THE APPLICATION PROVIDES NO NEW INFORMATION.

Microsoft is working on a new application for smart phones and Global Positioning System receivers to overlay crime data on maps.  That has provoked the president of the Dallas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to preemptively denounce the "Avoid the Ghetto App."

“I’m going to be up in arms about it if it happens,” said Dallas NAACP President Juanita Wallace.

Wallace spent her afternoon at a rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and said she felt safe there, but fears the app may project otherwise.

“Can you imagine me not being able to go to MLK Blvd. because my GPS says that’s a dangerous crime area? I can’t even imagine that,” she said.

That's the kind of reaction that provokes former House Speaker Gingrich to make his offer to work with the Association on getting constituents off of food stamps, rather than continuing to elect Democrats whose electoral chances would likely be diminished as those neighborhoods became less impoverished.

The problem, dear reader, rests in the street name, not whether the street name shows up on a screen, with or without a crime-incidence overlay.  The perception of the neighborhood MLK Boulevard runs through is often erroneous, but it is there.

All across Black America, there are Martin Luther King streets, avenues, drives and boulevards and each has one major thing in common with this MLK bridge: they all lead to the most crime-ridden parts of town. What is also shocking are the number of schools named after Dr. King that have metal-detectors, cops, birth control centers and gang containment programs--not to mention tragically low test scores.

How on earth did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's. name become so attached to the absolute worst in our communities? Well, back in the late 70's and into the early 80's, urban mayors and city councils across this land decided to throw a bone to the Black community by naming something in town after the late Reverend. Sadly, blacks were so impressed by this symbolic gesture that no one stopped to question why Martin Luther King's name seemed to be slapped only on problem areas.

There, also, are the heavily Democratic precincts that have been so badly served by the Democratic politicians repeatedly returned to office from there.  But the Republicans don't have an app for that.