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Cops Using Drones? Get Ready
(The Root) — Within a decade, thousands of aerial drones could be hovering over neighborhoods across America, surveying traffic or crops, monitoring large crowds, searching for missing children and fugitives and perhaps more. Could the “eye in the sky” deliver major advancements for public safety and a wide variety of industries, or lead to violations…
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Black Voter Turnout Is Up. Will That Persist?
(The Root) — Now that the government has confirmed that African Americans in 2012 voted at a higher rate than whites for the first time — and were the only group to boost its turnout — groups such as the NAACP are claiming credit. But Barack Obama has left the campaign trail. Without his name…
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Why Are Black People Protesting in NC?
(The Root) — Remember when North Carolina voted for a Democratic presidential nominee (Barack Obama) for the first time in three decades in 2008? And elected its first female governor that same year? Or that black voters in the state outperformed whites (pdf) in the last two presidential elections? Republicans remember. Now that they completely…
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The IRS Scandal: A Reality Check
(The Root) — For the Obama administration’s critics, Steven T. Miller, the ousted chief of the Internal Revenue Service, might now serve as the face of the overreaching, politically intimidating and criminal behavior of big government under this president. That message is filtering from Republicans amid Miller’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee…
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How the IRS Scandal May Hurt Obamacare
(The Root) — So what if Senate Democrats foiled House Republicans’ repeal of Obamacare — for the 37th time? GOP lawmakers are drawing renewed hope of blocking the law’s enactment from, of all things, the IRS scandal. What does the Internal Revenue Service have to do with the Affordable Care Act? Everything. Since the government…
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IRS's Lois Lerner Does Obama No Favors
(The Root) — It seems that Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS Exempt Organizations division who is at the center of the Internal Revenue Service scandal, can’t get out of her own way. First her apology for her division’s targeted scrutiny of conservative groups — to neutralize fallout over a forthcoming audit (pdf) —…
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The Man Who Blew the Whistle on the IRS
(The Root) — If you have followed any of the Internal Revenue Service scandal (hopefully here at The Root), you may have noticed two things: Three congressional hearings have uncovered exactly nothing relevant; and the wearer of the white hat, for once, is a black man. J. Russell George, a graduate of Howard University, is…
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Can Trayvon's Killer Win With Social Media?
(The Root) — Today I’m putting aside Washington politics to talk about political methods of another kind, in the upcoming second-degree-murder trial of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Instead of voters, Zimmerman’s attorneys are trying to sway potential jurors, and the extraordinary campaign could well succeed. For the past year, the Zimmerman defense team has…
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Medgar Evers: Legacy Challenged
(The Root) — Wednesday will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and the timing couldn’t be more significant: Any day now, the Supreme Court could strike down a pair of landmark remedies owed in part to Evers’ activism. Uncertainty hovers over observances that began at Evers’ grave site…
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Who Will Be on Zimmerman's Jury?
(The Root) — At long last, the second-degree-murder trial of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year, began on Monday with jury selection. Legal experts had predicted that attorneys for the prosecution and defense would probe potential jurors for their attitudes about African Americans (Trayvon), Hispanics (Zimmerman) and guns, as well as…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
