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E. Cleveland, Ohio-Cuyahoga County prosecutor hopeful Tim McGinty stunned the Black community yesterday by getting only a single vote for a straw poll at a debate for the five candidates for county prosecutor held Sat. afternoon at the East Cleveland Library, an event sponsored by the East Cleveland Coalition and moderated by Fox 8 News Anchor Wayne Dawson and Call and Post Managing Editor Kevin Heard..

Candidate Stephanie Hall, (pictured with her son) the only Black and woman in the race, won that straw poll, snatching the victory from McGinty, Subodh Chandra, Robert Triozzi and James McDonnell.

A straw poll is an unofficial audience ballot vote taken on the candidates, typically after a political debate, and designed as a indicator of how people there would likely vote on the ballot in the upcoming official election. It has no essential research validity.

Editor's note: This video below, produced by The PlayaT Show (www.playatshow.com) at Saturday's debate at the East Cleveland Library, reveals McGinty dodging legitimate questions on his record as a former Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas judge, and answering questions about his role as a former assistance county prosecutor.

BEREA, Ohio-Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock, who is now under investigation for documented impropriety by the Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper, is under fire.

Among a host of other allegations, Comstock is accused of recruiting out-of-town retired White visiting judges with nothing to lose to replace him in cases previously before him to harass maliciously prosecuted Blacks and women including triple bonds issued without holding a bond forfeiture hearing and without revoking the first bond as required by state law.

(Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper Online Photo www.cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND,Ohio-A controversial custody-adoption trial that began last Nov. between a poor Black Cleveland family and an affluent White couple with the popular judicial surname of Gallagher that were handed two new born Black children taken involuntarily from their teen mothers continues.

Taken within months of their births and precluded from being cared for by extended family members as state law requires, the celebrated trial to get back three year-olds Jamela and Jamyla Barringer is center stage at the new Juvenile Court Justice Center on Quincy Ave. in Cleveland before Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Alison Nelson Floyd, who is Black.

"Children and Family Services have a modern day slave plantation by stealing Black children and we want our children back," said Angelique Cunningham, the 39-year-old grandmother of the three-year-old cousin toddlers of two of Cunningham's daughters, one 20 and the other 17, but both teens when their daughters Jamela and Jamyla were taken from them at two and four months old, respectively. "They have harassed us at every turn because we are Black and not middle class or rich."

This is an exclusive one-on-one interview with Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell, one of four Blacks on the 11-member Cuyahoga County Council that came into power Jan. a year ago, along with voter-elected Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald. (Editor's note: For a better understanding for some readers unfamiliar with Cuyahoga County's new form of government, the actual interview follows the overview below).

A college educated woman with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Cleveland State University and a mother of three children, one an adult, another in college, and the third a teen, Conwell is the 26-year wife of Cleveland Ward 8 Councilman Kevin Conwell.

She represents Cuyahoga Council District 7, a district with some 116,000 residents in a county with some 1.2 million people.

Cuyahoga County  is also Ohio's largest among 88 counties statewide, and is roughly 30 percent Black. It is a colorful and politically astute venue that is heavily Democratic and routinely helps to determine presidential elections.

WASHINGTON,. D.C.-President Barack Obama wooed Americans Tues. evening with his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress that had the fire and appeal that helped to catapult the former U.S. senator from Illinois to the presidency of the United States of America in 2008.

During a speech that lasted shortly over an hour, the president called for Congress to repeal the Bush tax cuts for wealthy Americans that pay a lesser federal tax percentage on income than some middle class and poor people, and to pass the Dream Act to give children of undocumented immigrants in the country by no fought of their own a chance at financial aid for higher education and citizenship.

And those are just a few of the demands that America's chief political leader sought before some 38 million viewers that tuned in to hear the president's State of the Union speech that was broadcast across a multitude of radio and television airwaves throughout the nation.

Obama also talked about education, foreign affairs, green energy, jobs, responsibly ending the Iraq war, and overseeing last year's U.S. military mission to kill Osama bin Laden .

"We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world," he said. "For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home."