The recently deceased and respected actor Michael Clarke Duncan is finding that his problems have continued beyond the grave.  Duncan’s tomb was recently vandalized by a group of racists, according to a family rep.

TMZ is reporting that a relative went to visit Duncan at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills when she saw that the grave had been desecrated by a cartoon-like image that someone had attached to his tomb.

The friend believes that the image was a blackface “Sambo” picture.  These images have been considered discriminatory against African Americans.

The family contacted LAPD after the incident, and it is being investigated as a hate crime.

The image has been removed, but the family won’t stop until they find out who did it.

Michael Clarke Duncan died from heart complications in September, 2012.  He is best-known for his Academy Award winning performance in “The Green Mile,” starring Tom Hanks.

Tavis Smiley might be a lot of things to a lot of people, but one thing that you must admit is that he is consistent.  The controversial commentator has spent 20 years in journalism, and is now in his 10th year on PBS.   Throughout his career, Smiley has challenged the black community on matters of importance and has even allowed himself to endure firestorms of controversy.

Currently, Tavis works with his good friend, Dr. Cornel West, on a show called “Smiley & West.”  The show provides critical commentary and analysis for those who are deeply concerned about growing poverty and violence in the African American community. These are topics that you won’t usually hear about anywhere else.

Tavis also hosts the quarterly show, “Tavis Smiley Reports” for PBS, which does careful analysis of important social issues.

“This is the kind of work I think needs to be done. I’m trying to entertain and empower people,” Smiley said.

PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger gave Smiley his first start by allowing him to host a show that came on right after Charlie Rose.

“The two of them have very different styles. Tavis has done a great job of bringing a wide range of people on to public broadcasting,” Kerger said. “He’s constantly looking at the next big idea.”

At the age of 48, Smiley isn’t planning to slow down.  He doesn’t pander to either liberal or conservative audiences, and keeps his focus on the African American community.   He says that members of the Obama Administration have pushed to get his sponsors to drop some of his projects, including his anti-poverty initiative.

“This administration does not like to be criticized. And the irony of it is, there’s nothing I have tried to hold the president accountable on that my white progressive colleagues have not,” Smiley said. “They’re labeled courageous critics, but if I say it, I’m an ‘Obama critic.’ There’s race at play in the very question.”

Police say that the story that was told to them didn’t hold up.  Apparently, Claude told them that the man had tried to break into the house.  But police said that they spoke with the young man and eventually found the victim dead in a woodshed behind the home.

“Because we did not have a forced entry here we believe that the two parties did know each other, Montgomery County Police Captain Jim Daly said to WJLA.

The suspect’s father is Claude A. Allen, President Bush’s domestic policy adviser from 2005 to 2006.   He resigned after being charged with shoplifting at a department store in Gaithersburg.

According to the Washington Post, the senior Allen’s wife claims that the shoplifting incident occurred when the family was wiped out in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

According to a PJ Media report, the whistleblowers feel that their information is so sensitive that they are securing attorneys.   They apparently work in areas where Whistleblower law may not cover them fully and the allegations they are seeking to prove might be considered borderline treasonous.

According to the diplomats, the revelations share the real reasons that Ambassador Chris Stevens was in Benghazi in the first place.  Stevens, who was killed during an attack that took place on September 11, is believed to have been there to work with al-Quaeda on a mission to get back stinger missiles that had been issued to them by the US State Department.

“Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming ‘insurgents’ with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft,” said the report.

The report says that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to proceed with the mission in order to “overthrow Gaddafi on the cheap.”   Muammar Gaddafi was the former leader of Libya.  He was killed on October 20, 2011.

The report says that Clinton’s move against Gaddafi  ”left Stevens in the position of having to clean up the scandalous enterprise when it became clear that the ‘insurgents’ actually were al-Qaeda – indeed, in the view of one of the diplomats, the same group that attacked the consulate and ended up killing Stevens.”

