Mayor Kilpatrick charged with perjury, obstruction of justice.

See also the Free Press, which has had the best coverage of the scandal, and offers this wonderful little detail:

Members of the media were kept from getting close to Manoogian’s front gates by security officials. The officials told reporters, television camera operators and photographers they were not allowed to stand on a sidewalk across the street from the mansion, saying they were impeding pedestrian traffic. The sidewalk was mostly empty this morning, save for a man walking his dog and a red fox trotting across the sidewalk into a yard.

A fox? They have actual foxes in Detroit? Just wondering around the city?

I am reminded of that scene from The Matrix where the Agent has been evading Neo's bullets only to find that Trinity has a gun right to his head. For some reason.

Dodge this.

OK, so Kwame's problems aren't just about his affair and perjury; it turns out that there's also possible favors for friends in city contracting, the infamous Manoogian Mansion stripper party is back, and by gum if this doesn't also have a whiff of murder about it:

A retired Detroit Police Department clerk came forward Monday to say she saw a police report in 2002 in which stripper Tamara Greene described being attacked by Carlita Kilpatrick, wife of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, during a party at the Manoogian Mansion.

The court affidavit by former clerk Joyce Carolyn Rogers of Troy marks the first time a Detroit police employee has stated that a report on the long-rumored party and assault exists.

Rogers told the Free Press she came forward on the advice of her psychiatrist.

"According to the report, the mayor's wife walked into a room and witnessed Ms. Greene touching Mayor Kilpatrick in a manner that upset the mayor's wife," Rogers, 65, said in the affidavit. "The report further states that the mayor's wife witnessed this, left the room and returned with a wooden object in her hand and began assaulting Ms. Greene."

The report indicated Greene was taken to a hospital because she was injured, Rogers said. "It was clear to me as a clerk working in records that Ms. Greene wanted to press charges against Carlita Kilpatrick," Rogers said in the affidavit.

It's a mystery that never had a definitive answer, the story of a Detroit stripper known as Strawberry who was killed in a hail of gunfire while sitting in a car with her boyfriend in the predawn darkness of April 30, 2003.

Since then, Detroit police and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick have combated persistent rumors and lawsuit allegations that Tamara Greene was killed because she danced at a wild party at the Manoogian Mansion.

Despite repeated denials by the mayor and a state investigation that dismissed the claims as urban legend, the story has persisted and is being fueled by fresh allegations raised by a former homicide detective as part of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Greene's 14-year-old son.

In a 10-page affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, former Lt. Alvin Bowman says he believes Greene, 27, was killed by a Detroit cop and that police officials derailed his homicide investigation.

"I suspected that the shooter was a law enforcement officer, and more specifically, a Detroit Police Department officer," Bowman said in the document.

Spend a few moments scrolling through the Detroit Free Press archive of Kilpatrick scandal-related coverage and your jaw will drop. Considering that Kwame is just the latest in a long line of lousy officials in Detroit, it's really no surprise that a once-great city has been reduced to a hellhole. This is the sort of thing that happens when the politics of a city become entirely dominated by race, bad economics, and corruption.


Michigan Central Station, Abandoned - Corktown, Detroit


Tiger Stadium, Abandoned - Corktown, Detroit

Unfortunately, he doesn't appear to have a brain. Last night, he gave his annual State of the City address and had this to say about the sex and perjury scandal that he has, through his own actions, mired himself in:

And finally tonight, and this may be the most talked-about part of this speech after laying out all of that, but I feel that I cannot leave this auditorium with my wife and my sons sitting there without addressing this issue. In the past 30 days, I've been called a n------, a n----- more than any time in my entire life. In the past three days, I've received more death threats than I have in my entire administration. I've heard these words before, but I've never heard people say them about my wife and children. I have to say this because it's very personal to me. I don't believe that a Nielsen rating is worth the life of my children or your children. This unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality has to stop. And it's seriously time, we've never been here before and I don't care if they cut the TV off, we've never been in a situation like this before. Where you can say anything, do anything, have no facts, no research, no nothing and you can launch a hate-driven, bigoted assault on a family.

