(The Root) — By now it’s well-known that Republican-dominated efforts to impose and enforce voter-ID requirements may constitute the most pernicious and effective means of suppressing the votes of the poor, racial minorities, rural voters and the elderly since the poll tax and the literacy test. Attorney General Eric Holder has demonstrated fierce and unwavering…

Did the authors of the infamous “torture memos” get off scot-free? Recent news stories seem to suggest that attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee were exonerated when the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility decided not to issue a finding of professional misconduct against them. But a close examination of the 69-page memo makes it…

This is it. The election of Barack Obama may be the last, best chance for America to salvage our mortally wounded political system.  Most rational politicians and commentators from both parties know that the legitimacy of the American political system is at a dangerously low ebb in the eyes of most of the public.  Pressured…

You ever have one of those days? Wednesday was a doozy for Baltimore. First, the city’s embattled mayor, Sheila Dixon, finally resigned more than a month after being convicted of embezzlement. Then, in a devastating opinion, federal district judge Frederick Motz dismissed Baltimore’s groundbreaking claim against Wells Fargo bank, for targeting African-American communities for sub-prime…

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s brief on behalf of beleaguered white men was delivered with a honeyed tongue and a swift blow from the first day of the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. His argument is instilled in his central thesis: If a white man had made the same statements as those made by Judge Sotomayor…