Politics

In her Chicago Sun-Times column, Mary Mitchell says that Michelle Obama is sure to help draw national attention to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s food-desert campaign. She will join him on Oct. 25 when he presides over a food-access summit. Emanuel, a master strategist, has found a way to link his own pet project to first…

Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School You would always get straight talk from professor Derrick Bell. When I was a young lawyer, barely six years out of law school, I was at a crossroads. I could stay in the U.S. Department of Justice and take a position in the criminal section…

There’s been no bigger Herman Cain skeptic than I — just read here, here, here, here or here. In my view, Cain — the gospel-singing, talk-radio-hosting, former Burger King exec and Kansas City Fed chair — is long on style and short on solutions. He’s heir to a long line of Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque politicians who mistakenly…

Left for dead a few weeks ago, Herman Cain’s long-shot presidential campaign was resurrected by a surprising win in the Florida straw poll, upsetting front-runners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney in the process. In a CNN interview, Cain found his swagger and proclaimed, “African Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering…

Aliyah Shahid at New York’s Daily News is reporting that GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain said that unemployed Wall Street protesters have only themselves to blame for not having a job. He also charged that the demonstration is being “orchestrated” by the Obama administration. “I don’t have the facts to back this up, but I…

The wells of courage from which the Southern freedom movement drew its strength are remarkably numerous and deep. Nonetheless, I would be hard-pressed to name anyone who was more courageous than the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who died Wednesday at age 89. There was no one quite like him, and it is almost tragic that —…

Ending weeks of speculation among Republicans unhappy with their field of presidential candidates and telling his New Jersey constituents, “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me,” Gov. Chris Christie announced Tuesday that he wouldn’t be getting in the 2012 presidential primary. But he couldn’t resist taking a parting shot — while standing safely on…

During President Obama’s address to the Congressional Black Caucus recently, besides riling some columnists with his message, he was, as one might phrase it, dropping some Ebonics. Or especially some g’s, spiritedly advising the assembled to “stop complainin’ ” and “grumblin’.” The audience seemed to like it, but news sources varied on how they recorded…