CLEVELAND,Ohio- Kimberly Brown (pictured), a former Cleveland mayoral candidate who also lost a bid for Cuyahoga County Council, writes the guest editorial below against a levy in November that woud support the financially strapped Cleveland Municipal School District.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor (pictured second) has denied an affidavit of prejudice filed against chief Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst (pictured third) in May by county prosecutor Bill Mason (pictured first), who claimed in the affidavit  that Fuerst is biased against him and his entire staff of over 150 assistance county prosecutors and wanted her removed after she assigned former common pleas judge Robert Glickman as a special prosecutor to investigate a perjury allegation stemming from a since dismissed rape case and did not hold a hearing first.

Elected by her 33 judicial colleagues in the general division that hear felony cases, lawsuits seeking damages in excess of $15 thousand, and other legal matters, Fuerst is both the presiding and administrative judge of the court and by state law she hears affidavits of prejudice filed against municipal court judges in the Cuyahoga Count for potential removal of them from cases, though public records show that she denies nearly all of them, regardless of the merits.

O'Connor, on the other hand, hears affidavits of prejudice filed against common pleas judges statewide,and  also under state law,  to determine if removal from a case is warranted and she does practically the same thing, in addition to handpicking retired visiting judges with nothing to lose to send throughout the state to venues like the Berea Municipal Court to allegedly manipulate case outcomes in both civil and criminal cases.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com

WASHINGTON, D.C.-President Obama's sweeping healthcare law that was adopted by Congress in 2010 before a divided America was narrowly upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday as passing constitutional muster with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, a former president George W. Bush appointee who wrote the landmark opinion on behalf of the court, casting the swing vote with the four liberal's of the nation's high court, two of them appointed by Obama  himself.

ObamaCare requires, among other mandates, that most Americans  that can afford it, hold heath insurance by 2014 or face a penalty.

Among other provisions, it also expands medicaid for some low income Americans, precludes insurance companies from dropping people because they have preexisting conditions, prevents them from charging women higher premiums than men, and lets children stay on the parents' insurance policy until the age of 26.

"The highest court in the land has now spoken and we will continue to implement the law," Obama said in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com. "I didn't do it because I believed that it was good politics. I believe that it is good for the country. "

Obama said that the requirement to purchase health care insurance is fair because when people don't and they then appear as patients in hospital emergency rooms, the premiums go up for paying Americans, and he said that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney supported that provision when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Challenging the law dubbed the Affordability Care Act were 26 states, including Ohio, and a small business trade group, as well as a wealth of Republican congressional lawmakers.

Supporting it were mainly Democrats and their supporters like some unions, as well as a cadre of women, among others.

But the court said that the penalty for not getting insurance is a legitimate tax that Congress can legally impose. And in striking down a small portion of the law, the court dismantled the law's plan to extend medicaid insurance wide span, stipulating the expansion  only to the poor,  and saying that the U.S. government lacks authority to penalize states that don't participate in this aspect of the law by withholding its entire medicaid allotment.

"This is a victory for all Americans," said Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge of Ohio's majority Black 11th congressional district (D-11), in a press release."In my district alone an estimated 7,000 children with preexisting health conditions can no longer be denied coverage by health insurers, thousands of seniors will receive medicare preventive services with no out-of-pocket co-pays or deductibles, and thousands of seniors on medicare will receive an average discount of $490 per person on the cost of prescription drugs."

State Rep. John Barnes Jr., a Cleveland Democrat,  said that he was pleased with the unprecedented court decision too.

"The decision represents the single most humanitarian effort of the 21st century because it responds to the tasks of the health needs for all of the American people," said Barnes.

Debbie Kline, who leads Cleveland Jobs With Justice, a union, faith based and community activist group with some 64 organizational affiliates, called the ruling "good for America."

Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, both conservatives, were the most watched on the decision as they were the most aggressive in questioning lawyers for the Obama administration on the controversial issue during oral arguments in March, and Roberts came through for the president, the first Black one for the United States of America.

The nation's nine-member high court is no doubt divided on the issue, voting 5 to 4 to uphold it with justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both appointed by Obama, among the liberal majority of four justices that joined Roberts to seal the deal.

Dissenting were the three conservative justices other than Roberts, including Clarence Thomas, the only Black on the court , veteran and scholar Anton Scalia, and Kennedy, often a swing vote.

Cleveland area community activist Valerie Robinson, 77, a retired Cleveland schools teacher, said ObamaCare has some good things but that she remains ambivalent because she believes that it places more of a burden on the American people then on the federal government.

Romney vowed to overturn ObamaCare if elected president and Republican lawmakers say they will begin efforts to repeal it beginning with a congressional vote on July 11.

Reach Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman at www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, ktcoleman8@aol.com and phone number: 216-932-3114.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com

WASHINGTON, D.C. - By a vote of 255 for and 67 against that came along party lines, the U.S. House of Representatives moved Thurs. to hold America's first Black attorney general in contempt of Congress in a document dispute pertaining  to a bungled gun-tracking operation, and a majority of the Democrats walked out of the congressional chambers during the vote in a show of protest and solidarity .

Eric Holder (pictured), 61, is the first sitting attorney general and cabinet member to be held in contempt.

A former Superior Judge of the District of Columbia and prior United States Attorney, Holder was appointed to  U.S. attorney general by Obama when Obama took the reigns as the first Black president of the United States in 2009.

He was also a member of Obama's vice presidential selection committee.

Republicans that pushed the contempt citation argue that Holder withheld documents that give reasons why the Obama administration initially took the position that  gun walking tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious, which permits guns to be smuggled from Arizona to Mexico, are not risky.

Holder called the contempt action "a political stunt."

President Barack Obama's administration has argued that the records, allegedly some140,000 pages, are privileged because they are part of the executive branch's deliberative .

He claims that the controversial records are therefore immune to congressional scrutiny under the separation of powers.

The criminal contempt vote hands the issue to the U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is under Holder's command.

A separate and distinct vote on civil contempt, which paves the way for the House to ask a court of competent jurisdiction to order Holder to hand over the requested documents, was undertaken by the House too.

Both votes came down the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upheld the president's sweeping health care mandate.

Reach Cleveland Urban News. Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by telephone at 216-932-3114.