Lynitta Bouvier Hargray

Case Type: Endangered
Date of Birth: October 9, 1964
Missing Date: February 1, 2005
Age Now: 45
Missing City: Tallulah
Missing State: Louisiana
Gender: Female
Race: Black
Complexion: Dark
Height: 5-8
Weight: 285
Hair Color: Black
Hair Length: Medium
Eye Color: Brown

Location Last Seen: Hargray was last seen at her residence in the vicinity of the 400 block of Askew St. in Tallulah, La.

Circumstances of Disappearance: She may be in the Miami, Fla. area. Lynitta has a medical condition.

Identifying Marks or Characteristics: Known to wear braids, big toes are hammer toes, small scar on middle of forehead, pierced ears.

If you have information, regarding the whereabouts of Lynitta Bouvier Hargray, please contact the Black and Missing Foundation's tip line.

A Bush appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is calling charges that the Justice Department ignores the civil rights of whites ridiculous.

Abigail Thernstrom, Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said allegations that the Obama Administration failed to prosecute a voter intimidation case, involving the New Black Panther Party, have no merit:

"We have no direct evidence that [the NBP activists] actually intimidated anybody, stopped them from voting," Thernstrom said on CBS' Face the Nation. In an earlier column, she called the case "small potatoes."

"I think the evidence is extremely weak," Thernstrom said. "If the Justice Department chooses - and I would be delighted if it did so - to send to us, for instance, somebody who is at that alleged brown bag meeting in which [Deputy Assistant Attorney General] Julie Fernandez said, 'We don't prosecute cases [against] blacks ...' fine. I'm an evidence girl, really. I want evidence."

It's what most people with common sense said after hearing the facts surrounding the case. The first warning sign that this entire case is questionable is that it is being pushed by former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams, who is now a conservative Republican activist. One New York Post columnist called him a "Republican activist posing as a whistleblower."

Van Jones says he knows the feeling of being caught up in the type of media swirl that cost Shirley Sherrod her job and nearly destroyed her reputation.

Jones resigned as the White House Green Jobs Czar last year, after he, too, was attacked by the conservative media for allegedly signing a petition that blamed the U.S. government for 9/11. Then came the report of him using vulgarity to describe a Republican and his past as a radical in California.

Jones, in a New York Times op-ed, says that he never signed the petition and the website organizers used his name without permission; however, in the media scrum that followed, none of that information came out. With the downsizing of the U.S. media, stories aren't properly vetted and little tidbits are overblown into scandals because its cheaper than real reporting.

Jones writes:

Our situations aren't exactly the same. Ms. Sherrod's comments, in which she, a black woman, appeared to admit to racial discrimination against a white couple, were taken far out of context, while I truly did use a vulgarity.
But the way we were treated is strikingly similar, and it reveals a lot about the venal nature of Washington politics in the Internet era. In my case, the media rushed to judgment so quickly that I was never able to make clear that the group put my name on its Web site without my permission. The group finally admitted that it never had my signature, but by then it was too late.

The imperative to immediately and constantly churn out news on even the most minor bit of controversy leads news organizations, and partisans posing as news organizations, to cross the line from responsible reporting to dangerous rumor-mongering. This is exactly what happened to Ms. Sherrod. Andrew Breitbart, a prominent Internet conservative, promoted a misleadingly edited video of her speech; within hours, news outlets of all stripes were promoting it as truth.

The District of Columbia public school system announced on Friday that it will be letting 226 teachers go for poor performance under the education assessment system called "IMPACT."

The district also announced that it has notified 737 employees that if their performance doesn't improve, they will be terminated after the upcoming school year.

New evidence has come to light regarding the Staten Island mom and her three children who were killed in a suspicious murder-suicide last week. Police investigators had originally thought that the oldest child, 14-year-old C.J. Jones, might have set a deadly blaze that killed his mother and toddler brother. The youth was then suspected of slashing the throats of two family members, then his own.

But now, the focus of the ongoing police investigation has shifted to the Mother.

A child pyromaniac is suspected of murdering his mother and siblings, setting fire to his home, and then slitting his own throat with a razor. The horrific scene was discovered by police and firefighters, and the story has left his Staten Island neighbors and other family members numb with disbelief.

R&B heartthrob Brian McKnight, who was accused of being a long-lost baby daddy to a 14-year-old Florida boy, is not be the child's biological father.