Red State Update: Hanging Saddam Hussein

Jackie and Dunlap discuss the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Plus, RSU reveals its Wish List of Celebrity Hangmen. Plus, Showtime at the Apollo. http://www.redstateupdate.com

saddam hussein hanging

saddam hussein hanging

Saddam Hussein Executed Yesterday

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners before dawn Saturday. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm.

In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes.

Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."

"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

The post-execution footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.

Al-Arabiya satellite television reported Saturday night that a delegation including the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam's clan retrieved his body from Baghdad and took it for burial near the executed dictator's hometown of Tikrit. The broadcaster reported the burial would take place Sunday. The report could not immediately be verified.

Earlier, in Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. Some hanged an effigy of Saddam. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice "is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

He said that the execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that Saddam's death will not halt the violence in Iraq.

Within hours of his death, bombings killed at least 68 people in Iraq, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad.

Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.

A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker.

In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles."

"He did not lie when he declared his trial null," they said.

Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the AP that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.

He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck.

Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.'"

Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shrine - the Imam Kazim shrine.

The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people.

"We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.

"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds. Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Iraqis had been transformed from among the region's most prosperous people to some of its most impoverished.

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For the many murders of his own people; Hussein deserved the sentence of death. However, George W. Bush's excuse for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam was a lie. George Bush should be brought up on charges for lying to the American people and he should be made to answer for the deaths of every American and every Iraqi who has died because of his lies. Impeach George W. Bush.

Deputy in Gibson Case Claims Harassment

LOS ANGELES - The sheriff's deputy who arrested Mel Gibson for drunken driving six months ago says his superiors have harassed him ever since a report detailing the star's anti-Semitic tirade was leaked to a celebrity new Web site.

Deputy James Mee was transferred to another assignment, interrogated for several hours, and investigators seized a computer and phone records during a search of his home, his attorney told the Los Angeles Times for its Thursday editions.

"His life and career would be a lot different had he not made that arrest," attorney Richard Shinee said.

Neal Tyler, a division chief who oversees the sheriff's office where Gibson was booked, denied that Mee was singled out and said he didn't know of any problems with Mee's treatment.

He declined to discuss Mee's specific complaints because of confidentiality rules, but he said, "I disagree with the assessment that personnel in the department or at the station have been relating to him or supervising him in an unfair manner."

Mee arrested Gibson July 29 in Malibu on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. An arrest report signed by Mee and posted on the celebrity news Web site TMZ said Gibson was belligerent and quoted him as saying: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

The actor-director later apologized to the Jewish community and pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving.

After Gibson's much-publicized arrest, investigations were opened into whether Gibson received preferential treatment, and into who leaked Mee's report to TMZ.

"My client has denied he gave the report to anyone," Shinee said.

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For the record, I do not like Mel Gibson. I dislike and distrust bigots. To me, any man who is capable of making some of the comments and slurs Mel Gibson has made in the past is capable of anything. Do I think he gave that report out? Yes. Did Gibson mean the slurs? Probably. It's hard for me to fathom how anyone with a conscience could go to a movie made by this man and contribute to this form of social injustice and hatred. I refuse to give him my hard earned money so he can have a big hit when he says such horrible things about other people. He is NOT the victim here. The people he slurs are the victims. Boycott. Boycott. Boycott.

Ex-President Gerald Ford Dead At 93

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. - Former President Gerald R. Ford, who declared "Our long national nightmare is over" as he replaced Richard Nixon but may have doomed his own chances of election by pardoning his disgraced predecessor, has died. He was 93.

The nation's 38th president, and the only one not elected to the office or the vice presidency, died at his desert home at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday.

"His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country," his wife, Betty, said in a statement.

Ford was the longest living former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in June 2004, by more than a month.

Ford's office did not release the cause of death, which followed a year of medical problems. He was treated for pneumonia in January and had an angioplasty and pacemaker implant in August.

Funeral arrangements were to be announced Wednesday.

"The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to duty, his personal character and the honorable conduct of his administration," President Bush said in a statement Tuesday night.

Former President Carter described him as "one of the most admirable public servants and human beings I have ever known."

Ford was an accidental president. A Michigan Republican elected to Congress 13 times before becoming the first appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew left amid scandal, Ford was Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office moments after Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate.

"My fellow Americans," Ford said, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."

And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers."

He revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president.

That single act, it was widely believed, contributed to Ford losing election to a term of his own in 1976. But it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Ford was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, his presidency remained open and plain.

Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.

After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he "built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own."

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.

"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. "I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

So Ford became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.

Said a ranking Democratic congressman: "Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous."

In 1976, he survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter's record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.

Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.

"His life-long dedication to helping others touched the lives of countless people," Carter said Wednesday. "He frequently rose above politics by emphasizing the need for bipartisanship and seeking common ground on issues critical to our nation."

