A little girl in Detroit is being celebrated as a hero after she shielded her mother from an onslaught of bullets while they sat in a car at a gas station. The mother's ex-boyfriend shot the woman in the head, and when the first-grader threw herself over her mother's body, the man shot the child six times, in the head, chest, and arms.

"Officers said they found [the girl] huddled on the floor under the steering wheel, covered in blood, surrounded by spent cartridge casings, a spent bullet on the floor and teeth on the seat," the News reports. "There were bullet holes in the windshield and blood inside."

The suspect, Calvin/Kelvin Tillie, was arrested at the scene and taken to jail, although, from the looks of his rap sheet, I'm not sure why he wasn't already there already.

Both the girl and her mother are recovering at the hospital. [USAT]

I have a list of goals I made when I was in college with all the the things I want to accomplish by the age of 30. Nowhere on the list does it say "become a grandmother." And while I doubt that would be on any young person's list of goals, it's the reality for some women. Twenty-nine-year-old Leticia Magee is one of them. She had her daughter when she was 13, and the girl, now 15, has just given birth to a baby boy, who will hopefully be taught the virtues of condoms by age 7. Read 'em and weep.

Thanks, NOva

The man charged with vandalizing Tupac Shakur's Center for the Arts in Dekalb, Ga. and throwing a noose around his statue is 43 years old and African American, meaning he is both old enough and black enough to have known better than to do something stupid and hateful like that. That's not to imply that a white teenager shouldn't have also known better. I'm just saying. [SOHH]

Some desperate soul, whose name is probably Gary Coleman, is selling Gary Coleman's signed Gamecube and games on ebay. Let's suspend reality for a minute and pretend that people are really looking to buy Gamecubes like that — who in their right mind would purchase something that was touched by hands and arms that haven't seen lotion since Diff'rent Strokes went off the air? It's called Vaseline Intensive Care, Gary.

Roy L. Pearson, the maniac DC judge who represented himself in a $54 million lawsuit against a Mom and Pop dry cleaner that lost his pants, will probably lose his job. I mean, you weep on the stand about some messed up dry cleaning you think is somehow worth $54 million, you lose a little bit of credibility as an administrative law judge.

If he doesn't get reappointed to his current position, the litigious Pearson, who has already asked an appellate court to overturn the negative ruling in his pants suit (ha, get it?), will likely appeal. Meanwhile, the Chungs, who owned the embattled dry cleaning business, had to close shop because of the high cost of the law suit. I hope Pearson's happy. Considering his sanity level, probably not.

[WP]

Remember humble Foxy? The Foxy that was truly remorseful and reminded us all after she was sentenced to jail to think about more important things, like the Jena Six? Well, that Foxy's exit from this world was as abrupt as her entrance.

These days, she's busy making life harder for herself by refusing to do anything she's supposed to do in jail. At the beginning of the month, she got into a shoving match with another inmate, then was "verbally abusive" to correction officers and refused to take a drug test. The combination of those three infractions got her 76 days of solitary confinement, which means she's only allowed out of her cell for an hour each day.

If that's not bad enough, authorities might tack more days onto her solitary punishment after they investigate her refusal (twice!) to get on a Rikers Island bus that was supposed to take her to a Brooklyn court appearance. The first time, she missed the bus because she had to get in hair and makeup. The second time, she wouldn't board the bus until she had eaten lunch.

As ridiculous as Foxy Brown's behavior is, I wonder if the COs shouldn't be the ones punished. It sounds like Foxy Brown's the one running that prison, not them.

[NYP]

• At this point, it would almost be funny if it wasn't so sad and infuriating. Good ol' Bush has appointed a woman who is anti-birth control to head the family planning division of the Department of Health And Human Services. [WP]

• This is what Jason Kidd has resorted to? Grabbing crotches in the club? [Bossip]

• It's hard to pick just one thing wrong with this picture. [C&D]

• No matter how hard this guy tries, I will never, ever, ever, ever be interested in NASCAR. [DS]

• So, considering the current racial climate, it's probably a good idea to keep that Halloween hangman decoration in the garage this year. [SL]

The promoter in charge of Detroit's now-infamous "Light Skin" party, Ulysses "DJ Lish" Barnes, had decided to cancel the event.

