A guy like Beanie Sigel is the type Bill Cosby's usually complaining about in his speeches and books, but yesterday the two teamed up for an anti-violence march in Philadelphia. And the Cos had nice things to say about Sigel, who released an album last week.

“Here is a young man from the streets who came back to the streets as a man,” Cosby said of the rapper. “This is what we want from our young boys, to go from boys to men.” Beans, who shot an anti-violence public service announcement with Philly’s Fox 29 last week, believes that, as an artist who hails from the same mean streets that are now under siege, he is uniquely suited to reach at-risk youth. “I come from these things, the streets,” Beans told the crowd outside of M. Hall Stanton School. “I’m at a time in my life where I’m trying to make the transition from something negative to something positive.”

And despite the occasional passive theft of rental cars, Beans is making that transition quite nicely.

• Rep. Julia Carson (D-Ind.) died this weekend of lung cancer. She was 69. [BS]

• Hillary Clinton won the Des Moines Register's coveted endorsement over the weekend, while Barack Obama picked up the Boston Globe's. [BN]

• Police forces in Philly's mostly white suburbs aggressively enforce nuisance laws and have a high arrest rate for minor crimes. They say that targeting small crimes helps discourage larger ones. The Philadelphia Inquirer says that targeting small crimes helps arrest a disproportionately large number of black people. [CBS3]

• Mitt Romney said that when he found out in 1979 that the Mormon church had decided to allow blacks to be priests, he pulled over in his car and cried. I believe him. [FN]

We all know the stats, right? Fifty percent of U.S. homicide victims are black, and 9 out of 10 of them were killed by other blacks. Black people are consistently criticized — often by white people who think blacks aren't allowed to comment on white racism as long as there is such a problem with black-on-black crime** — for not stepping up to do something about this problem. No where is "this problem" more prevalent than in Philadelphia, which has the highest murder rate out of all the major American cities. But guess what, critics! Philadelphians, black Philadelphians, are stepping up and making actual attempts to save their city.

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• The Honolulu NAACP held a public forum to discuss Dog the Bounty Hunter. Was that really necessary? [HA]

• Baltimore citizens aren't stepping up to tackle the outrageous murder rate there as Philly's black community has. [BS]

• Onyx, a Houston magazine geared toward the city's black professional community, is folding. [HC]

• Jay-Z will take over Sirius Radio's Hip Hop Nation station, dubbing it Jay-Z Nation. Overkill? [EUR]

• A tattoo is a new clue in the very solvable unsolved murder of Jam Master Jay. [NYDN]

• Oh, if only having your bodyguards smack the papers you just got served to the ground would make the lawsuit actually go away… [TMZ]

• Forbes' list of the top 10 highest earning comedians does not include one single black performer. Dave Chappelle goes all "conscious" on us, and now we've got no one making the big bucks. Seriously, Larry the Cable Guy made more than Chris Rock last year. [Forbes]

• Alicia Keys claims she can "understand" the lesbian rumors. If that's true, then why did she say this? [SP]

• Is James Watson working for the New Jersey Department of Education? [NJ]

• For all of you critics who think black people always want to blame white people and never work to solve problems in the community. [MSNBC]

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