Politics

(The Root) — The tornado that devastated Oklahoma this week requires significant government aid to support recovery. This presents a unique problem for the Republican Party writ large — both in the state and in Washington, D.C. — as requests for aid, and approval thereof, undercut its meme of “self-reliance” and the dangers of “big…

Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart says that what’s missing from most African-American critiques of President Obama is an appreciation for Republican resistance to his agenda. Here we go again. President Obama’s critics in the African American community are hammering him for doing nothing for black people. Drawing my attention this time is “How the Obama…

MSNBC‘s Evan Puschak looks at the theories about why the president’s approval has gone untouched despite government scandals. A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Obama’s approval rating holding steady at 51%, the same as it was a month ago. Gallup shows the same trend: in their poll Obama has remained at 49%. A CNN poll…

(The Root) — The confederacy of dunces that makes up the Republican Party leadership and Fox News want you to believe that liberal operatives at the IRS abused power — for political purposes — by scrutinizing conservative Tea Party affiliates applying for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status. What has been missed in the mainstream debate on the…

Barack Obama arrived in Atlanta on a rainy Sunday to be with a friendlier crowd, after a rough week in Washington, to become the first sitting president to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The president was scheduled to later attend a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at…

(The Root) — One year from now, we will mark the diamond jubilee, or 60th anniversary, of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. I fear the celebration will be a muted, if not deeply ambivalent, moment.   Brown enshrines some transcendently important principles. But at the same time, with almost 60 years of…

(The Root) — Last week, with the Dow Jones industrial average breaking 15,000, war raging in Syria, a guilty verdict in the Jodi Arias trial and nearly round-the-clock coverage of the (mercifully) found victims of the Cleveland kidnappings, House Republicans were fighting an uphill battle to make a splash with committee hearings on the Sept.…

(The Root) — If Barack Obama is truly concerned with how history will judge his presidency, he will resist the intensifying pressure to intervene militarily in Syria’s horrendous civil war. Instead, he should complete the planned withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Afghanistan and refocus our national energy on reinvigorating the still-shaky domestic economy during…

Every year, the street-culture magazine The Fader publishes a special photo issue. Usually the issue features multiple photo essays, but this year the magazine chose to spotlight just one. Shot by photographer Daniel Shea, the essay, entitled “Chicago Fire,” features the city’s notorious South Side , but with a focus not on the neighborhood stars like…