Jennifer Hudson's Back! God Bless Her!

In her first performance since her family murder tragedy, Jennifer Hudson sang the National Anthem at Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa. We really feel for this poor gal! She did amazing and everyone is talking about it! What a voice! What are your thoughts on her performance? (Watch a YouTube clip of her performance.) Can't get enough of her? Hudson also is slated to sing at the Grammy Awards on Feb. 8 in Los Angeles.

Justice for Jennifer Hudson...FINALLY!

If there's a hell, this guy is rotting in it...

Police arrested the estranged brother-in-law of Jennifer Hudson on Monday in the deaths of the entertainer's mother, brother and young nephew, taking him from a prison where he had been held on a suspected parole violation.

William Balfour was arrested at Stateville Correctional Center and released to detectives as he awaited formal charges in the shooting deaths of the singer and Oscar-winning actress' relatives, said Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond.

Until Monday, police had identified Balfour, 27, only as a "person of interest" in the investigation. He had not been charged by Monday evening, said Andy Conklin, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.

The bodies of Jennifer Hudson's mother, Darnell Hudson Donerson, and brother, Jason Hudson, were discovered Oct. 24 at the family's home on the South Side of Chicago. The body of 7-year-old Julian King was found three days later in a sport utility vehicle on the West Side. All three had been shot.

Police took Balfour into custody the same day the bodies of Donerson and Hudson were discovered. After 48 hours — the longest Chicago police can hold a person without charges — Balfour was taken by the Illinois Department of Corrections on the suspected parole violation.

Balfour — Julian's stepfather and the estranged husband of Jennifer Hudson's older sister, Julia Hudson — served seven years for a 1999 attempted murder and vehicular hijacking conviction.

His mother, Michelle Davis-Balfour of Chicago, told reporters outside a police station Monday night that authorities don't have a case against her son.

"If they found gun powder on his hands, you got a case; if they found a gun on him, he had a case; if they found a fingerprint on the truck that he did this, you got a case; but they don't have nothing," Davis-Balfour said.

Balfour had refused to take a lie-detector test and stopped cooperating with detectives, according to a police official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Police have confirmed they found the gun used in the killings. The .45-caliber gun was discovered Oct. 29 in a vacant lot in the West Side neighborhood where the King's body was found a few days earlier.

Bond declined to discuss any evidence Monday. But after a hearing at the prison, the chairman of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board said a woman had told authorities that a gun used in the slayings was "identical" to the gun that was recovered.

At the time, board Chairman Jorge Montes said the evidence was key to a decision finding probable cause that Balfour violated his parole and should remain locked up pending a Dec. 3 hearing before a review board panel.

Balfour did not have an attorney at the November hearing, and the Cook County public defender's office said at the time that nobody from the office had been assigned because he was not formally charged with a crime.

No one in the public defender's office was assigned to Balfour's case late Monday, and it' was not clear whether he had other representation.

I hereby declare October 30, 2008, to be Nancy Grace Day!

Click on the pic to see Nancy Grace's interview with William Balfour's mother

I've refrained from posting my personal opinion about the Jennifer Hudson tragedy, mostly out of respect for Ms. Hudson (who I met a few times on the red carpet, back when she was with her hometown sweetheart, and she was nothing but a doll) and her deceased nephew (I have two young nephews myself, and if -- Gods forbid -- something happened to either of them, I couldn't be held responsible for what actions I take against the person who showed the supreme idiocy of hurting them), but after witnessing one too many media appearances by this joke of a "mother" -- William Balfour's birth vessel, that is -- and Julia Hudson's constant updating of her MySpace page as though everything was totally normal (woman, YOUR SON WAS KILLED! PLAN HIS FUNERAL, GRIEVE WITH DIGNITY, AND GROW THE F**K UP!), I FINALLY have to comment.