The whistleblowers are also reportedly going to state that General Carter Ham, then leader of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), was pushed to avoid protecting US personnel in Libya.

“Military contacts of the diplomats tell them that AFRICOM had Special Ops ‘assets in place that could have come to the aid of the Benghazi consulate immediately (not in six hours),’” said the report.

“Ham was told by the White House not to send the aid to the trapped men, but Ham decided to disobey and did so anyway, whereupon the White House ‘called his deputy and had the deputy threaten to relieve Ham of his command.’”

Like most Oklahomans, Taylor knew about the weather and the chance for storms, but she also knew storm warnings were nothing new for the area, so she really wasn’t nervous about her scheduled delivery.

“We’re used to tornadoes and sirens,” the new mom told the Huffington Post during an interview. “If you freaked out every time you heard a siren, you’d have an anxiety attack every May in Oklahoma.”

Although Taylor remained calm, doctors were nervous about her  planned induced delivery and canceled it, but Taylor’s baby boy had other plans. Taylor began having contractions and couldn’t be sent home.

At around 2PM Taylor was still at the hospital but hadn’t delivered yet when hospital staff came into her room and told her that if the tornado headed their way, then her husband and four year old son would be moved to a protective shelter area. About an hour later the tornado came toward them and Taylor was separated from her husband Jerome and son Shaidon, then taken to an emergency room where the mom-to-be monitored the storm on her phone.

Then the worst happened and Taylor’s hospital was destroyed by the twister while she was still having contractions.

“The floor was shaking like an earthquake and then I saw the ceiling shaking too. You could see insulation starting to fall. Me and two of the nurses were all just holding hands and praying. My eyes were closed, but you could kind of see daylight. And I opened my eyes and I could see out the wall.”

Still in labor, Taylor requested a hand doppler to monitor her baby’s heartbeat to ensure that he was OK. After the tornado passed, husband Jerome helped hospital staff move his wife to an ambulance so she could be transported to another hospital to deliver her baby.

Taylor’s baby boy was born at 7:25 p.m. on Monday evening. He weighed 8 pounds 3 ounces.

Christine Daniel fooled patients into paying for six months of treatment with herbal supplements she claimed would cure diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and even cancer. Now she’s headed to jail for 14 years.

The judge also ordered the 58 year old doctor to pay back $1.3 million dollars to patients who’d fallen victim to her scam.

The herbal concoction which Daniel said cured disease was actually a mixture of sunscreen preservative, beef extract flavoring and other ingredients that would not have any effect on cancer or other diseases, expert testimony proved during trial. Daniel was found guilty of 11 counts including tax evasion and wire fraud.

Prosecutors say that in one case a 22 year old woman with a curable form of lymphoma actually died because she depended on Daniel for treatment instead of seeking traditional medical help.

“The scope of Daniel’s fraud was breathtaking,” U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said in a statement after Daniel was sentenced. “Daniel robbed victims of more than money — she also stole their hopes and dreams for a cure. Daniel is responsible for a shockingly cold-hearted fraud that has brought her a richly deserved federal prison sentence.”

In total, the court heard from 28 former cancer patients and family members of people who had died.

Prosecutors pushed for a 27 year prison sentence while defense attorneys argued for a six year term. In the end, the judge settled with a compromise of 14 years.

“I am the only full- time(tenure-track) African-American faculty member at Taylor University. There have been many racial problems that both my family and I have experienced since arriving at Taylor University. First of all, I was told that blacks come here and leave and they do not like it but it was really the black person’s fault. This faculty member went on to talk about the KKK as if it was just a simple issue.”

Dr. Whipple says that when he and his wife were looking for a home, he was asked by another faculty member “what would make you want to come here and live with all these white people?”

The small school is located in central Indiana, where the Ku Klux Klan has long had a strong presence.  Even to this day, there are Klan members in the area.   Even for those who are not in the Klan, the area is known for its racial animosity, so Dr. Whipple’s claims are not entirely unfounded.  The school has no African Americans on faculty, serving as further evidence that discrimination might be a factor.

