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President Obama's Statement on the Passing of Ted Kennedy
The overnight news that the Democratic Party’s long-serving Senator, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, has passed away, marked the end of an era in American politics. That’s a fine cliché, but there is no doubt that an enormous body of legislative accomplishment—the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 Immigration bill, the SCHIP program, the Americans with Disabilities…
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Eric Holder Won't Cut Obama Slack on the Torture Question
Attorney General Eric Holder is taking his job as top cop of the United States to heart, and is appointing a special prosecutor to get to the heart of CIA misconduct involving interrogations of suspected terrorists during the tenure of George W. Bush. Holder’s move, which the NEW YORK TIMES is calling “the most politically…
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The Entire Health Care Debate Explained–On a Napkin
The technology writer and rudimentary artist Dan Roam decided that the American conversation on health care reform should be simple enough to explain on the back of a napkin. So he gave it a shot. Watch: Healthcare Napkins All —DAYO OLOPADE Covers the White House and Washington for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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'The Simpsons' Hit Angolan TV
Fresh off Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Angola last week, the television show “The Simpsons” appears to be paying the less-than-democratic, oil-rich southern African nation a visit. Via McClatchy’s always-interesting “Somewhere in Africa” blog: America’s most dysfunctional cartoon family (OK, second most) is coming to TV screens in Angola, via the South African…
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Will Obama's Public Option Punk Out End Up Passing Health Reform?
On the heels of Jack White’s breast-beating cry for Barack Obama to stop punking out on health care reform, it’s worth reposting “The Daily Show”‘s equally impassioned cry for Obama to do the same: It’s understandable that progressive-minded Americans might want the president to show a little Bush-era salesmanship, and start acting like the party…
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Hillary and Bill Clinton Take the White House
No, that’s not a flashback to 1993: Hillary Clinton, current Secretary of State and former president Bill Clinton are meeting separately with president Barack Obama to discuss foreign affairs. Hillary, fresh off a female-focused ten day trip to sub-Saharan Africa, is keeping her standard weekly appointment at the White House, while her husband will have…
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Where’s the Beef in Africa?
On Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—part of a seven-nation tour of sub-Saharan Africa—a flurry of attention focused on her sharp reply to a local student who seemed to question her role as chief diplomat of the United States. All the attention overshadowed the substance of…
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President Obama Tries "Straight Talk" in NYTimes
President Obama has held seven town halls this summer and one lengthy primetime press conference in service of his plan to bring affordable health care coverage to every American. The charm offensive doesn’t seem to be going the president’s way—and may even have watered down his brand—but the White House seems to think their strategy…
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Clinton Compares Nigerian Elections to Florida 2000
On the last legs of her ten-day trip to sub-Saharan Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the US to Nigeria. Speaking generally about the need to lift the shroud of illegitimacy that often covers elections on the sub-continent—rather notably, in the disputed 2007 vote that seated current Nigeria president Umar Yar’Adua—Clinton told a town…
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Obama Hugs it Out with Sidney Poitier
President Barack Obama bestowed the National Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, to a host of prominent Americans today, including actor Sidney Poitier, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Obama gave a particularly moving tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy, the last to be cited, and said at the start of the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
