• We Move Forward a Decade After the Terror

    In a post-9/11 United States, we find ourselves at war on three fronts, and government more secretive and invasive than it has been in years, Leonard Pitts Jr. writes in a column for McClatchy Newspapers. Suddenly, it has been 10 years. That’s an amazing realization when you remember how it was back then. Calendars still…

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  • Democrats Need a Spine to Stand Up to Tea Party

    Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. says that it’s important for Democrats to up the ante during these arduous political times and points out that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) left the Tea Party surprised when she let loose on its members. I am pleased to report the sighting of an artifact so rarely seen among…

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  • MLK Fought for Poor and Unions, Scorned Today

    Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald reminds readers that when Martin Luther King Jr. died, he was fighting for fair treatment of the poor and the right of workers to form unions. Those struggles continue today. That is not a bedtime story from way back when. It is a headline from right now. Unions,…

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  • Someone Pays When Reality TV Goes Too Far

    Leonard Pitts Jr., in his Miami Herald column, takes a look at problems surrounding reality TV in light of the suicide death of the estranged husband of a star of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.  One imagines the promo will pretty much write itself. “Don’t miss a moment of the high fashion, high drama and…

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  • A Glimmer of Common Sense Toward Tea Party

    Leonard Pitts writes in his Miami Herald column that the Tea Party movement is losing favor among Americans partly because of its loud and angry antics. Cheer up. Not everything went down over the last two weeks.  Granted, most things did. The stock market tanked, government’s approval numbers fell, America’s credit rating slipped as if…

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  • GOP's Nasty 'Tar Baby' Politics

    The Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts tackles the GOP’s “tar baby” rhetoric and calls on President Obama to realize it’s not politics as usual. Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, “your boy,” that “tar baby,” the president of the United Sates, Barack Obama: Ahem. The first title was bestowed upon Obama by political commentator Patrick Buchanan…

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  • Violence, Videotapes and Police

    In his Miami Herald column, Leonard Pitts reflects on changes brought about by the videotaped beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. This all started with Rodney King. More to the point, it started with a plumber named George Holliday. Had he not been video recording from his balcony, that night in 1991…

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  • Why NAACP Call to End War on Drugs Matters

    Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts writes about NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous’ call to end the nation’s “war on drugs,” calling it a monumental sea change for the old-guard civil rights organization. See, this particular quake was not of the Earth, involved no shifting of the planetary crust. No, what shifted was a paradigm, and…

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  • Terror in Norway Sadly Predictable

    Leonard Pitts, in his Miami Herald column, uses a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to highlight signposts leading up to Anders Behring Breivik’s alleged bombing of a government building and shootings at a youth camp in Norway. Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.” —Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1 The dogs of…

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