Politics

(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…

(The Root) — With so many pundits declaring that President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda is dead on arrival, you could be forgiven if you mistook the last few days for the first week of May … 2009. Back then, there was already angst that in Obama’s first first 100 days, unemployment briefly spiked to 10…

President Obama kicked off his annual commencement-speech tour on Sunday with a visit to Ohio State University. In front of a crowd numbering close to 60,000, according to the New York Times, the president steered clear of stumping or any partisan politics. Instead he chose a message of uplift and hope for the graduating Buckeyes…

First lady Michelle Obama said that students at a high school near her family’s Chicago home told her recently that “every day they wake up and wonder whether they’re going to make it out of school alive,” according to The Hill. She told CBS Sunday Morning that she learned the disturbing detail last month during…