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Duluth and Superior are honoring and celebrating the legacy of Civil Rights Movement leader, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a series of tribute events on January 19 - 20 coordinated by the Duluth Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These events are free and open to the public.

This years theme is Give Us The Ballot which is centered around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s "Give Us the Ballot and We Will Transform the South." In his speech, Dr. King speaks to the importance of political power and the right to vote. He states that the right to vote is a sacred right. A right that should be defended and aggressively upheld. The Reverend goes on to say that if we are to achieve racial justice we need strong leadership from our government and our communities. He speaks to the coming freedom and independence of communities of color and the importance of leading with love. Dr. King suggests that even in victory we must avoid the temptation of being victimized with the psychology of victors. We must work to pursue victories while seeking harmony with those who would see us harmed. Dr. King would have us focus on the future and not despair. He states Let us realize that as we struggle for justice and freedom, we have cosmic companionship.

We will honor Dr. King in this years events including:

The 2020 MLK Community Breakfast will feature a free, hot, delicious meal provided by the Duluth Grill and served by the African American Mens Group; a presentation by Eric Holder, former U.S. Attorney General via a live-streamed broadcast of the Twin Cities MLK Day Celebration. The freewill offering recipient will be Family Freedom Center.

The 2020 MLK March will be led by the Men as Peacemakers "Girls Group" Restorative Justice Programand will host a variety of youth and community activities, poster making, and refreshments starting at 10 am, and the March will begin promptly at 11:00am.

For our 2020 MLK Rally, the Keynote Speaker is Autumn Brown, and our emcee will be Doreen Nyamwaya. Performers include the Miziiweykaamikiinaang drum group, the ARE Poets, and the Major Atraktion Dance Group. The Drum Major for Peace Awards will be announced and presented. There will be childrens activities, a selfie photo booth, vendors, and free MLK buttons while supplies last outside the DECC hall before and shortly after the Rally. The Rally will begin promptly at 12 pm. The rally will be interpreted into American Sign Language and recorded for broadcast.

All events in the MLK Tribute series serve to inspire and educate our community, honoring the work and life of Martin Luther King, Jr. through meaningful local community engagement.

For more on all of our MLK Tribute events, please visitduluthnaacp.org/mlk.

Our Mountain Top Sponsors are The College of Saint Scholastica and the Duluth Entertainment. Our Drum Major for Peace Sponsors include Blackbird Revolt, ISD 709 Office of Educational Equity, and the School District of Superior. Our I Have a Dream Sponsors include Duluth Grill, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Interfaith Action, Northland Foundation, Lake Superior College, UMD African & African American Studies Program, 1Roof Community Housing, UMD Campus Climate, and the Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans. Our Beloved Community Sponsors include Girl Power! YWCA Duluth, National Audio Visual, UMD Office of Diversity & Inclusion, Clayton Jackson McGhie, and Duluth Superior Pride. Thank you for your contribution to the success of the MLK Events!

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Twin Ports 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr Events Themed "Give Us the Ballot" - BusinessNorth.com

Florida woman doubles down on twins

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Doctors told a Florida woman she had a better chance of winning the lottery than of giving birth to two sets of twins in the same year.

But Alexzandria Wolliston said she won the jackpot with the births of Mark and Malakhi in March and Kaylen and Kaleb in December.

Oh, yes, I feel like I hit the twin lottery, Wolliston told WPTV.

The tired mom said her 3-year-old daughter helped her prepare for the double dose of twins.

She was actually worse than them, so she was like having two babies in one, Wolliston said.

Two months after the first set of twins arrived, Wolliston learned about the second set, she said. They were born in West Palm Beach on Dec. 27. Wolliston said Kaleb was dismissed from the hospital on Monday and shes hoping to bring Kaylen home soon.

She said she recently learned that both of her grandmothers lost twin boys at birth, which makes her believe her four babies are a blessing from above.

I always say that I feel like my grandmothers gave me their kids because two sets of twins and their twins passed away, she said. I feel like they just sent them down for me.

TUCSON, Ariz. A man convicted of shooting a U.S. Border Patrol agent nine years ago in a case that exposed a botched federal gun operation known as Fast and Furious was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison.