But I can't understand why. It was so well-received!

"I made a mistake," Barnes said. "I didn't think there would be a backlash."

Barnes, who said he's been a party promoter for six years, canceled the event.

He said he has gotten angry calls and e-mails from around the country about the party.

"I didn't mean to offend anyone," he said. "I had planned a party for other shades (of black women). We were going to take a shade of color each week. Next week was going to be a party for 'Sexy Chocolate' and the week after that 'Sexy Caramel.' "

You know, it's probably better that he quit before he got to "Sexy Caramel" — the door man would have had a tough time with that one.

[DN via C&D]

Is someone going to be standing at the door with a brown paper bag? How retro.

[C&D]

• If there was any doubt that Zahara is the most amazing Jolie-Pitt. [MG]

• Calling all We Got To Do Better producers! [TAN]

• Janet Jackson describes her yo-yo dieting as something "like a fighter getting ready for a fight." [BV]

• This is just sick, but I've grown to expect little from college football fans. [DS]

• A blog post after my own heart. [FN]

Why does it have to be the black Congresswoman (Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio) who inappropriately grabs a CBS reporter's wrist while saying, "Don't play me like that?"

[Jossip]

Quote of the Week

Lil Wayne on how he came to impregnate his 14-year-old girlfriend, Toya, when he was 15:

A year after Rabbit was gone, I was on tour like crazy with Cash Money, and my momma said she was bored, alone, and scared in the house by herself. She was like, 'Why don't you just have a baby with somebody? Just tell the little girl's mom I'ma take care of the baby, don't worry about that.' I was like, 'I don't have nobody I like like that!' She was like, 'Just find somebody! You don't like Toya?' I was like, 'Alright, I like her then.' Toya was 14 when she got pregnant, and I was 15 asking 14-year-olds. Toya's the only person that agreed outta all the ones I asked. I said that my momma wants a child. And they was like, 'That's your momma's problem!' So Toya was like, 'Shiiit, when we due, boo?

[via C&D]

I would have killed to have seen Al Sharpton and Bill O'Reilly dining together at Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem recently. I could have done without O'Reilly's on-air description of his shocking restaurant experience.

Bill O'Reilly reported that he "had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful," adding: "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship."

Later, during a discussion with National Public Radio senior correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams about the effect of rap on culture, O'Reilly asserted: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.' You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

CONTINUED »

• Missing black woman alert. You probably won't hear about her on the news, so read about Nailah Franklin here. [RR]

• To paraphrase Cord from Mollygood, if MTV had a Hot Bumpkin Mess, this would be the lead story. [AP]

• Don't worry, Kim K. Your secret's safe with us. [Jossip]

• I really just wish they hadn't named their new disc Baby Makin' Project. [SP

Here's the thing. Why do we really need BET to produce a show called We Got To Do Better? In addition to the fact that it sucks, we already have something similar. It's called the newspaper. And most of those tales are far more cautionary than grainy YouTube clips of ignorant people doing ignorant shit.

Take 28-year-old Denver Broncos running back Travis Henry, for instance. The man has a $25 million contract, he makes roughly $50,000 a month, he recently spent $100,000 on a car and $146,000 on jewelry. And he has 9 kids by 9 different women scattered across four Southern states. Unfortunately, he has a bit of trouble paying their child support.

Things are so bad that he once had to borrow $9,800 from the Tennessee Titans so he wouldn't miss a payment, and now a judge is requiring him to set up a $250,000 trust to ensure he has the money to pay every month. According to his lawyer, Henry has "significant financial issues." Clearly, he's too broke to buy a damn condom.

[AJC]