• Diplomatic Posts Remain Closed After Threat

    U.S. diplomatic posts in 19 cities in the Muslim world will be closed at least through the end of the week, the State Department said Sunday, citing “an abundance of caution,” the Associated Press reports. On Friday, the Obama administration announced the closings over the weekend, and officials issued a global travel alert, warning that…

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  • Tea Party: Dropping GOP Stars?

    Members of the Tea Party plan to abandon Republican lawmakers they helped elect four years ago because many have adopted more moderate positions on key issues such as immigration and health care, the Associated Press reports. The move could hurt the re-election chances of former stars, including the governors of Florida and Ohio. Four years…

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  • Celebs Wish Barack Obama a Happy Birthday

    (The Root) — It’s the president’s birthday, and he’s getting well wishes from everybody from your cousin Greg to Gladys Knight. Even Tavis Smiley hit pause on his bitterness long enough to wish him a happy birthday. There was also a bit of electronic PDA from the first lady, which was just the cutest thing…

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  • Rush Limbaugh: Why the GOP Carries His Baggage

    America’s political arena started to become polarized nearly 25 years ago, after conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh syndicated his act, L.Z. Granderson writes at CNN. It also marks the time when Republicans began carrying the talk-show host’s literal and emotional baggage. If you want to know why there’s little cooperation in Washington these days, I’d…

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  • Will Sybrina Fulton Be Remembered?

    Mychal Denzel Smith writes a penetrating piece at the Nation about black women activists, through the prism of Sybrina Fulton and her life after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of her 17-year-old son, Trayvon Martin. In the country’s effort to “address the problem of anti-black racism, we neglect to consider the experiences of…

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  • A To-Do List to Avoid Rape?

    While it’s important for all women to take precautionary measures to avoid attacks, not enough men are being trained not to rape in the first place, Christiana Mbakwe writes in a piece at XOJane that tackles rape culture in America. Like many woman, I’ve bought into the fallacy that by adhering to a list of…

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  • MHP: Washington Needs a Safety Net to Fight Poverty

    On her MSNBC show on Saturday, Melissa Harris-Perry slammed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, for refusing to allow a former guest to testify about anti-poverty programs. She penned a letter to the congressman explaining that Washington need a safety net to fight poverty. Dear Congressman Ryan, It’s me, Melissa. Look,…

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  • President Obama Celebrates 52nd Birthday

    President Barack Obama turns 52 today and is spending part of the day at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, the Associated Press reports. The White House said little about how he’s celebrating. He played golf Saturday with friends from his days in Hawaii and Chicago. Some of them joined him at Camp David.…

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  • 5 Ways 'Poetic Justice' Predicted the Future

    (The Root) — John Singleton’s Poetic Justice was released in 1993 during a watershed period that saw a number of black films entering theaters. Janet Jackson starred as Justice, a poetry-loving hairstylist (the works of Maya Angelou were prominently featured), and Tupac Shakur played Lucky, a postal worker with dreams of making it big as…

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  • Quote of the Day: Martin R. Delany on Nationhood

    Read the quote in context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.  Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

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