U.S. District Judge David C. Bury sentenced Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes to the mandatory life sentence after hearing tearful statements from the sisters of Brian Terry, the agent who was fatally shot while on a mission in Arizona on Dec. 14, 2010.

Osorio-Arellanes is one of seven defendants who were charged in the slaying of Terry. Osorio-Arellanes was convicted of first-degree murder and other charges last year after being extradited from Mexico in 2018.

Terrys death exposed the Fast and Furious operation, in which U.S. federal agents allowed criminals to buy firearms with the intention of tracking them to criminal organizations. But the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of most of the guns, including two found at scene of Terrys death.

The Obama administration was heavily criticized for the operation. Then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by Congress for refusing to turn over documents related to the sting.

PHILADELPHIA A man walking to the hospital after he was stabbed was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Philadelphia, authorities said.

Karon Underwood, 36, was struck around 10:20 p.m. Monday just blocks from the hospital.

One driver saw him and was able to avoid him, authorities said, but a second vehicle swerved to avoid the first and hit Underwood. Both vehicles drove away.

Underwood was pronounced dead at the scene. He was the father of five children who range in age from 2 to 13.

No other injuries were reported in the hit-and-run, which remains under investigation.

The hit-and-run was captured on surveillance video, and authorities hope witnesses will come forward with information about the vehicles and their drivers.

PASADENA, Calif. Modern Family will air its finale after 11 seasons on April 8, and there are no spinoffs in the works involving its large cast.

Eric Stonestreet jokingly pitched one featuring Cam and Mitch, the gay couple played by him and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, after executive producer Steven Levitan told a TV critics meeting on Wednesday that nothing is planned.

The Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker clan isnt done traveling, though. They visit Paris in an episode airing Feb. 12, continuing their tradition of trips to such places as Australia, Hawaii, Las Vegas, New York and Wyoming.

I was able to do a lot of shopping, so it was perfect, said Sofia Vergara, who became a breakout star when the series began in 2009.

The show starring Ed ONeill was an immediate hit and holds the record with Frasier of five straight Emmy Awards as televisions best comedy.

Levitan and co-creator Christopher Lloyd knew from the start the show would include a gay couple who adopts a baby.

When we locked it in, I remember saying to Chris, Well, there goes Middle America, said Levitan, whose concern proved to be unfounded. We got zero blowback. They were embraced because here was this couple, their first priority was their baby and raising it and doing it right, and people said it was hard to argue with that.

Stonestreet added: We were able to make all the same mistakes raising a child that everyone else did.

The Associated Press

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Your nation and world news in brief - Winston-Salem Journal

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly A. Strassel has just conferred her Adult of the Year Award on a man who deserves it, Attorney General William Barr. And Ms. Strassel writes with sufficient distance from the swamp to be taken seriously. Her column, titled Potomac Watch, is, I am told, composed from her lair in Alaska. That ought to insulate her from the swamps fumes and from Wall Streets, too.

Moreover, though the attorney general has been a presence in Washington for years, he is not simply a Washington creature. He is his own man. A few months back, when it fell to me to introduce him at a professional dinner, I made bold to say, I hope I am not mispronouncing your last name, General Barr. The accent is on the first syllable is it not?

He, in a very good-natured way, assured me that it was. You must remember that I am a stickler for pronunciation, and the attorney general has a well-developed sense of the absurd.

Ms. Strassel in her award-conferring column noted that upon being nominated for attorney general by President Donald Trump in December 2018 he received the respect that he deserves. Official Washington was quick to note Mr. Barrs years of nonpartisan facility with the law observable in years spent at the Justice Department, at the CIA and in private practice. He was known as a serious student of the law and of the U.S. Constitution. All agreed he would not be anyones toady.

Yet Ms. Strassel notes that his honeymoon is over. He has begun to be vilified precisely because he has maintained an impartial view of the Justice Department and has kept his promises. This demonstrated integrity by the attorney general has commenced one of the more obvious, not to mention nasty, delegitimization campaigns in modern Beltway history.

