Politics

Over the past few days my Twitter feed has buzzed about the letter signed by 1,000 women and girls urging President Barack Obama to broaden his My Brother’s Keeper initiative. The letter and subsequent commentaries attack the president, accusing him of any number of sins for not including women and girls in this program. Yes,…

As an ordained United Methodist Church minister myself, when I speak at home or around the country, I am exceedingly particular about the language I use to express my support for, or opposition to, political or policy positions. I am humble enough to recognize clearly that the voice of God that I hear is sometimes…

The AFL-CIO, along with the undersigned civil rights organizations, believes that every child has the right to a high-quality education. Last week the Los Angeles County Court invoked that right, under California’s Constitution, but its decision in Vergara v. California identifies classroom teachers as the one and only problem facing public schools. The ruling unfortunately targets all educators, including…

You may often hear the words “Koch brothers” during casual flips through tense cable TV talk shows or when a campaign attack ad invades your television screen. But you might also be among that half of all Americans who don’t really know who they are, according to an April Wall Street Journal-NBC poll.  But when…

All eyes shift again to Iraq … and the sky is falling. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has been out grumpily arguing that President Barack Obama’s 2011 withdrawal from Iraq was a “colossal failure of American security policy.” In other words, he’s saying: Blame Barack; dozing at the diplomatic wheel has led to the current Iraqi…

In one of the most stringent state laws, abortions will be illegal in Florida at any point during a woman’s pregnancy if a doctor rules that the fetus could survive outside the womb, the Associated Press reports. Gov. Rick Scott signed a measure Friday “that redefines that state’s current third trimester abortion ban,” the AP…

It wasn’t enough for Republican primary voters in Virginia’s 7th District that their congressman, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, helped the GOP regroup after President Barack Obama took office; that Cantor played bad cop to House Speaker John Boehner’s good cop during the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff; or that over his career, Cantor voted with his…

Pundits, prognosticators and backseat-driving know-it-alls are chatting up everything you need to know about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) karma-driven primary loss Tuesday night, with politicos scrambling to understand David Brat: a once-puckish Tea Party upstart and Cantor twin with only $200,000 in the bank who managed to unseat the second most powerful cat in…

There is victory in perseverance. It is the fable about the tortoise’s slow pace being just the pace he needs. It is the religious doctrine that heralds, what comes doesn’t always come when you want it but when you need it. James Clyburn knows this well, having been a child in school during the slow…