Politics

A state senator has been picked as the new mayor of Charlotte, N.C., to replace Patrick Cannon, who resigned from the post last month in a public-corruption scandal, the Associated Press reports. The Charlotte City Council on Monday selected Dan Clodfelter, a business lawyer and Democrat who was on the council before being elected to…

Former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who is serving a two-and-half-year sentence after pleading guilty to illegally using campaign money, has been moved from a federal prison in North Carolina to a minimum-security prison in Montgomery, Ala., the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The 49-year-old former representative from Chicago, who entered prison in October, clashed with prison officials…

After spending much of his first term facing criticism that he did not do enough to address issues of particular importance to minority communities, President Barack Obama appears to be making a conscious effort to make such issues a priority of his second term. On Tuesday, the president will sign two executive orders specifically aimed…

Recent Supreme Court decisions on voting rights and political contributions have rescued the Republican Party from the brink of political oblivion and instead threaten to permanently undermine the very fabric of American democracy. The court’s 5-4 decision last week in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission eliminated the aggregate cap on individual campaign donations. The ruling…

For a guy who says that running for president is “not something that I really want to do,” Dr. Ben Carson—world-renowned neurosurgeon, philanthropist and author—sure is making a lot of moves in that direction. Last month he made his second headline appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the largest annual gathering of…

Washington, D.C., Mayor Vince Gray, who had a solid lead a month before the Democratic primary, will not serve a second term in office, the Washington Post reports. Amid scandal over campaign financing and one of the lowest voter turnouts in history, the mayor conceded defeat early Wednesday morning to Council of the District of…

Fewer than 30 days after masked Russian troops rolled their way into the Ukraine under false pretenses, the U.S. Congress moved with lightning quickness to pass a $1 billion aid package for the troubled Eastern European country. Members on both sides of the partisan aisle, while a little shaky on the details, agree that it…

A surge of sign-ups on the last day for open enrollment in President Obama’s health care initiative, one of the cornerstones of his presidency, brought the total number of enrolled beyond the White House’s original target of 7 million people. President Obama stood on the White House lawn a day after the deadline for Americans…

The College of Charleston’s board of trustees adopted in 2012 its first-ever Diversity Strategic Plan. The plan, to be implemented over a five-year period, was meant to address the college’s many “diversity challenges.” It seems the board just created itself a new challenge. The board tapped South Carolina Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell as the college’s…