Official Washington has been yapping at the attorney generals appointment of John Durham a prosecutor of squeaky-clean reputation to investigate the FBIs probe into the 2016 Trump campaign. It became hysterical when the attorney general stated his own view that the Inspector Generals December report confirmed that, as Mr. Barr put it, the FBI suspicions about the 2016 campaign were insufficient to justify the steps taken by the countrys top cops.

The campaign against him continues. Former FBI Director William Webster has joined the attack and Eric Holder, perhaps the most partisan attorney general ever, has too. All the high-minded talk of Mr. Barrs early days in office has been forgotten. Who else will come forward? Perhaps Pope Francis?

Few people in the country today have demonstrated deeper insight into Spygate, the investigation into those who have been investigating the elected president of the United States, than Kimberley Strassel. In her column I detected a genuine note of alarm.

Is it possible that the investigation of the investigators could be brought to an end? Could the media render Attorney General Barr or prosecutor John Durham suspect? Will they uncover an incriminating telephone call? How long can the Democrat-controlled House mire these men in one of their investigations? Is it possible that the whole finely-tuned investigation overseen by the attorney general will come to a grinding halt because of Democratic subterfuge?

Well, I do not think it is likely, but it is possible.

As Ms. Strassel writes, the evidence against the FBI has steadily accumulated. Recall if you will the December report of Inspector General Michael Horowitz. If Americans are ever going to be able to see what happened in 2016 with the FBI and with other intelligence agencies, the work of Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr must continue.

My guess is there are going to be indictments coming, possibly as early as this spring. Then the wheels of justice will expose the wrongdoing. Or possibly there is no wrongdoing. Let our system of justice decide.

I am putting my trust in the courts after putting my faith in prosecutor Durham, Attorney General Barr and Inspector General Horowitz. As for Ms. Strassel, I turn to her Potomac Watch column every Friday. Last week, she pointed to William Barr as the Adult of the Year. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was doubtless appalled, and Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, thought to dig up more dirt on him. Has the Hon. Schiff discovered that Mr. Barr was cited for jaywalking in 1967? Look into it, fellows.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author most recently of The Death of Liberalism, published by Thomas Nelson Inc.

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Attorney General William Barr, 'Adult of the Year' - Washington Times

Here is news you probably cant use: a new Texas Law Review analysis by University of Chicago law professor William Baude concludesthat Justice Hugo Black, who served on the Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971, was unconstitutionally appointed.

The relevant text is the Constitutions Article I, Section 6, which says No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time.

At the time of his appointment Black was serving as a senator from Alabamaas part of a Congress that had enacted new retirement benefits for Justices, and while his backers argued that the clause did not apply to bar his nomination, Baude concludes that it probably did. One litigant before the high court challenged Blacks right to serve, but the Court chose to sidestep the merits of that claim by ruling against its standing, and the controversydied.

All of this might seem purely academic. At this remove there would be no way to unscramble the legal omelet as to Blacks jurisprudential contributions, even were there a will. (Despite an unpromising start, the Alabaman eventually showed a libertarian streak on many Bill of Rights issues.)

But the issue is not quite so remote as that, because more than a few contemporary commentators have flirted in some cases more than flirted with claims that the makeup of the present Supreme Court is illegitimate.

After the Senate leadership refused to hold hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland, the editorial board of the New York Times repeatedly declared the seat of the late Justice Scalia to have been stolen, and then-Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said of eventual nominee Neil Gorsuch that hes not there properly.

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the seat vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy brought renewed attack, with former Attorney General Eric Holder declaring that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court can justifiably be questioned and other high-profile figures taking a similar line.

Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky raised the ante with this remarkable assertion in The American Prospect: each of the five conservative justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh or someone like him (emphasis added) came on to the Court in a manner that lacks legitimacy. Perhaps at some point it will lead to open defiance of the Court.

Other commentators were happy to take up the exciting theme that future Court opinions written by, or decided by the votes of, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and perhaps other Justices might meet with open defiance or resistance from a future Democratic president, from state officials, or from people marching in the streets.

What can the Supreme Court do? Send its tiny police force to storm the White House? wrote Mark Joseph Stern at Slate. Libertarian-minded law professor Ilya Somin, who does not welcome the efforts to de-legitimize the Court or promote defiance of its rulings, nonetheless found them worth taking seriously enough to analyze at length last year.

Baudes research may provide a bit of reassurance in this respect. The challenge to the legitimacy of Blacks seat fizzled in part because it gained little headway with the public, but much more because the Courts other Justices welcomed Black aboard.

Most of the scenarios in which triumphant Democrats in 2021 or 2022 defy Supreme Court rulings are difficult to reconcile with the reality that the Courts liberal Justices have, to all appearances, been entirely content to regard Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as legitimate colleagues, and would, themselves, neither counsel nor welcome defiance of Court rulings. As I wrote last year, "the federal courts are not as polarized and tribal as much of the higher political class and punditry at nomination time."

Baude puts it this way at the conclusion of his article: the real source of constitutional settlement in our system is not always judicial decision, but sometimes sheer practice.

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Disputed Appointments and the Supreme Court's Legitimacy, in 1937 and Today - Cato Institute

Now, operatives in both parties are readying for an unprecedented fight in 2020 to elect those who will be the mapmakers in state legislative races across the country.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder and his group, the National Democratic Redistricting Commission, are leading the battle for Democrats. The group and its affiliates recently announced they had raised $52 million since 2017. They're targeting state legislative races in a dozen states, with more than half below the Mason-Dixon line.

"I'm bound and determined to make sure that candidates, activists and voters understand the stakes of the redistricting battle and the long-term consequences for our democracy," Holder said in a statement.

On the other side, the Republican State Leadership Committee is readying a defensive operation known as Right Lines 2020 to try and maintain the GOP's successes in 2010, sending out former House Speakers Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Newt Gingrich to raise money and keep the party focused on redistricting.

The Republicans are targeting races in 14 states, with six in the South. They declined to put a dollar number on the effort, but have said they are "planning multimillion-dollar investments in key states."

"We can't just assume that the success we've enjoyed in the states is going to be there," RSLC President Austin Chambers said, adding that he is concerned Republicans are more focused on re-electing President Donald Trump than the fight for statehouses that's so crucial to redistricting. "We're going to have to fight like hell to keep it this is as serious as a heart attack."

While each state's process is different, there are three key Southern battlegrounds next year, experts and party officials said:

Legislatures in other Southern states, including Georgia and Louisiana, also are in play.

Virginia poses a key test for national Democrats, who like Holder typically say they want fair not gerrymandered districts. Democrats have control in the state Legislature and the governor's mansion. If they wanted to gerrymander next year, they'll likely have the power.

"When Democrats are out of power, they say all the right things about gerrymandering," Li said. "But Virginia is a state with a lot of congressional districts and whether Democrats walk the walk when they have power Virginia's going to be a big test of that. Its a big test for Eric Holder."

John Bisognano, executive director of Holder's redistricting group, said Holder has spoken out against Democrats seeking to rig the system and the former AG also has expressed support for nonpartisan redistricting, a concept that's grown in popularity as states seek to opt out of the gerrymandering wars.

In the last decade, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Utah implemented changes to their congressional redistricting processes, with some states authorizing bipartisan commissions with the work in an effort to reduce the role of state lawmakers. For example, Missouri will ask a nonpartisan demographer to draw district lines, subject to approval by a commission made up of both Republicans and Democrats.

Still, not all commissions are created equally. In Ohio, voters passed a referendum last year requiring bipartisan support for redistricting plans in an attempt to prevent one party from forcing their House maps on the other. If the parties can't reach agreement, a bipartisan commission would draw the districts, but both Democrats and Republicans are angling for power on that commission and partisans can still push through four-year maps without minority party support.

"We supported an independent commission well, we supported a commission," Bisognano said. "It's a commission of politicians."

Given that, both parties say the Ohio Statehouse is a top target in 2020.

CORRECTION (Dec. 29, 2019, 11:24 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the number of seats Democrats in North Carolina need to gain to take control of the legislature. It is at least four in the state Senate and six in the House; not eight in the Senate and 11 in the House.

Jane C. Timm is a political reporter for NBC News, fact checking elections and covering voting rights.

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Gerrymandering is alive and well. The coming battle will be bigger than ever. - NBC News