At a joint session after becoming president, Ford addressed members of Congress as "my former colleagues" and promised "communication, conciliation, compromise and cooperation." But his relations with Congress did not always run smoothly.

He vetoed 66 bills in his barely two years as president. Congress overturned 12 Ford vetoes, more than for any president since Andrew Johnson.

In his memoir, "A Time to Heal," Ford wrote, "When I was in the Congress myself, I thought it fulfilled its constitutional obligations in a very responsible way, but after I became president, my perspective changed."

Some suggested the pardon was prearranged before Nixon resigned, but Ford, in an unusual appearance before a congressional committee in October 1974, said, "There was no deal, period, under no circumstances." The committee dropped its investigation.

Ford's standing in the polls dropped dramatically when he pardoned Nixon. But an ABC News poll taken in 2002 in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in found that six in 10 said the pardon was the right thing to do.

The late Democrat Clark Clifford spoke for many when he wrote in his memoirs, "The nation would not have benefited from having a former chief executive in the dock for years after his departure from office. His disgrace was enough."

The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon "an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest."

While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind.

He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.

Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt.

Both women are serving life terms in federal prison.

Asked at a news conference to recite his accomplishments, Ford replied: "We have restored public confidence in the White House and in the executive branch of government."

As to his failings, he responded, "I will leave that to my opponents. I don't think there have been many."

In office, Ford's living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Va., home — unpretentious except for a swimming pool — that he shared with his family as a congressman.

After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity.

Ford spent most of his boyhood in Grand Rapids, Mich.

He was born Leslie King on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Neb. His parents were divorced when he was less than a year old, and his mother returned to her parents in Grand Rapids, where she later married Gerald R. Ford Sr. He adopted the boy and renamed him.

Ford was a high school senior when he met his biological father. He was working in a Greek restaurant, he recalled, when a man came in and stood watching.

"Finally, he walked over and said, 'I'm your father,'" Ford said. "Well, that was quite a shock." But he wrote in his memoir that he broke down and cried that night and he was left with the image of "a carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son."

Ford played center on the University of Michigan's 1932 and 1933 national champion football teams. He got professional offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose to study law at Yale, working his way through as an assistant varsity football coach and freshman boxing coach.

Ford got his first exposure to national politics at Yale, working as a volunteer in Wendell L. Willkie's 1940 Republican campaign for president. After World War II service with the Navy in the Pacific, he went back to practicing law in Grand Rapids and became active in Republican reform politics.

His stepfather was the local Republican chairman, and Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg was looking for a fresh young internationalist to replace the area's isolationist congressman.

Ford got twice as many votes as Rep. Bartel Jonkman in the Republican primary and then went on to win the election with 60.5 percent of the vote, the lowest margin he ever got.

He had proposed to Elizabeth Bloomer, a dancer and fashion coordinator, earlier that year, 1948. She became one of his hardest-working campaigners and they were married shortly before the election. They had three sons, Michael, John and Steven, and a daughter, Susan.

Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

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I wish very much that I had only kind memories of Mr. Ford, but I also remember that Gerald Ford was most probably part of a Republican power deal to keep Richard Nixon from being impeached and brought up on federal charges. The Nixon-Agnew administration was perhaps one of the most corrupt in US history. That Ford was an extended part of that corrupt regime is unfortunate. He was probably the most benign of US presidents in recent history. History will, of course, say only good things about Mr. Ford, and we all know that his wife, Betty, showed extreme courage by coming forward with her alcohol and drug dependency. The Betty Ford Clinic has been the salvation of many since then. Mr. Ford, I will just say that you were just caught in a bad situation and perhaps it wasn't fair to your abilities as a diplomat. Rest in peace.

The Nepalese "Buddha Boy" Has Returned

KATHMANDU- A mysterious teenaged boy believed by some to be a reincarnation of Lord Buddha has reappeared in eastern Nepal after vanishing for nine months, a witness and a television channel said on Monday.



Sixteen-year-old Ram Bahadur Bamjon was spotted on Sunday by villagers in the remote and dense forests near Piluwa village in Bara district, 150 km (95 miles) east of Kathmandu, local journalist Raju Shrestha, who visited the boy, told Reuters.

Bamjon disappeared in March from the forests in nearby Ratanpuri village where he had reportedly been meditating without food or water for almost 10 months.

"I have been wandering in the forests since then," Shrestha quoted Bamjon as telling him.

"I am engaged in devotion which will continue for six years," the boy told Shrestha.

Hundreds of curious onlookers, including many Buddhists, thronged the site to see the boy, sitting in a meditating position.

A local TV station showed people pressing their palms together and lowering their heads in devotion in front of him.

"I don't think he is a Buddha. But he has some sort of extra strength to meditate. He eats herbs," Shrestha said.

