Naacp Convention

WASHINGTON -- Leaders of the NAACP were not delighted to receive a stern letter from the Internal Revenue Service, especially when it was delivered about a month before Election Day. The organization announced last week that the IRS was investigating the civil rights group because its chairman, Julian Bond, criticized President Bush at the NAACP's annual convention in Philadelphia this summer. An "Information Document Request" from the IRS said Mr. Bond's remarks "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush on education, the economy and the war in Iraq."

NATIONAL No rush to name court pick The White House signaled last week that it is in no hurry to name its pick for the first Supreme Court vacancy in more than a decade, a strategic slowdown that legal and political analysts say should help President Bush to more finely shape one of his most lasting legacies. [Page 1a] Return to space in sight The countdown for NASA's return to space began yesterday with the planned liftoff Discovery on Wednesday, the first shuttle mission in more than two years.

For the second straight year, Marylanders have won the highest number of medals in the NAACP's national scholastic competition.Ten Maryland high school students received honors in New York last week at the 22nd annual Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO), competing against about 850 teen-agers in 12 categories, including the sciences, arts, math, entrepreneurship and film.Three gold medalists are from Maryland: Osato Dixon of Carver Center for the Arts and Technology in Baltimore, for filmmaking; Karl Kuhn of Montgomery County's Watkins Mill High School, for music composition; and Patricia Edmonds of Woodlawn Senior High School, for the computer science competition.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- More than 100 NAACP convention delegates protested last night President Kweisi Mfume's decision to close the group's regional office in Detroit.The protest escalated when convention officials would not let the delegates, including several national board members, carry signs into a hall where Chairwoman Myrlie Evers-Williams was to speak.The protest leaders withdrew only after Charlotte police threatened to arrest them.It was the first public display of dissatisfaction with the leadership of Mfume, who took office in February.

Woman, 32, carjacked in parking lotA Baltimore woman narrowly escaped injury in the parking lot of the Annapolis Plaza on Sunday when two men robbed her of her car and drove off as she held onto the key, county police said yesterday.The 32-year-old victim told police she was getting out of her car in the shopping center lot off Jennifer Road about 4:30 p.m. when two men walked up to her.She said she recognized one of them as someone she dated five years ago. That man began hitting the woman, grabbed her and pulled her out of the car, she said.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has invited Mexican President Vicente Fox to attend its July annual convention in Milwaukee to explain recent controversial remarks about African-Americans. The Baltimore-based civil rights group sent an e-mail invitation to Fox on Thursday in response to his public comments last week that Mexican immigrants do jobs that "not even blacks" want to do. "There is no doubt that Mexican men and women, full of dignity, drive and a capacity for work, are doing the jobs that not even blacks want to do there, in the United States," Fox said.

NAACP board Chairman Julian Bond might not know it, but he just proved a black Republican is right. When I met Christopher Alan Bullock during a reception at the Venezuelan Embassy this month, the Delaware Republican told me that President Bush, whom he supports, "hasn't done enough to get the message out about what he's done for African-Americans." Bullock then elaborated. Homeownership among blacks has risen under Bush, Bullock said, as well as Small Business Administration loans to black entrepreneurs.

READ THIS timeline carefully. It's one NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and board Chairman Julian Bond seem to have forgotten. July 2000: George W. Bush, then governor of Texas and the Republican candidate for president, addresses the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People convention in Baltimore, the first Republican candidate to do so since his father did it in 1988. Bush extended an olive branch to the nation's oldest civil rights organization, telling the delegates: "For my party, there is no denying the reality that the party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln."

The Internal Revenue Service has ruled that NAACP Chairman Julian Bond did not jeopardize the civil rights group's tax- exempt status when he criticized President Bush during a speech in 2004. In a letter dated Aug. 9, the IRS told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that it "continues to qualify" as a tax-exempt organization, which means its donors can make tax- deductible contributions. The agency said it had reviewed a videotape of Bond's speech at the NAACP's annual convention two years ago and determined that it did not violate rules prohibiting political activity by tax-exempt groups.

After four years of refusing to meet with the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group, President Bush sat down at the White House yesterday with NAACP President Kweisi Mfume. Mfume called it a "very frank, open meeting" that he hoped would mark the end of a rocky relationship between the president and the leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Bush spoke to the group while campaigning in 2000 but did not accept invitations thereafter. The estrangement came to a head when Bush refused to speak at the NAACP's annual convention in Philadelphia this summer, blaming rhetoric and name-calling from its leaders.