blogging the beltway

In a phone call with college journalists on Monday, President Obama began attempting to galvanize youth voters, many of whom supported him in 2008 but seem unlikely to rally around the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. “Back in 2008, a lot of young people got involved in my campaign because they … generally felt…

In the lead-up to the NAACP’s One Nation Working Together March on Oct. 2, when 30 LGBT partner organizations will march alongside the NAACP, racial-justice organization the Applied Research Center has released a new study proving that both parties benefit when racial-justice and LGBT-justice groups combine. That coalition building works is no surprise, but what…

Hot on the heels of just-released statistics about America’s staggering poverty problem, President Obama released a tepid statement attempting to hype health-care reform and his infrastructure plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 14.3 percent of Americans are now living in poverty, the most since 1994. For blacks, that rate is 25.8 percent, almost three…

Now that anti-masturbation crusader Christine O’Donnell has defeated opponent Mike Castle in the Delaware Republican Senate Primary, and Carl Paladino has dispatched Rick Lazio, thus earning the GOP nomination for governor of New York, it appears that the most popular headline today is “Tea Party Candidates Defeat GOP.” Before we get to November, I’ve just…

According to Hotline, 11 House Democrats say they’ll work to block President Obama’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans. Looking into most of these congresspeople’s districts, one gets a hint as to why they might be so intent on breaking with their party: they represent rich people. The average…

Many people have a hard time understanding the concept of “othering.” Perhaps it’s the way an adjective becomes a verb, or perhaps they’ve forgotten their Hegel. Either way, a nice refresher on the term is Forbes magazine’s latest cover story, “How He Thinks,” an utterly racist tirade penned by neocon Evangelical Christian Dinesh D’Souza. First,…

Barack Obama today issued a proclamation declaring next week, September 12 through September 18, 2010, National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week. Ever since President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12232 in 1980, saying he sought to “strengthen and expand the capacity of historically black colleges and universities,” all other presidents have continued honoring HBCU…

Less than a month after the closure of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, a new oil rig explosion just west of BP’s failed well has injured one man. Early this morning, Vermilion Oil Platform 380, a rig operated by the Houston-based Mariner Energy, exploded, sending 13 workers into the…

Two notable things in the wake of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally this weekend, at which the Fox News host declared that America needs to reject hate and “turn back to God”: 1.     While official crowd estimates are notoriously tricky—and subsequently inaccurate—a nonpartisan approximation commissioned by CBS News puts the rally’s attendance at 87,000, about…