WASHINGTON (AP) -- Most congressional Democrats say the quickest way to save homeowners like Troy Butler of Saginaw, Mich., is to let them declare bankruptcy and allow judges to dictate new mortgage terms. Easy, except the lenders that would absorb the pain -- and lose control of any deals to ease the terms -- do not want to get dragged into bankruptcy court by millions of overextended borrowers. ...

Job vacancies in Washington last fall were 32 percent fewer than just six months earlier, according to the latest job-vacancy report from the Employment Security Department. The survey showed that Washington companies were attempting to fill an estimated 50,593 open positions in the fall of 2008, compared to 74,744 open positions in the spring of the same year.  ...

Larry Evans, the father of a T.T. Minor student, joined several hundred parents, students and teachers Sunday Jan. 25 at a march and rally at the school to stop the school closures set to be finalized Jan. 29 by Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. Larry Evans' daughter has already had to change schools once -- she moved to T.T. Minor following the closure of Martin Luther King Elementary School in 2006. 
Currently on the table are plans to close five schools, relocate eight programs and eliminate five programs, including the African American Academy ...

WASHINGTON (AP) _ It's already been a lousy year for workers less than a month into 2009 and there's no relief in sight. Tens of thousands of fresh layoffs were announced Monday and more companies are expected to cut payrolls in the months ahead.
A new survey by the National Association for Business Economics depicts the worst business conditions in the U.S. since the report's inception in 1982.
Thirty-nine percent of NABE's forecasters predicted job reductions through attrition or "significant" layoffs over the next six months, up from 32 percent in the previous survey in October ...

Often called the "Margaret Cho" of Diversity Trainers, Jessica Pettitt uses politics, humor, and her own life experiences to take audiences through a safe but confrontational process of examination and open dialog in her interactive workshop "Social Justice Core Competencies." The Bush School offers this workshop free to the public as part of its third annual Diversity Speaker Series. You can take part on Tuesday, February 3 ...

Children snatched from Congo streets were trained to kill and forced to fight in a brutal ethnic war, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor said Monday as the tribunal opened its historic first trial.
Children as young as 9, ripped from their families, were told "their gun was father and mother and would feed and clothe them," Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the three-judge panel in the trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga ...

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police officers have leeway to frisk a passenger in a car stopped for a traffic violation even if nothing indicates the passenger has committed a crime or is about to do so. The court on Monday unanimously overruled an Arizona appeals court that threw out evidence found during such an encounter. The case involved a 2002 pat-down search of an Eloy, Ariz., man by an Oro Valley police officer, who found a gun and marijuana ...

Valerie Allen took advantage of Portland Community College's financial aid day and got her Free Application for Student Aid paperwork in order with the help of Kristen Lena, a financial aid technician II. Allen is interested in returning to college to get a degree in drug and alcohol counseling. 
Photo by Lulie Keefe

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Suing police officers is good business for civil rights lawyer John Burris.
Over the past 30 years, the former prosecutor has earned millions of dollars for handling hundreds of police brutality suits, other racially charged cases and high-profile lawsuits.
Burris, 63, helped win a $3.8 million jury verdict for Rodney King over a videotaped beating in 1991 at the hands of Los Angeles police. He defended basketball star Latrell Sprewell against reckless driving charges in 1998. And he obtained a $42,000 settlement for the late rapper Tupac Shakur ...

Hardly had President Bush slunk out of Washington before his apologist Ross Baker, the Rutgers political scientist, defamed those seeking his prosecution as motivated by "revenge." They "should let their hate 'die away,'" Baker advised in his Jan. 27 USA Today article. Bush's critics are mere low types "possessed of a kind of legalistic blood lust that can be satisfied only by criminalizing conduct of which they do not approve." ...