Politics

  • Rejection of Obama’s DOJ Nominee Means Trouble for Black Defendants

    Debo Adegbile’s contentious confirmation hearings and failure to be confirmed as assistant attorney general for civil rights led one senior Democratic Senate aide to say that racial bias has cast a permanent pall over the confirmation process for black Obama nominees. But the treatment Adegbile faced, which the aide called a “smear campaign” and President…

  • Black Man Used Stolen Passport to Board Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 

    A Mario Balotelli look-alike used a stolen passport to get on board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, a Malaysian aviation official said on Monday, according to ABC News. According to the report, the two men who boarded the flight—which has seemingly disappeared into thin air en route from Malaysia to Beijing, along with 237 other…

  • Ben Carson Hits Liberals at CPAC, Says They Are Trying to Silence Him

    Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon and professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, on Saturday pushed back at liberal criticism of his views during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., bringing the crowd to its feet, the Baltimore Sun reports. “I hate PC [political correctness], and I will…

  • Ben Carson Probably Isn’t the Key to Republicans’ Winning the White House

    Give this much, at least, to the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee: At the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, they went all out for their “candidate.” Carson addressed the crowd on the final day of this year’s CPAC—before Sarah Palin’s late-Saturday keynote—and autographed copies of his new book at a preferred-access signing…

  • Memo to Rutgers: Don’t Boycott Condi Now If You Won’t Boycott Hillary Later

    Put me down as a skeptic when it comes to Condoleezza Rice. Although she’s generally applauded for her barrier-breaking career in public service, as the first African-American woman to serve as secretary of state and national security adviser, “her signature ‘achievement’ in public life,” as I wrote a couple of years ago, “was co-signing Bush’s…

  • ‘Gladiator School’: FBI Investigates Idaho Private Prison for Abuse 

    The FBI has opened an investigation into one of the largest private-prison operators over its management of an Idaho prison with a reputation for violence, which inmates call “gladiator school,” according the Associated Press. Corrections Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tenn., which has operated Idaho’s largest private prison for more than a decade, has…

  • Condoleezza Rice Unwelcome at Rutgers’ Commencement

    There’s little love for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, where faculty and staff are lashing out at the decision to invite Rice to be this year’s commencement speaker, Fox News reports. According to the news site, the New Brunswick Faculty Council officially called on the university’s board of governors…

  • The History of Attacks by the Right on Civil Rights Defenders

    It’s true that some U.S senators voted to kill the confirmation of Debo Adegbile as assistant attorney general for civil rights because they were concerned about the representation provided by Adegbile as a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund to a man convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer. Even though LDF’s…

  • How the Kapor Center Serves as Our Brothers’ and Sisters’ Keeper

    Cedric Brown sat three chairs down from President Barack Obama as he announced his My Brother’s Keeper initiative last week. But more importantly, moving forward, is that Brown has a seat at the table as the White House tackles the persistent crisis of young men of color in America. Brown and his colleague Nicole Sanchez…

  • Senate Rejects Debo Adegbile to Lead Civil Rights Division

    Republicans of the Senate, joined by a few defecting Democrats, successfully blocked President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department on Wednesday, sparking the ire of the administration, the Associated Press reports. The final vote tally was a narrow 47-52 against moving longtime NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund…