Politics

With the repeal of the controversial “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prevented homosexual soldiers from serving openly in the U.S. military, ratification of the new START Treaty and a surprise 11th-hour passage of the 9/11 first responders’ health care bill, President Obama is being hailed as “the Great Compromiser.” But just a couple of…

By Adam Serwer As we reach the end of a successful lame-duck session of Congress and the second year of the Obama presidency, Perry Bacon writes, “This blitz of bill signings completes a dramatic first two years for the nation’s first black president that included the enactment of arguably the most major liberal policies since…

Yahoo News is reporting that a tour bus slammed into a truck in southern Egypt on Sunday, killing eight Americans and injuring 21 others in the latest fatal crash involving tourists, the state news agency said. The bus was taking a tour group on the 115-mile (185-kilometer) journey from Aswan to the ancient temples of…

The “Birthers” who insist that President Barack Obama was not born a U.S. citizen so incense Hawaii’s new governor that he’s looking for ways to change state policy so that he can release additional proof that the president was born in Honolulu in 1961. The matter is personal for Neil Abercrombie because he knew President…

By Perry Bacon Jr. Twice this week, President Obama suggested that he might become the first sitting U.S. president to support gay marriage. He said his views on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are “evolving” and added that, although he is a longtime supporter of civil unions, “I recognize that from their…

It’s true: Black people are protective of President Barack Obama because he is the first African American to serve as the commander in chief of the United States. It’s not that hard to figure out why that would be the case. Still, I didn’t truly understand the depths of this loyalty until I recently moved…

MONROVIA, LIBERIA — If you’ve seen the award-winning 2008 documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, then this will be a familiar story: How a group of Liberian women — Muslims and Christians, young and not so young, long grown weary from the terrors of war — conspired to wage peace in their country. How…

Earlier this week, the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt rules that will affect the way average people receive data and other content over the Internet. The results of the vote — meant as a compromise between the interests of big business and the needs of “the little guy” — are likely to have a…

The triumphant e-mail arrived in my in-box a week or two ago. It announced a re-enactment of the Florida Secession Convention on Jan. 8, 2011, in the old State Capitol building, where the original event took place 150 years before. “This will be an early event of the Sesquicentennial of the War Between the States…