I humbly ask members of council, I humbly ask the business community, I humbly ask the religious community, I humbly ask the brothers and sisters of the city of Detroit, I humbly ask we say 'No more' together. I humbly ask that we say "No more' together.

Give the man credit for that greatest of modern Democrat virtues, audacity, but no more credit than that. I find it somewhat hard to believe that Kilpatrick is being flooded with racist hate mail threatening him and his family, but then again, who knows. Perhaps there is a significant cadre of racist morons out there who simply can't figure out that this case is about race about as much as Bill Clinton's impeachment was about sex - specifically, not at all. It's about perjury, lawbreaking, character, and the fitness of an executive to lead a city or the country. For Kilpatrick to play the race card in order to weasel out of the consequences of his actions is laughable and pathetic. "Unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality"? What, for reporting what you clearly did and demanding that you be held accountable for the $8.4 million you cost to an already financially devastated city? Where's the regret for your clearly unethical and illegal activities that got you and your city into this mess in the first place?

I believe the Detroit media has responded to Kilpatrick's tantrum. The Detroit News editorializes:

...for the longest time, it seemed as if he were going to stare past that elephant in the room and focus determinedly on the progress of his administration and the hopes for the future. It was a rousing speech, filled with new initiatives aimed at easing his citizens' concerns about public safety, education and neighborhood services. Not a word about his personal travails, until the end.

And then Kilpatrick blew it. He angrily and audaciously defined the scandal as a bigoted attack, claiming he's been called the n-word; that he and his family have been threatened; and that opponents with an "unethical, illegal lynch mob mentality" are trying to tear him down.

He blamed everyone but the real villain -- himself.

It's not the first time Kilpatrick has selfishly played the race card to escape a jam. But it may be the most cynical, coming at a time when his personal conduct and poor choices have stalled progress in Detroit and slammed a hammer into the fledgling and fragile attempts to get beyond differences and establish regional unity in Metro Detroit.

The Free Press has two editorials on the matter. From the first:

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick gets at best an "incomplete" for Tuesday night's State of the City address. At worst, an "incredible" for what he didn't address and a closing rhetorical flourish in which Kilpatrick declared himself and his family to be victims of his self-created problems.

Ending a fairly lackluster speech, the mayor said he has faced unprecedented death threats, racial slurs and "a hate-driven, bigoted assault on our family" since the so-called text-message scandal erupted. He called for unity and said he "will continue to focus on building the next Detroit," without acknowledging that he's the one pulling focus from the myriad tasks at hand, and diverting money the city could use to get some of the work done.

And here's a portion of the second:

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was right on when he said Detroiters are concerned about crime.

What he didn't say is that denizens of his violence-ridden city are also concerned about whether HE will be charged with a crime.

Stephen Henderson in the Free Press:

In his State of the City speech a year ago, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick issued a challenge.

It moved me then. It saddens me now.

"Men of Detroit," the mayor implored, "I am talking to you not just as mayor, but as a father, a husband and a fellow Detroiter. As men of Detroit, we must step up together and take a leadership role in saving our city. ... Men of Detroit, the time is now for us to take the openhearted and courageous way."

Wonderful words to inspire Detroiters to "man up" against violence, crime and joblessness in the city. In a broad sense, to take responsibility for themselves, their own actions, and how they relate to the city's future.

But they were words that could have been directed at the mayor himself Tuesday, as he gave his 2008 address under the cloud of his inartful dodging of responsibility for the text message scandal.

Was Kilpatrick's tirade at the end of his speech, in which he claimed the media and nearly everyone else are to blame for the brutal effects of this scandal on his family, his idea of taking responsibility? The shameful, divisive words he used to draw false lines between those who want him to own up and those he expects to give him a pass will serve only to prolong the agony in this community.

This whole episode was sad to begin with, but Kilpatrick just made it pathetic. Predictable, considering that this is Detroit after all, but pathetic.

Excellent documentary. Watch it.