Politics

By Eugene Robinson This whole health-care thing isn’t quite working out the way Republicans planned. My guess is that they’ll soon try to change the subject — but I’m afraid they’re already in too deep. Wednesday’s vote to repeal President Obama’s health insurance reform law was supposed to be a crowning triumph. We heard confident…

Today marks the second anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration, and his administration is officially looking forward. To 2012, that is. The New York Times reports that Obama plans to close the Office of Political Affairs at the White House and restructure to prepare for the 2012 election. Also, in a first for a sitting president,…

Few things are more infuriating than when people lecture African Americans on where we should fall on rights-related issues because we’ve been oppressed and ought to know better — as if we owe a debt for our freedom that can only be repaid by signing on to their point of view, without going through the…

Today is the midpoint of Barack Obama’s first term as president of the United States of America. When scholars look back at this moment a century from now, what will they make of it? They, of course, will have the advantage of knowing facts about which we can only speculate, starting with whether Obama was…

For more than 50 years, Julian Bond has been a human rights and civil rights leader. In 1960 he co-founded the SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bond spent 20 years in the Georgia Legislature after first being denied a seat because of his outspoken views against the Vietnam War. For 11 years, until 2010,…

Twenty-four months after President Obama was sworn in as American’s first African-American president, 1,006 people of all races responding to an online survey by The Root are at times sharply divided on his achievements, and particularly on the racial climate in the country: * While just 15 percent of whites believe that hate crimes, police…

By Felicia Sonmez and David A. Fahrenthold The House on Wednesday evening passed a bill that would repeal the national health care overhaul, approving the measure on a largely party-line vote. The repeal bill passed 245 to 189, with three Democrats — Reps. Mike Ross (Ark.), Dan Boren (Okla.) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.) — joining…

Today’s scheduled vote by House Republicans to repeal the new health care law is largely symbolic, but the Obama administration is taking no chances that people will miss what’s at stake if the worst-case scenario plays out. African Americans are among the groups to which it’s reaching out to rally support in defense of the…

MSNBC is reporting that President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, will confront stubborn rifts over North Korea and bilateral economic imbalances on Wednesday when they meet during a formal state visit. The two have vowed greater understanding and cooperation between the world’s two largest economies in an effort to bridge the strains…

During this time of year, we in the media are given to expounding on what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have counseled in our era, especially about poverty and war. But there is an aspect of what King was all about that we tend to miss, because time passes, and technology preserves and highlights…