Before his disappearance, an estimated 100,000 people from Hindu-majority Nepal and neighbouring India flocked to see him meditate. They were not allowed to get closer than 50 metres (165 feet).

Shrestha, who met the boy up close, said he had shoulder-length hair and sat cross-legged under a small tree.

"He has an ash-colour shawl wrapped across his chest," he said, adding the boy had a "flat-ended scimitar" next to him.

Buddha was born a prince in Lumbini, a dusty village in Nepal's rice-growing plains about 350 km (220 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu more than 2,600 years ago.

He is believed to have attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, which borders Nepal.

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Always there will be those who give us hope. Whether or not this boy is the buddha is irrelevent. That he gives hope to many is important. Just as Jesus Christ gives us all hope every day of our lives. Let us not forget that Jesus was born to save us all.

James Brown "The Godfather Of Soul" Is Dead

'Godfather of Soul' James Brown Dies



ATLANTA (AP) - James Brown, the undeniable "Godfather of Soul," told friends from his hospital bed that he was looking forward to performing on New Year's Eve, even though he was ill with pneumonia. His heart gave out a few hours later, on Christmas morning.

The pompadoured dynamo whose classic singles include "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)" died Monday of heart failure, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. He was 73.

"People already know his history, but I would like for them to know he was a man who preached love from the stage," said friend Charles Bobbit, who was with Brown at the hospital. "His thing was 'I never saw a person that I didn't love.' He was a true humanitarian who loved his country."

The entertainer with the rough-edged voice and flashy footwork also had diabetes and prostate cancer that was in remission, Bobbit said. Brown initially seemed fine at the hospital, Copsidas said. Three days before his death, he had participated in his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, and he was looking forward to his New Year's Eve show.

"Last night, he said 'I'm going to be there. I'm the hardest working man in show business,'" Copsidas said Monday. He said Brown planned to perform during a two-week tour in Canada after hitting Times Square.

Brown was himself to the end, at one point saying, "I'm going away tonight," Bobbit said at a news conference later Monday.

"I didn't want to believe him," he said.

A short time later, Brown sighed quietly three times, closed his eyes and died, Bobbit said.

One of the major musical influences of the past 50 years, Brown was to rhythm and dance music what Bob Dylan was to lyrics. From Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, David Bowie to Public Enemy, his rapid-footed dancing, hard-charging beats and heartfelt yet often unintelligible vocals changed the musical landscape.

He was one of the first artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.

"He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator. Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown," entertainer Little Richard, a longtime friend of Brown's, told MSNBC.

"James Brown changed music," said Rev. Al Sharpton, who toured with Brown in the 1970s and imitates his hairstyle to this day.

"He made soul music a world music," Sharpton said. "What James Brown was to music in terms of soul and hip-hop, rap, all of that, is what Bach was to classical music. This is a guy who literally changed the music industry. He put everybody on a different beat, a different style of music. He pioneered it."

Sharpton will officiate at Brown's funeral service, details of which were still incomplete, Copsidas said.

Brown won a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living In America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.)

He even had a brief but memorable role on the big screen as a manic preacher in the 1980's movie "The Blues Brothers."

Brown, who lived in Beech Island, S.C., near the Georgia line, had a turbulent personal life that included charges of abusing drugs and alcohol. After a widely publicized, drug-fueled confrontation with police in 1988 that ended in an interstate car chase, Brown spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program.

From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, "Please, Please, Please" in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. He earned the nickname "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business" and often tried to prove it to his fans, said Jay Ross, his lawyer of 15 years.

Brown's stage act was as memorable, and as imitated, as his records, with his twirls and spins and flowing cape, his repeated faints to the floor at the end.

"He was dramatic to the end - dying on Christmas Day," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since 1955. "Almost a dramatic, poetic moment. He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way."

His "Live at The Apollo" in 1962 is widely considered one of the greatest concert records ever. He often talked of a 1964 concert in which organizers made the mistake of having the Rolling Stones, not him, close the bill, remembering Mick Jagger waiting offstage, nervously chain smoking, as he pulled off his matchless show.

"To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close," rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told the AP.

Brown routinely lost two or three pounds each time he performed and kept his furious concert schedule in his later years even as he fought prostate cancer, Ross said.

With his tight pants, eye makeup and outrageous hair, Brown set the stage for younger stars such as Michael Jackson and Prince. And the early rap generation overwhelmingly sampled his music and voice as they laid the foundation of hip-hop culture.

"Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me," Brown told The AP in 2003.

Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, Brown was abandoned as a 4 year old to the care of relatives and friends. He grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an "ill-repute area," as he once called it, learning how to hustle to survive.

By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3 1/2 years in reform school for breaking into cars. While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.

In January 1956, King Records of Cincinnati signed the group, and four months later "Please, Please, Please" was in the R&B Top Ten.

Brown is survived by his fourth wife, Tomi Rae Hynie, one of his backup singers, and at least four children - two daughters and sons Daryl and James Brown II, Copsidas said.

