Tag Archives: Pennsylvania Avenue

January 30, 2013 · 11:28 AM

Teenager Who Performed At Obama’s Inauguration Ceremony Is The Latest Victim Of Chicago Gun Violence

Hadiya Pendleton, 15 years old, was killed in Chicago on Tuesday.

Another young life taken over useless gun violence in Chicago…

Think Progress

Less than two weeks ago, Hadiya Pendleton was leading her classmates in the King College Prep School Marching Band down Pennsylvania Avenue on the afternoon of President Obama’s second inauguration. It would be an opportunity of a lifetime for any 15 year old, but for Pendleton, it was her last. On Tuesday, she was gunned down in a park a few blocks from school on the South Side of Chicago, less than a mile from the first family’s home.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Pendleton and another classmate, a 16 year old boy, were both caught in the middle of a gang war. The boy was still in serious condition on Tuesday evening, but Pendleton did not survive:

Friends of the slain girl said King was dismissed early today because of exams, and students went to the park on Oakenwald–something they don’t usually do.

Friends said the girl was a majorette and a volleyball player, a friendly and sweet presence at King, one of the top 10 CPS selective enrollment schools. Pendleton performed with other King College students at President Barack Obama’s inaugural events.

In the last year, Chicago has endured a surge of gun-related murders, more than quadruple the number of homicides in New York City and 58 percent more than the number of U.S. soldiers shot and killed in Afghanistan. During the recent debate over gun control, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has sought to place his city at the front of the push for reform, instructing the city’s pension funds to divest from any gun manufacturer and supporting more gun buyback programs.

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January 6, 2011 · 10:11 AM

Echoes of 1995 for new Congress

 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it…

Politico

Call it 1995 Lite: a one — rather than two — chamber Republican takeover this time, and no Newt Gingrich, just a lot of little would-be Gingriches running around accusing the White House of corruption or threatening to push the Treasury into default.

Every new Congress is a time for renewal and hope, and Wednesday’s ceremonies brought fresh blood to a stagnant Senate and elevated a working-class bar owner’s son to the speakership of the House. But there is also a sense of having seen this play before, just as the new fashion of reading the Constitution aloud brought echoes of Gingrich adding the Pledge of Allegiance to the daily prayer for lawmakers.

In the 16 years since, the biggest real change may be that the nation’s problems have gotten so great that both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue find it easier to retreat into their illusions.

How else to explain President Barack Obama claiming victory in the recent lame-duck session when he surrendered tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest estates, committed $85 billion more to modernize nuclear weapons and then failed to fight for a $224 million increase in training programs for the physicians and nurses he will need to implement health care reform.    More…

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