Dr. Whipple says that there were other incidents that left both he and his wife disturbed.  He claims that speaking up about racism is part of what led to him being fired.   He even says that his wife was seeking to visit the family of another faculty member, and that when she got lost, they watched her from the window without letting her into the house.

There were several uncomfortable conversations about being black here. We were told several times by faculty members that this is an all-white community. My children were called names by children of Taylor faculty members, such as, “you look like a black horse.” Comments were made about my daughters hair such as, “It must be difficult for your mother to do your hair.” My wife was invited to a faculty member’s home once. When she arrived to the unfamiliar area, she called the faculty member from the car using her cell phone. The faculty member would not answer the cell phone call but called our home instead. They saw my wife from the window but would not let her in the home.

Dr. Whipple’s experience certainly begs the question:  Why stay at a university that hates you so much?  But, unfortunately for many faculty members, jobs are difficult to come by.  So, Dr. Whipple’s push against his university may be important for his family’s survival.

You can check out Dr. Whipple’s petition here. 

Real Bronx Tours, the company that launched this “novel” idea, issued a statement on the matter, announcing an end to the tours right away.

The rides were $45 each and would go out three times per week.  Visitors would be taken by a food pantry line, a housing project and a park known for its pick pockets.

Tourists were told that their views would represent the Bronx during it’s darkest periods, the 1970s and 80s, where drugs, guns and murder threatened every man, woman and child in the area.  Fires were set intentionally during this time in order to collect the insurance money, and no one was safe.

Residents say that the tours don’t represent the Bronx for what it truly is:  The place that birthed established American figures such as Colin Powell and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“Those days are over, the Bronx is being rebuilt, it’s rising again,” said Bronx resident and Grammy-nominated musician Bobby Sanabria.

Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. got together with City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito to send an open letter to the company, asking that they bring the tours to an end.

“We strongly urge you to stop profiting off of a tour that misrepresents the Bronx as a haven for poverty and crime, while mocking everything from our landmarks to the less fortunate members of our community who are availing themselves of food assistance programs.”

Maybe they’ll think twice next time.

Freeman was promoting  a new film, “Now You See Me” co-starring Michael Caine when it all went down.   The actors were being asked about the film, and Caine was giving a lively response, when it appeared that Freeman had just had enough.  His eyes were closed and he wasn’t responsive, which has created a frenzy on the Internet, since none of us have ever seen an actor do something like this.  But hey, if you’ve done one press junket, you done them all, at least if you’re Morgan Freeman.

Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby.   Freeman was discovered nationally for his roles on “Another World,” and “The Electric Company.”  Since then, his smooth voice and amazing acting ability have graced screens for the last 40 years.

When you have that kind of star power, you can fall asleep every now and then, and nobody is going to say anything about it.   We just hope that he isn’t communicating that his film is going to put audience members to sleep as well.

Jackson is not backing down and says he will not apologize for anything that he has said, in the past, about the LGBT community. Last year he was quoted as saying,

“Homos*xuality is a horrible sin, it poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies; it brings the judgment of God unlike very few things that we can think of.”

The politician also referred to Democrats  as “slave masters” and even likened Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan.”

In an interview he did  last year, he said,

“Liberalism and their ideas have done more to kill black folks whom they claim so much to love than the Ku Klux Klan, lynching and slavery and Jim Crow ever did, now that’s a fact.”

On Tuesday, he made it clear to reporters that if they thought he was going to apologize, then they needed to think again.  He told the reporters that he made his statements because he was a Christian and his Christian values mattered to him; not because he had any feelings of hate towards anyone or any group.

He also added,

“Attacking me because I hold to those principles is attacking every church-going person, every family that’s living a traditional family life, everybody who believes that we all deserve the right to live.”

What seems to be different about Jackson, compared to many other politicians is that when he gets a negative response for what he says, he does not re-frame it to try and please the people. Maybe that is what has gotten him this far. Whether it will win him the position remains to be seen.