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." ...

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris was rebuffed in the U.S. Senate today as he tried to enter the venerated chambers and take his seat, as the successor to president-elect Barack Obama appointed by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
"My credentials were not in order, I will not be accepted, I will not be seated," Burris, 71, told a reporters who had followed him across the street for a news conference in a cold and steady rain outside the Capitol.
The former Illinois attorney general said he was "not seeking to have any type of confrontation" over taking the seat that he was appointed to by embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich. But Burris, who would be the Senate's only Black member, also said he was considering a federal lawsuit to force Senate Democrats to seat him.
In what has become a racially tinted controversy, President-elect Barack Obama has rebuffed the man chosen by Illinois' scandal-scarred governor to replace him as the only African-American senator in Congress ...

In a bid to help expand minority access to public-contracting opportunities, Metro officials announced today they have hired Coast Office Products to provide office supplies for the agency. The minority-owned firm, based in northeast Portland, recently signed on with Office Depot and is one of only twelve minority-owned firms in the country selected for the corporation's Supplier Diversity Program ...

Mychal Bell, a teen convicted in the "Jena Six" beating case shot himself in the chest with a .22 caliber firearm and was taken to a hospital in Monroe, La., on Dec. 29, according to the police.
Monroe Police Sgt. Cassandra Wooten told the Associated Press that the wound was not life-threatening.
The reported shooting took place days after Bell's arrest Dec. 24 for shoplifting, resisting arrest and simple assault.
Wooten said she believed Bell was "upset over the [shoplifting] incident…and didn't want to be in the news again," she told AP.
Bell was one of a group of Black teenagers who once faced attempted murder charges in the 2006 beating of a White classmate at Jena High School ...

Racial disparities in foster care for Oregon children will get a new review, as Gov. Ted Kulongoski this week signed an executive order mobilizing state agencies and child advocacy groups on the issue.
The move mirrors an effort in Washington State, where Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a similar order in 2007 that has rejuvenated longstanding efforts to improve the foster care system there ...

Oregon's new Attorney General John Kroger will be the keynote speaker at The Skanner's upcoming 23rd annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast. Last week, Kroger sat down to talk with us about his plans for the state's highest law enforcement office.
Kroger, who is a former Assistant United States Attorney, helped to convict major players in the Enron case; is skeptical of some of the strategies used in the "war on drugs," where he helped to convict major traffickers who were easily replaced ...

Promise King, executive director of the Oregon League of Minority Voters, visited family in his home country of Nigeria in November and December. He was there to talk with legislators and his cousin, who is a governor.
Due to the snowy and icy conditions in Portland, Promise King was unable to catch his original flight back. The airline gave him the choice: be diverted to Dubai to wait out the weather or wait it out in Zimbabwe. King decided to revisit a country he hasn't visited in nearly 20 years....

Newly-minted Mayor Sam Adams hosted a giant party and open house Monday night in City Hall to celebrate his inauguration as the first openly-gay mayor in the city's history. Acrobats, jugglers, and the MarchFourth Marching Band entertained thousands of guests, while free beer, wine and snacks flowed. Adams, left, is congratulated by his former senior policy director, Jesse Beason, right, now the executive director of the Portland Land Trust. Adams' new executive assistant, Cevero Gonzalez, center, looks on.