Politics
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Black Legislators Want Your Voting Rights Back
When Rep. Alicia Reece—a Democrat representing Cincinnati in the Ohio state legislature—hears people say the next big political event in the Buckeye State won’t materialize until the 2016 presidential election is underway, she wonders what political planet they inhabit. In 2012, Reece saw conservative political operatives erect a billboard in her neighborhood that claimed to…
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Obama Includes LGBT Athletes in Olympic Delegation
Renowned tennis player Billie Jean King and hockey player Caitlin Cahow are the two openly gay athletes whom President Barack Obama has selected to be part of the U.S. delegation for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, sending a clear message to that country about its treatment of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and…
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NYC Mayor Blames God for Homeless Girl’s Plight Instead of His Policies
Mayor Michael Bloomberg may be in his last few weeks as New York City’s mayor, but he sure is finishing his tenure with a bang. Today it was reported that when asked for his reaction to the harrowing New York Times series on a little homeless girl named Dasani, he replied, “This kid was dealt…
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Tulane Student Youngest Member of Mississippi House of Representatives
As a sophomore at Moss Point High School in Mississippi, Jeramey Anderson became interested in politics, and it’s a good thing, considering that those years in high school prepped him to become Mississippi’s youngest legislator, at age 22. Anderson is a senior at Tulane University’s Gulf Coast campus in Biloxi, Miss., where he studies homeland…
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Looking for a Job? Congress Doesn’t Seem to Care
Lawmakers are in a knot over everything from the Affordable Care Act to finding a rare congressional kumbaya moment for a budget deal. But perhaps you haven’t noticed—it seems as if the last thing anyone in Washington, D.C., wants to talk about is employment. That’s fairly strange, considering it’s still rather rough out there as…
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For Black Cubans, That Handshake Was Hope
It’s hard to get excited about a handshake. It is just a courteous gesture, after all. But for Cubans, particularly many Afro-Cubans, such a gesture between their president and the black president of the superpower just 90 miles north of them fuels hopes for bigger changes. One such change would be the ultimate lifting of…
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Senate Confirms Jeh Johnson to Head Homeland Security
Democrats used the newly adjusted anti-filibustering rules to win Senate confirmation of Jeh Johnson, the president’s top pick for secretary of Homeland Security. The Senate voted 78-16 to confirm Johnson, a former top lawyer for the Pentagon who served as general counsel to the Defense Department during most of President Obama’s first term, ABC News…
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Bob Woodward: Budget Deal Happened Because Obama Wasn’t Involved
A federal budget deal was reached that would avoid another government shutdown because President Obama wasn’t involved in the negotiations, Washington Post columnist Bob Woodward said Sunday on Fox Morning News. The budget bill replaces $65 billion in across-the-board spending cuts that were set for this year and next. “I think this budget deal worked,…
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6 Reasons the US Needs to Keep the Focus on South Africa
It’s tempting to forget about South Africa, now that Nelson Mandela has found his final resting place. But the South Africa he transformed is still changing in interesting and surprising ways. The nation is already the economic powerhouse of the continent and has recently muscled its way onto the world stage. It will see watershed…
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Nelson Mandela Laid to Rest
Nelson Mandela was buried in his childhood village of Qunu, South Africa, on Sunday, ending the journey of the singular man who went from prisoner to president and revolutionized South Africa. A military escort accompanied his coffin to the burial site and removed the national flag that draped his coffin, CNN reports. His widow, Graça…