Detroiters go to the polls Tuesday to elect a mayor to finish out Kwame Kilpatrick’s unfinished second term—and then they’ll get ready to do it all over again.  The prize for the winner is a city in distress. Crime is up; schools are down; and unemployment is at 20 percent. Last year, the Detroit Lions…

Barack Obama’s ascendancy still brings to mind popular themes from his campaign—“we want change” and “yes we can”—the liberal analogues of “morning in America.” But brushing aside the loftier characterizations of the president’s political rise, 100 days in, his deliberate style, his approach to political adversaries, his omnibus economic recovery policies and his Aloha diplomacy…

If I ever have to die for my beliefs, I sincerely hope that my reward in secular humanist heaven is a bottomless platter of crisp, thick-cut Irish bacon—delicious. But for an al Qaeda suspect locked up at Guantánamo, finding out that interrogators snuck a tiny grain of pepperoni into his already-eaten cheese pizza might be cause…

If you’re running a Latin American country that has fallen out with the U.S. in recent years, or you’re the premier of a Caribbean island nation whose principal exports are tax shelters and LisaRaye, you better come with your “A” game when you meet with President Barack Obama at the Fifth Summit of the Americas.…

Read the washingtonpost.com Live Online discussion on OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY DOCTRINE with The Root’s David Swerdlick. ***** That irresistible beat you hear off in the distance is either the sound of an all-night discothèque in Istanbul shutting down at sunrise or the hum of Air Force One coming in for a landing as President Barack Obama—leaner, browner…

The condensed history of the Western world goes something like this: Achilles slays Hector, Charlemagne conquers Saxony, Anne Boleyn, Martin Luther, Waterloo, May Day, Versailles, The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and Queen Elizabeth II hugs Michelle Obama.  Can you say “road trip”?  Halfway through their trip to the G20 summit, NATO and beyond, it’s safe…

Looking at the radiant Michelle Obama smiling from the covers of every major magazine in America, it’s not hard to imagine that the unquestionably foxy Supriya Jindal could make a very elegant first Indian-American first lady one of these days. But she’ll never get that chance if her husband doesn’t tighten up his game. Republicans…