Politics
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Wisconsin Lawmakers Target Institutional Racism
Wisconsin leads the nation in the percentage of incarcerated African Americans, according to a report released this week by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. While African-American men made up 4.8 percent of the total adult male population in Dane County, whose county seat is Madison, Wis., which is also the state capital, they accounted for more than…
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Obama Will Keep Spying Because That's What Presidents Do
Early reviews are in, and the consensus seems pretty clear: President Barack Obama isn’t going to fundamentally alter the NSA’s spying regime. As the National Journal’s James Oliphant wrote following the president’s speech Friday, new reforms “will have little operational effect” on how the National Security Agency operates going forward. And, if you ask me,…
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Judge Strikes Down Pennsylvania Voter-ID Law
In a victory for the opponents of Pennsylvania’s voter-ID law, a state judge spiked the requirement that mandated all Pennsylvanians must show photo identification before casting their ballots, the Associated Press reports. Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard L. McGinley, who is a Democrat, said that the law would place an exorbitant burden on the people’s right…
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Web-Access Ruling Is a Loss for People of Color
The fight to preserve a free and open Internet has been raging for years, but now it’s crunch time. The big telecom companies have just won a major round in their fight to privatize the Web, and it’s now up to the Federal Communications Commission to reverse the missteps it has made over the past…
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Post-Shelby Cleanup: Bipartisan Effort Aims to Revive Voting Rights Act
When the Supreme Court ruled in its June 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision that a key component of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, the responsibility fell to Congress either to fill the gaping hole left by the striking down of the formula used for Section 5’s preclearance requirement or to otherwise update protections…
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Obama to Nominate His 1st Black Lesbian Federal Judge
President Barack Obama is slated to appoint his first-ever African-American openly LGBT federal judge on Thursday, once again showing his commitment to diversifying the judicial system, Politico reports. Staci Michelle Yandle, who is currently practicing privately, is the woman President Obama wants to place in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois,…
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The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Bashes the President at MLK Birthday Breakfast
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright left no stone unturned in the bashing of President Obama when speaking at a breakfast co-hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The one-time friend and pastor to the president claimed that Abraham Lincoln, whom Obama greatly admires, loved to tell…
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Senate Democrats Can’t Win Without Black Votes
If you are unaware of a congressional midterm election this year, you may very well wake up the morning of Nov. 5 and slam “WTF” into your Twitter feed. Also sad will be the quizzical looks of other black voters upon learning that they were crucial to the nation’s electoral fate. The exit polling will…
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Obama Prepared to Act Alone to Help the Unemployed: ‘I’ve Got a Pen, and I’ve Got a Phone’
President Barack Obama is sending one clear message to Congress: He wants less partisan fighting and more legislating. On Tuesday, Obama said he was happy that Congress passed the $1 trillion spending bill that had bipartisan support, but warned lawmakers that he was prepared to act alone if they intended to obstruct his second-term agenda,…
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Senate Confirms Robert Wilkins, Completes Revamp of US Appeals Court for DC
The majority of judges seated on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are now Democratic-appointed, a deal that was sealed on Monday when the Senate confirmed one of President Barack Obama’s key judicial nominees, the Associated Press reports. Robert Wilkins, who had been trapped in a nomination deadlock in the…