Politics

First lady Michelle Obama will speak at the NAACP’s 101st Annual Convention in St. Louis on July 12, 2010. Obama will continue her push to get Americans more fit and healthy by addressing the epidemic of childhood obesity. She will use this opportunity to promote her comprehensive campaign, Let’s Move! which advocates healthier foods in…

Remember when people were making jokes about Bill Clinton being the nation’s first black president because of his most deplorable acts — womanizing, lying under oath, being raked over the coals for reasons some thought were irrelevant to his presidency? Comedians, Toni Morrison and black intellectuals felt quite free to utter those words. Now a…

The second day of the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court was marked by some substantive dialogue, respectful banter and even an exchange of ethnic humor between the nominee and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans and Democrats alike seemed to have forgotten the previous day’s tensions.  But for many…

It’s cold in here. Just days after U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Medvedev met at the White House to thaw post-cold war relations, news of a suburban Russian spy ring has emerged. Not surprising, since the relationship between the two Cold War rivals has been marked by alleged spy rings. The saying “Keep…

Oscar and Grammy Award winner Jennifer Hudson spoke publicly for the first time about the murders of her mother, brother and nephew by her brother-in-law on VH1’s Behind the Music. She said the incident was “surreal” and she “felt like she was outside of herself.” Hudson says she spent so much time in seclusion because…

The phone rings. It’s your 75-year-old Aunt Mildred, the one who helped you and your brother financially after your father died. She also helped your first cousins whose mom was disabled, and always had a little extra for her brother Steve who had difficulty making ends meet after he retired. Aunt Mildred is calling to…

Just last weekend, a veteran Chicago law enforcement officer said he was hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the city’s longstanding handgun ban because it would help address the city’s intractable gang problem. “That way everybody would be able to carry a gun,” said the veteran officer, who patrols the border of…

As adults wrestle with rising foreclosure rates and disappearing jobs, child-development experts are reporting that children may end up shouldering some of the most severe, long-lasting consequences of the recession of 2008, according to the Foundation for Child Development (FCD). Working with an index of 28 indicators of quality of life called the Overall Composite…

I wish that last week Barack Obama had not accepted General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as commander of the war in Afghanistan.  I wish that instead the president had picked up the phone and unceremoniously fired the blabbermouth military man as soon as he digested the insulting and insubordinate comments uttered by McChrystal and his staff…

In this installment of Theater of the Absurd, Alvin Greene may be in a heap of trouble. While professing his innocence, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s office are investigating the finances of Democratic U.S. nominee Alvin Greene, to see if he broke any laws in obtaining money for…