Free Republic

CHICAGO, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- The largest annual Kwanzaa celebration of African-American culture in the United States began Monday at Malcolm X College in Chicago. Ayoka Samuels, a consultant for the college's Kwanzaa committee said a major misconception is that about the seven-day festival is that it's meant to be "the black Christmas," the Chicago Sun-Times said. Samuels said many who celebrate it do substitute it for Christmas, and if gifts are exchanged, they must be either educational or a symbol of African heritage. Maulana Ron Karenga, now a professor of black studies at California State University, Long Beach, created...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democrats demanded Thursday that President Bush order a halt to personal attacks on the party's leader, Sen. Harry Reid, and expressed regret they had failed to mount a stronger defense for his defeated predecessor. "This is a new Democratic party," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference called to release a letter telling Bush to muzzle his "political operatives." "...It says to the president, 'you will not intimidate us'," added Schumer, who likened the attacks on Reid to political knee-cappings. The letter itself was written in milder terms. "We urge you to keep your...