Let me explain something to people across America: you have EVERY right in the world to have your own life. Lord knows I have lashed out against every groupie and gold-digger in America, have called them every name in the English language (and a few in Spanish, Italian, and Sicilian), and think they should all be quarantined by order of the CDC...but at the end of the day, they're all consenting adults, and have every right to do what they want with their bodies. Most of my aggravation with groupies and gold-diggers lies with the fact that the vast majority of them are weak of character, otherwise-talentless except for primal skills that ANYONE can master with the help of a few "instructional" videos, and rife with insecurities, and I detest those type of people with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

But as many of you who have followed my writings (both here and elsewhere) know equivocally, I reserve special venom for "women" who give birth to innocents and proceed to treat them as though they're little more than a cramp in their style...or, worse, place them in harm's way because of their weakness for "good d**k" (as Julia Hudson had on her MySpace page until recently).

You see, once you become a mother, it stops being all about YOU. It is your job, from the minute that child takes its first breath until the minute you take your last, to make sure that said child is safe from harm. No, you can't hold their hand every minute of every day, and nor can you protect your child from every monster and thing that goes bump in the night, but IT IS YOUR DUTY to ensure that you don't INVITE the boogeyman into the house, either.

Contrary to what a few of my journalist colleagues have unscrupulously mentioned, this attitude is NOT exclusive to the hip-hop (and, in a slimy racial undertone, the African-American) community. Hell, I've been a rock'n'roller since the days of Andrew Wood and Mother Love Bone (how's that for an obscure reference, kids?), and I can cite two VERY obvious examples in the rock'n'roll community about two groupies in particular who I frequently wish all sorts of bodily and psychic harm upon who do this EXACT thing.

(One is a nearly-60-year-old teacher who -- as an erstwhile guitarist once said -- acts worse than her students, who sold her own daughter out to troll MySpace, send harassing e-mails, and almost cost herself her entire career to follow a no-name, no-talent, barely-known bar band around with all the obsession of a New Kids on the Block fan [and, prior to that, she was equally obsessed with Hanson, which I don't know whether to laugh or cry about]. Another groupie, closer to my age, abandoned her child in another state to whore around New York City, do drugs, and sleep with every musician who said "hello" to her while calling herself a "band manager." I would sooner trust my teenage daughter to the care of Dina Lohan than trust my PLANTS -- let alone a band -- to this "manager's" care.)

For Julia Hudson, her weakness for "good d**k" cost her son, her brother, and her mother their lives. She invited William Balfour -- a convicted VIOLENT felon, who served time for attempted murder -- into her home, into her life, around her son. Did she really think that something like this wasn't going to happen? Even in her interviews, she comes across as someone who is more excited about the fact that she's Jennifer Hudson's sister (her plea for Julian's return looked like a poorly-acted B-movie) and getting ancillary attention as a result. I know it's politically correct to feel sorry for her, but the ones we SHOULD be feeling sorry for are the victims of this brutal crime, especially the seven-year-old victim. And when the "mother" of the victim is more concerned about her MySpace profile -- not to mention the fact that the "person of interest" is still on the TOP of her Top Friends list -- and getting "good d**k", who previously said she was a mother "whether she liked it or not," one has to wonder just how much she knew, or knows, about the circumstances surrounding that innocent boy's death.

As for William Balfour's mother, whom Nancy Grace mercilessly skewers in the above interview (though I miss Grace's early days; motherhood seems to have softened her take-no-prisoners approach), well, maybe instead of taking the "there's no way my little angel did this" (ma'am, I hate to tell you this, but he's a convicted violent felon who was raised in a household with OTHER convicted violent felons; his alibi cannot be positively verified; there are no other "persons of interest" in this case. As in the OJ case years ago, I have to wonder...WHO ELSE COULD IT BE, THEN?), she should have taken the responsible parent's approach (I know, tall order) and said, "I know what my child is capable of. The question is, did he do THIS?" Perhaps then I'd be more apt to respect her.

Click to view Nancy Grace in all her glory.