Politics

This Thursday, 4 million people in Scotland will vote in a referendum on whether to end its 307-year political union with England. Final opinion polls show the result on a knife edge, with a remarkable 97 percent of the electorate registered to vote. Among the many communities energized by the debate are 37,000 Scottish residents…

Even though President Barack Obama has been getting tough on power plants to push them to cut back on their carbon dioxide emissions, his administration supports the extraction of natural gas, and environmental groups are warning him to fix that blemish on his climate legacy, Al-Jazeera reports. Climate experts are saying that contrary to the Obama administration’s…

Reminding people to vote costs money. And to that end, the Democratic National Committee is spending a pretty penny—seven figures’ worth—on a national media campaign to get the word out that there is indeed a midterm election coming up and that blacks, Latinos, women, Asians and young Americans—all of whom show up to vote much…

Tavis Smiley, known for his unrelenting criticism of Barack Obama, recently told the Huffington Post that his commentary is rooted in holding the president accountable as the nation’s leader. “As Cornel West and I said many years ago; I respect the president; I will protect the president against white supremacist attacks or anything else he’s…

Since President Obama has decided not to move forward with any immigration-reform work until the midterm elections are over, voter-advocacy groups are finding it hard to get disappointed Latinos to the voting booths this fall. “It’s hard,” Sonia Marquez, a director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, told Al-Jazeera. Of Obama’s postponement of his promised deportation relief for undocumented…

Despite polls this week showing that the public is losing confidence in President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy, you can put me down in that dwindling category of folks who, up to now, actually think that his handling of the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—ISIS for short—has generally been about…

President Barack Obama has a problem. Just when he thought he was getting out of the Middle East, he keeps getting pulled back in. After declaring the successful conclusion of two wars initiated by his predecessor, the centerpiece of his foreign policy, external events have backed the president into a proverbial corner. And Wednesday night…

There’s no shortage of calls for racial healing or proposals for community initiatives in slowly back-to-normal Ferguson, Mo. But as the dust settles and the tear gas cannisters pile up in recycle bins, a malignant return to that special brand of Ferguson status quo may be what’s really happening. After everything that’s happened over the…

In an effort to avoid a repeat of last year’s partial government shutdown, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are promising action as they return to Capitol Hill after summer break, the Associated Press reports. At the same time, they hope to define their parties for the fall campaign. Last fall, Republican House leaders…

Going into the final stretch of President Barack Obama’s presidency, as Americans—and particularly African Americans—begin to form opinions about his legacy on issues of race (that is, what he’s done for black people), they’ll look back to a couple of great rhetorical moments and key policy successes, but they’ll also remember that he was perhaps…