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Rest in peace, James. You have earned your right to sleep. You gave us all so much of yourself, and you got so little back from so many who never loved you. But those who did love you will neve forget you. I was only 12 when I first heard you sing. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the TAMI show and they had to literally drag you off the set. I understand now why it was so hard for you to leave that stage. Good night, and be at peace.

Santa Is Alive And Well In America

Santa Claus endures in America




WASHINGTON - Santa has lots going against him — school-yard rumors, older brothers who think they know the deal and tattle to the young ones, errant price tags, the tell-all Internet and so many Made in China labels it seems the North Pole has outsourced to Asia. Humbuggers everywhere. But no worries. It's a wonderful life for Santa.


An AP-AOL News poll finds him to be an enduring giant in the lives of Americans.

Fully 86 percent in the poll believed in Santa as a child. And despite the multiethnic nature of the country, more than 60 percent of those with children at home consider Santa important in their holiday celebrations now.

That's an approval rating President Bush and most in Congress could only dream about these days. (If Santa were a politician, Catholics and the nonreligious would be his base.)

Among the findings:

_Santa is important to 60 percent of Catholics, 51 percent of those without a religious affiliation and 47 percent of Protestants, when households both with and without children are surveyed.

_Nearly half, 47 percent, said Santa detracts from the religious significance of Christmas; over one-third, 36 percent, said he enhances the religious nature of the holiday.

_91 percent of whites believed in Santa as a child; 72 percent of minorities did. One quarter of those now living in households with incomes under $25,000 did not believe in Santa.

_An overwhelming majority, across nearly all backgrounds and religious beliefs, say they believe in angels — 81 percent. Belief in angels is shared by 57 percent of those who say they have no religious affiliation. Nearly all white evangelical Christians, 97 percent, share this belief.

Somehow, the tradition has survived all that challenges tradition.

Carl Anderson studied Santa beliefs as a doctoral student 20 years ago, looking at the phenomenon then and a century earlier. A child psychologist with a long, real beard, he's since put in 18 Christmases at the Dallas NorthPark Center absorbing the wide-eyed wishes of little ones.

So what's new, Santa?

Remarkably, he says, not much. The set of beliefs appears to have remained largely intact since the topic was studied in the late 1800s.

Few kids have challenged him over the years, he said. When one little girl did so, tentatively, this week, he did what psychologists always seem to do. He answered by asking a question.

"Santa, some people are saying they don't believe in you," she told him shyly.

"Well, what do you say to them?"

"I tell them they haven't met you."

Case closed, for now.

In the poll, 8 was the average age for a child's Santa reality check. Fifteen percent hung on to their belief over age 10. The telephone poll of 1,000 adults was taken Dec. 12-14 by Ipsos, an international polling firm. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Kimberly Schiller, 25, of Levittown, N.Y., believed in Santa until she was 13. He was a comfort to her after her dad left home when she was 12. "So I was kind of holding on to that last bit of childhood," she said.

"I teach 13-year-olds now," she went on. "They are just so jaded. They always want stuff. It's kind of sad that they don't believe anymore."

Wendy Ross, 50, from Kings City, Calif., said she gave up her Santa belief when she was about 5, but that didn't spoil Christmas for her. "The only thing that spoiled the holidays for me was me. I threw a fit if I didn't get what I wanted."

Now the mother of three grown children, Ross said she brought her kids up to focus on Jesus, at the expense of Santa. Now she sees Santa as a symbol of giving, but also one of superheated commercialism.

In Louisville, Ky., Ron Montgomery agrees with that downside. "Now if you are using Santa Claus to push a $100 robotic dinosaur, then that's a problem," he said. But the 64-year-old grandfather counts himself as a Santa believer to this day.

"It's the whole atmosphere," he said. "Santa Claus is the spirit. The trees, the church, the whole works. You actually see more of your neighbors.

"It's a feeling. It's not like a ghost. It's an attitude."

Reaching deep into memory, Margaret Klumpp, 88, of Windsor, N.Y., recalled hiding her Santa doubts from her parents. "I think probably I pretended I believed so my parents would keep doing it," she said. "I don't know if I was that smart at 5, but I did later."

Now she sees Santa through the eyes of five great-grandchildren, the oldest 6, and considers him a complement to the Christian celebration.

"When you are a little child you go to Santa and after that you move over to Jesus," she said. "I think it kind of goes together."

Anderson shared his historical expertise with an elite group this summer in Missouri, addressing the international convention of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas.

At the Dallas mall, he knows the faces looking up at him will be clouded by questions before long. But for many kids, the letdown also comes with an upside.

"They see themselves as more grown up," he said through that beard. "They're on the other side now."

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Santa is alive and well, in the hearts of America. Now, let's pray for the rest of the world. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you out there.