Politics

It’s already well-known that Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice of the United States. But first … the show! Elena Kagan is one in a long line of Supreme Court nominees who were confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee for another position before they were nominated to the…

Elena Kagan had better get ready to fight for her nomination. In addition to the GOP, which is questioning her ability to be nonpartisan, civil rights organizations have resisted endorsing her Supreme Court nomination because of her record on hot-button issues like affirmative action, racial profiling and immigration. The National Bar Association isn’t enamored with…

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will break her silence and respond to Republican Party concerns that she cannot be nonpartisan, based on her unwillingness to enforce Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell while dean of Harvard Law School. Huh? We thought they might be upset about her lack of judicial experience. Silly us. The GOP should go…

Baltimore puts a higher percentage of its population behind bars — 0.6 percent, or more than 4,000 people on any given day in 2009 — than any other city in America, according to the Justice Policy Institute report Baltimore Behind Bars, released in June. (Cook County in Illinois and New York City both incarcerate less…

CNN and MSNBC recently announced new television hosts: Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker on CNN and Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. These three fit the description of cable television’s network news and chat fest champions like Greta Van Susteren, John King, Bob Schieffer, Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. They are all white, and cable news has…

There is an old saying: “Knowledge is power.” True of many aspects of life, it is of paramount importance in facing the crisis of HIV/AIDS in the black community. As an African-American medical expert, I know that the single biggest factor fueling the AIDS epidemic in our community is that too many of us don’t…

If you’re convicted after spending a reported $30 million on legal fees to keep from going to jail, it makes sense to go all in and take your case all the way up to the Supreme Court. It paid off for Jeffrey Skilling, who prevailed in challenging the constitutionality of the legal doctrine used to…

President Barack Obama has a terrible dilemma in Afghanistan. The surge isn’t working. His ostensible partner in Afghan president Hamid Karzai is sickeningly corrupt. His team on the ground is bickering. His top general, Stanley McChrystal, has been fired for the vulgar rant that he and his staff issued on the record for Rolling Stone…