OBAMA DOESN’T BACK FORD President Obama doesn’t want Harold Ford Jr. to run for the U.S. Senate. The White House has indicated it does not want the former Tennessee Congressman to challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in this year’s Democratic primaries. Ford’s name surfaced last week as a possible opponent to Gillibrand, who was appointed by…

“UNDERWEAR BOMBER” INDICTED Federal prosecutors have thrown the book, and then some, at the “underwear bomber” but some GOP politicians don’t think it enough. Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab , who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, was indicted in six counts by a federal grand jury in…

Ebony’s Eunice Johnson DiesEunice Johnson, the woman who stood alongside John H. Johnson, has died. Mrs. Johnson, who was in her 90s, worked with her husband to build Negro Digest, Jet, and Ebony into the most influential black publications in the post-World War II period. She was instrumental in developing the Ebony Fashion Fair, which…

Democratic Defend TSA Nominee Southers Democratic U.S. Senators have come to the defense of Erroll Southers, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration. The nominee, a former FBI agent, had come under fire for inconsistent statements to Congress about accessing the criminal record of his estranged wife’s boyfriend. The inconsistencies were first…

Can America catch a bad guy? Any bad guy? For years, the Bush Administration was under fire for letting Osama Bin Ladin slip through its fingers. Now the Obama Administration is catching flak for failing to nail the Underwear Bomber. Driven by Republican accusations of laxity about security, the Obama Administration has gone on the…

THE NEW SECURITY DEBATE Can America ever be safe? The Underwear Bomber has set off a new round of recrimination about the state of security in the U.S. The fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab’s own father went to the U.S. Embassy to express concern about his son’s militant leanings suggest another missed opportunity to stop…

SAY NO TO NO ON DRUGS? Will common sense about the war on drugs emerge from Mexico? For several years, the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón has battled the illegal traffic in drugs with a strategy defined and supported by the United States. He has deployed large numbers of troops in Ciudad Juarez, a…

Merry Christmas, Mr. President President Barack Obama’s Christmas present was the health care reform bill the U.S. Senate passed strictly along party lines in the early hours of Christmas Eve. The 60-40 vote along party lines, including the Senate’s two independents, signaled how dead the concept of bipartisanship has become. The great task now is…

A Black Politician Rises In France The most popular politician in French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government is Rama Yade, the minister of sports, according to the latest survey. She is also the most visible black politician in a country where few minorities play prominent roles outside of sports and entertainment. Yade, 32, a native of…