Less Than One Month After Announcing her Illness, U.S. Rep Julia Carson loses battle with cancer...

Congresswoman dies following lung cancer battle

U.S. Rep. Julia Carson died Saturday following a battle with lung cancer.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — U.S. Rep. Julia Carson died Saturday following a battle with lung cancer.

Carson, D-Indiana, died at home, said family spokesman Vanessa Summers. She was 69.

Carson had been away from Washington since she was admitted to an Indianapolis hospital September 21 for about a week. Her office had said at that time that she had deep infection in her leg, near a spot where a vein was removed in January 1997 when she underwent double heart bypass surgery just weeks after she was first elected to Congress.

Carson announced Nov. 26 that she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and that she would not run next year for a seventh term representing the city of Indianapolis.

She had said in a statement that she expected to return to Washington after recuperation, but a doctor then diagnosed her with lung cancer.

"It had gone into remission years before, but it was back with a terminal vengeance," Carson said in the statement.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

Carson also had suffered in recent years from high blood pressure, asthma and diabetes. She missed dozens of House votes in 2004 because of illness and spent the weekend before the 2004 election in the hospital for what she said was a flu shot reaction — but still won re-election by 10 percentage points.

Carson, who grew up in poverty and attended an all-black Indianapolis high school, became the first black and first woman to represent Indianapolis in Congress when she won her first term in
1996.

Carson was born to a single mother who worked as a housekeeper. She graduated in 1955 from Crispus Attucks High School, attending the segregated school at the same time as basketball star Oscar Robertson.

She began her political career in the 1960s, when then-U.S. Rep. Andy Jacobs Jr. hired the United Auto Workers secretary to work in his office. It was Jacobs who encouraged Carson to run for the Indiana Legislature in 1972 — the first of her more than two dozen victories in local, legislative and congressional elections.

She ran for Congress in 1996 when Jacobs decided to retire after three decades in the House.

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R.I.P. Julia

Thoughts and prayers are with the Carson loved ones.

Did Anyone Do A Study On The Most Dangerous Suburb to Live In If You're White, Female, Married & Pregnant or A Bullied White Male Teenager???

Detroit Named Most Dangerous U.S. City

SOURCE OF CRAP

DETROIT (Nov. 18) - In another blow to the Motor City's tarnished image, Detroit pushed past St. Louis to become the nation's most dangerous city, according to a private research group's controversial analysis, released Sunday, of annual FBI crime statistics.

The study drew harsh criticism even before it came out. The American Society of Criminology launched a pre-emptive strike Friday, issuing a statement attacking it as "an irresponsible misuse" of crime data.

**If there's any of this:

that city will be included in this type of study**

The 14th annual "City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America" was published by CQ Press, a unit of Congressional Quarterly Inc. It is based on the FBI's Sept. 24 crime statistics report.

The report looked at 378 cities with at least 75,000 people based on per-capita rates for homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. Each crime category was considered separately and weighted based on its seriousness, CQ Press said.

Last year's crime leader, St. Louis, fell to No. 2. Another Michigan city, Flint, ranked third, followed by Oakland Calif.; Camden, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; North Charleston, S.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond, Calif.; and Cleveland.

The study ranked Mission Viejo, Calif., as the safest U.S. city, followed by Clarkstown, N.Y.; Brick Township, N.J.; Amherst, N.Y.; and Sugarland, Texas.

CQ Press spokesman Ben Krasney said details of the weighting system were proprietary. It was compiled by Kathleen O'Leary Morgan and Scott Morgan, whose Morgan Quitno Press published it until its acquisition by CQ Press.

The study assigns a crime score to each city, with zero representing the national average. Detroit got a score of 407, while St. Louis followed at 406. The score for Mission Viejo, in affluent Orange County, was minus 82.

Detroit was pegged the nation's murder capital in the 1980s and has lost nearly 1 million people since 1950, according to the Census Bureau. Downtown sports stadiums and corporate headquarters - along with the redevelopment of the riverfront of this city of 919,000 - have slowed but not reversed the decline. Officials have said crime reports don't help.

Detroit Deputy Police Chief James Tate had no immediate comment on the report. But the mayor of 30th-ranked Rochester, N.Y. - an ex-police chief himself - said the study's authors should consider the harm that the report causes.

"What I take exception to is the use of these statistics and the damage they inflict on a number of these cities," said Mayor Robert Duffy, chairman of the Criminal and Social Justice Committee for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The rankings "do groundless harm to many communities," said Michael Tonry, president of the American Society of Criminology.

"They also work against a key goal of our society, which is a better understanding of crime-related issues by both scientists and the public," Tonry said.

Critics also complain that numbers don't tell the whole story because of differences among cities.

"You're not comparing apples and oranges; you're comparing watermelons and grapes," said Rob Casey, who heads the FBI section that puts out the Uniform Crime Report that provides the data for the Quitno report.

The FBI posted a statement on its Web site criticizing such use of its statistics.

"These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region," the FBI said. "Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents."

Doug Goldenberg-Hart, acquisitions editor at CQ Press, said that the rankings are imperfect, but that the numbers are straightforward. Cities at the top of the list would not be there unless they ranked poorly in all six crime categories, he said.

"The idea that people oppose it, it's kind of blaming the messenger," Goldenberg-Hart said. "It's not coming to terms with the idea that crime is a persistent problem in our society."

The report "helps concerned Americans learn how their communities fare in the fight against crime," CQ Press said in a statement. "The first step in making our cities and states safer is to understand the true magnitude of their crime problems. This will only be achieved through straightforward data that all of us can use and understand."

The study excluded Chicago, Minneapolis, and other Illinois and Minnesota cities because of incomplete data.

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I'm sure they were more than fair in concluding my city to be the most dangerous

. But the most dangerous according to whom? There are some suburbs I can walk thru and not have to worry about being poisoned, or my head blown off while carrying Jr in my uterus, or come up missing and saying I ran off with another woman! I don't have to worry about my son being bullied and him making a hit list and killing everyone he locks sight on.
hmmmm.
Or what about suburban police officers who work in the city and shove toilet plungers up the anus or, puts 100 bullet holes in one helpless person?

Is the danger REALLY in the metro cities...not to me.