Eideard

What do they serve at the restaurant? Vanilla Ice Cream with berry sauce and powdered sugar for all three courses?

Benjamin Zephaniah, left, was replaced by Tony Robinson

Campaigners for voting reform have air-brushed a black poet out of leaflets making the case for a “fairer” political system.

The “Yes” campaign, which is supported by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, was severely embarrassed after it emerged that it had removed the poet Benjamin Zephaniah from leaflets destined for the home counties, while leaving him in leaflets distributed in London.

Mr Zephaniah is one of six celebrities who adorn a leaflet from the “Yes” campaign calling on householders to back the Alternative Vote in a forthcoming referendum on May 5 in which people will be asked if they want to change Britain’s voting system.

He appears alongside Joanna Lumley, Eddie Izzard, Colin Firth, Honor Blackman and Stephen Fry in the leaflet which was delivered in London and which is signed by Katie Ghose, chair of Yes To Fairer Votes.

It calls on people to back AV because it will give them “a stronger voice”.

However, in an identical leaflet sent to other parts of the country including Sussex and Cornwall the poet is not there. Only white celebrities are featured and Mr Zephaniah is replaced by a picture of the actor Tony Robinson.

Terry Paul, spokesman for NO to AV, said: “Why are Yes to AV ashamed to have the support of Benjamin Zephaniah in places like Cornwall and Hampshire..?

Under AV, voters would rank candidates from different parties in order of preference, for example from one to five. Critics say the proposed system is extremely complicated…

It would be funny if it weren’t for the humorless effect of maintaining racist imagery by political parties that equally often trade on names and slogans that have become irrelevant over time. There are numerous parties on this planet still called “Liberal” something or other that are conservative and cowardly, afraid to provide leadership on any issue more controversial than the width of sidewalks.

Two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

Three men have been charged with burning a cross in the western Pennsylvania yard of a black teenager last year…

Federal officials charged Michael Bealonis, 18, and Kenneth Stiffey Jr., 20, both of Robinson, Pa., and Michael Bracken, 22, of Bolivar, Pa., with conspiracy to interfere with the housing rights of another, interfering with the housing rights of another, and using fire in the commission of a felony.

The teenager was not identified by federal officials or in the indictment issued Tuesday. But the boy’s guardian, Joe Walbeck, confirmed…that the charges related to a cross burning at their rural Bolivar home in November. Walbeck said the three men charged were white and that one of them lived just a few houses away…

Walbeck, who is white, said he and his wife took in 16-year-old Shaq Howard as a foster child about four years ago because he was having problems with his family. They live in a predominantly white community about an hour east of Pittsburgh and are now legal guardians of the boy.

The Walbecks have taken in about 16 foster children during the last six years at their home in West Wheatfield Township, Indiana County. They’ve had a couple of biracial foster children, but Shaq is their first black child.

Walbeck said Shaq wasn’t friends with the men charged, but he does know who they are.

“He never dreamt that they would do something like that to him,” Walbeck said of the 6-foot-tall cross he found charred on his lawn last year.

If convicted, all three could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison and fined up to $750,000.

Throw away the key!

Some days you just can’t figure out what to wear!

Thanks, Daylife

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

U.S. communities are changing complexion as ethnic diversity grows in the American heartland. Though not new in California, Arizona, Texas or Florida, the change of demographics is a bit more surprising in southwest Kansas.

Finney County, Kansas, is one of six counties across the nation that became majority-minority between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced. The agency defines majority-minority as a county where more than half the population is made up of a group that is not single-race, non-Hispanic white.

Nearly 10 percent (309) of the nation’s 3,142 counties were majority-minority as of July 1, 2008.

“Why there?” people ask Tim Cruz, former mayor of Garden City, Kansas, the largest town in Finney County. And then, “How do you all get along? It’s just another melting pot you know,” Cruz says. “It makes it nice to have those different cultures. And sure they’re different — we have to understand what they celebrate and why they do it…”

At the Alta Brown Elementary School, the native language of about half of the 409 students is something other than English…

Much of the United States is looking more like Garden City. New census figures show more than one-third of the people in the United States are non-white and a staggering 47 percent of the population under the age of 5 are a minority…

For many immigrant residents, life in Kansas, even working at the meatpacking plants, is much better than where they came from. But Cruz wants the immigrants to know, in his words, that “the American dream is much greater.”

“We catch them trying to tell their kids they don’t need to go to college because this is a good life,” Cruz says. “We have to help educate them saying, ‘No, there is even a better life than doing this and your kids can get to do that.’ “

Ethnic diversity can be a dynamic that produces as much friendship and knowledge – as hatred. That decision is usually predicated on the behavior of those in power before the immigrant swell threatens entrenched political power.

That behavior doesn’t often offer more than a token of equality. The good will of the best of those in place is required to build harmony.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations — such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians — categorized as “mainline” Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals.

Is anyone surprised? The question is about believing in hate as much or more than love, retribution as much or more than forgiveness, bigotry over understanding and knowledge – every day of the week. It’s as American as mom and apple pie.

A sculpture of a giant white horse taller than the Statue of Liberty is set to tower over the countryside as part of an unusual scheme to help revive the fortunes of a depressed region of England.

The 50-meter equine artwork was Tuesday announced as the winner of a competition to design a landmark to dominate the skyline of the Ebbsfleet Valley, set to be a new stop on the Eurostar London-to-Paris rail link.

Designed by artist Mark Wallinger — whose previous work has included dressing in a bear suit and wandering around a gallery in Berlin — the £2 million horse will be one of the largest artworks in the UK.

Wallinger’s horse — which echoes ancient white horse symbols carved into hillsides around Britain — beat a shortlist of designs that included a tower of stacked cubes and giant steel nest.

Ancient chalk horses was the first thing that struck my mind when I saw this headline. This critter fits perfectly into the history of the region.

It’s a favorite local sport in my neck of the prairie.