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VIDEO: White House Easter Egg Roll
The sun-drenched south lawn of the White House underwent a playground renovation on Monday morning, as the president and first lady kicked off the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Pastel-dressed families from all 50 states (30,000 visitors in total are expected) milled about the grassy landscape, with the Marine Corps brass band playing nostalgic…
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Obama Targets Youth Vote at Facebook Town Hall
On the second leg of a three-day town hall tour, President Obama visited Facebook’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters for a conversation with “the youth.” Fielding questions from both Facebook users around the country and staffers at the office, he touched on a broad range of subjects, including the deficit, health care and the housing crisis.…
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Gulf Coast Is Still Hurting
On the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, President Obama released a statement marking the occasion. Noting his administration’s efforts to hold BP accountable for the catastrophic damage wreaked on the Gulf Coast, he admitted that the job is far from done. “Today we remember the 11 lives lost as a result…
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Is This Obama Education Official Going Too Far?
President Barack Obama has frequently called education the most important civil rights issue of our generation. “There’s a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools,” he said at the 2009 NAACP convention, citing Brown v. Board of Education and the Little Rock Nine. “It’s because there is no stronger…
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Joycelyn Elders Puts Congress on Blast
To the relief of many on the political left, last week’s budget negotiations ended in a compromise that spared funding for Planned Parenthood. Republicans targeted the family planning agency — one of the largest recipients of Title X, the federal grant program dedicated to reproductive health services for low-income patients — because it provides abortions,…
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CBC Budget Dies, GOP Budget Passes in House
In January, I talked to Congressional Black Caucus chairman Emanuel Cleaver about the CBC’s then pending budget. “It is extremely important to have a budget proposal that comes from the vantage point of poor people,” Cleaver told The Root at the time, adding that even if the document died in Congress, Americans would at least…
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Congress Sends Budget Deal to Obama's Desk
The country is officially out of the government-shutdown woods, now that Congress has passed the budget deal reached last week. Today both the House and Senate voted on the measure, which cuts $35.8 billion from the 2011 budget. The only step left is getting President Obama’s signature. Although neither side got everything it wanted out…
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Obama Fires Back in Debt Speech
Before President Obama presented his debt-reduction plan in a speech at George Washington University on Wednesday, he first offered a scathing critique of the Republican proposal, introduced last week by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. Ryan’s plan aims to trim $4 trillion from the deficit over 10 years, mostly by cutting programs that serve the poor,…
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When Unemployment Runs Out: Meet the 99ers
On Unemployed Friends 2.0, a message board for people who have been out of work long enough to exhaust all emergency unemployment insurance — “99ers,” as some have taken to calling themselves — users let off steam in the Venting Forum. I am sooo tired of calling temp agencies week after week with no callbacks…
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White House Launches Black Website
It’s been a rocky week for President Obama in general, but particularly concerning his connection to African Americans. After kicking off his re-election campaign with a well-received speech at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference, the same event culminated with a televised shouting match between Sharpton and Dr. Cornel West over whether the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
