DETROIT
Atty. General calls for Kilpatrick to step down
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said yesterday that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick should resign because he’s a liar and a race-baiter “on par with David Duke and George Wallace” and no longer fit for office.
Cox told WJR-AM that he was shocked by the black leader’s televised use of the N-word and his appeal for support while attacking opponents as racist.
“I thought his statements were reprehensible,” said Cox, who is white. “It was race-baiting on par with David Duke and George Wallace – all to save his political career.”
Cox told the station the mayor’s words “not only hurt Detroit, but they hurt the whole region. And as long as the mayor is there, he will be a drag on the whole region, not just Detroit.”
Kilpatrick’s statements came at the end of Tuesday’s annual State of the City address.
Mayoral spokesman James Canning said Kilpatrick won’t step down.
NEW YORK
As scandal unfolds, Gov. Spitzer quits
In a startlingly swift fall from grace, Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned yesterday after getting caught in a call-girl scandal that made a mockery of his straight-arrow image and left him facing the prospect of criminal charges and perhaps disbarment.
“I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people’s work,” Spitzer said, his weary-looking wife, Silda, standing at his side, again, as the corruption-fighting politician once known as Mr. Clean answered for his actions for the second time in three days.
He made the announcement without securing a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, though a law enforcement official said the former governor was still believed to be negotiating one.
Spitzer will be succeeded on Monday by Lt. Gov. David Paterson, a fellow Democrat who becomes New York’s first black governor and the nation’s first legally blind chief executive.
ROME
Official: Olympics offer redemption
The Beijing Olympics in August offer China the chance to improve its human rights record, Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen said yesterday.
The United States, other nations and advocacy groups have tried to use the attention and prestige associated with the Olympics to leverage internal change and diplomatic cooperation from China.
“It’s a good opportunity for China to show that it has improved its regard for human rights,” Zen said in an interview with Italy’s RAI state TV.
WASHINGTON
Slaughterhouse exec. admits fault
The head of the Southern California slaughterhouse that produced 143 million pounds of recalled beef acknowledged Wednesday that cows too sick to stand at his plant were apparently forced into the nation’s food supply in violation of federal rules.
Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. President Steve Mendell made the admission after a congressional panel forced him to watch gruesome undercover video of abuses at his slaughterhouse. Mendell watched red-faced and grim, sometimes resting his head on his hand, as cows were dragged by chains, sprayed in the nostrils with water, shocked and harshly prodded with forklifts to get them into the box where they would be slaughtered.
– Compiled from Daily wire reports