That's The WayThe Tookie Crumbles

By the time you read this, Crips founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams will have met his maker.

Convicted - beyond reasonable doubt, BTW - of murdering 4 people on different occasions, Tookie has spent much of his death row stay trying to buy time.

And write children's books decrying gang violence.

Now, FrontPage Magazine doesn't have too many nice things to say about a deceptively street guy - had he been Italian, he would make John Gotti look like a pathetic poseur. Tookie knew how to play. And man, did he ever.

Not to mention the fact that everyone, Right and Left, were dealing with a pretty bright (for the most part) mastermind. If it weren't for the drug habit he cultivated during his reign of terror, Tookie would have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the old guard Mafiosi and the new-skool Thieves-in-Law, Triads and Yardies.

Let's cut the crap. The man is as good as dead, but once there's a vacancy in the leadership, there will be bloodshed on who would be the next ghetto capo di tutti capi. By all accounts, Tookie was a self-made man, and he carried it quite well in the House.

As for the kids' books, I'd really like to read at least one of them. Are they really about fighting the "gang mentality", or are they either thinly veiled recruiting tomes or how-to books for wannabes?

Mumia Abu-Jamal is still on death row.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is a free man, but not innocent, and someone in cyberspace may be onto him like white on rice.

Never mind the colour. Think about the crime and the evidence.