If you’re a regular The Root reader, you already know that I’m fairly skeptical about the prospects of a 2016 presidential run by current Fox News contributor and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. If not, read here, here, here, here and here. My basic takeaway is that Carson—the first surgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at…

Despite polls this week showing that the public is losing confidence in President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy, you can put me down in that dwindling category of folks who, up to now, actually think that his handling of the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—ISIS for short—has generally been about…

After saying, two Fridays ago, that “President [Barack] Obama failed in his leadership to say what he really knows and has lived as a black man in America”; then saying, a week ago on Face the Nation, that the president “needs to step up to the plate and be responsible”; and writing, Friday, in the…

Last year, right before President Barack Obama made his unannounced appearance in the White House briefing room to personally address the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, on murder charges, I was among those who argued, no, the president shouldn’t be called on to make a statement about the case. Although the words Obama…

If you’re familiar with the oeuvre of the late conservative Internet provocateur Andrew Breitbart, you’ll know that he’s remembered among his admirers for the cri de coeur that he offered right before his death: “Apologize for WHAT?” It’s become as much a part of Tea Party lore as Rick Santelli’s CNBC rant or South Carolina…

Let’s be clear: Whether or not he thought he was being funny, when Rush Limbaugh called out Mississippi’s black voters as “Uncle Toms for Thad,” it was an insult. Full stop. But what it also reveals, and sadly doesn’t come as much of a surprise at this point, is that the king of conservative talk…

It wasn’t enough for Republican primary voters in Virginia’s 7th District that their congressman, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, helped the GOP regroup after President Barack Obama took office; that Cantor played bad cop to House Speaker John Boehner’s good cop during the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff; or that over his career, Cantor voted with his…

Let me be clear. I agree with President Barack Obama’s statement on Tuesday that “regardless of circumstances … we still get an American prisoner back”—emphasizing that the principle of leaving no man behind applies, “Period, full stop.” And I agree with the Wall Street Journal that, any other issues aside, making the deal to get…

If North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis was under the impression that implementing new rules in the state Capitol for public demonstrations would be enough to silence the Moral Mondays protesters who made Raleigh, N.C., a focal point in progressive politics during last year’s legislative session, he might want to rethink. After all, as the…