox News and former NPR contributor

"If you think the Times plays it straight down the middle on [divisive social issues], you have been reading the paper with your eyes closed." -Dan Okrent, former NYT Public Editor

NEW YORK, Nov. 10, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Gray Lady Down examines how the New York Times, once the gold standard in journalism and America's most trusted news organization, has become a vehicle for politically correct ideologies and tattered liberal pieties, and a repeated victim of journalistic scandal and institutional embarrassment.

The book levels blame on publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., showing how his obsessions with diversity, "soft" pop cultural news and his countercultural Vietnam-era attitudinizing has squandered the Times legacy and corroded its institutional commitment to give the news "impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sects or interests involved," as Sulzberger's great-grandfather Adolph S. Ochs once declared.

Although the book explores Sulzberger's twenty-year tenure at the helm, it focuses most closely on the years following 9/11, inarguably some of the most dynamic — and contentious — in American politics. McGowan swifts through the Times coverage and miscoverage of such volatile social, political and cultural issues as race, immigration, the "Culture Wars," gay rights, the War on Terror and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gray Lady Down examines high-profile journalistic scandals and blunders that are collectively damning: Jayson Blair's plagiarism; Duke Lacrosse Rape Case; Hurricane Katrina; Weapons of Mass Destruction; Plamegate; 2009 Ft. Hood attack; celebratory reporting on such figures as former Weatherman William Ayers.

According to McGowan, "If 'These Times Demand the Times,' as the paper's advertising slogan goes, they also demand a better Times than the one we are getting, especially at this fraught point in our political, social and cultural history."

William McGowanis the author of Coloring the News: How Political Correctness has Corrupted American Journalism, for which he won a National Press Club Award.

McGowan Available for Interviews Starting November 16th

For More information, please visit: grayladydown-nyt.com/
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