Politics

A new expansive biography of Barack Obama and his family raises questions about the death of the president’s father in Kenya in 1982. Although the official cause of Barack Obama Sr.’s death was a drunk-driving accident, some family members interviewed in Peter Firstbrook’s The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family believe that he…

Less than one in 10 respondents in a recent New York Times poll were aware that their taxes had been cut by the Obama administration. Even worse: A third of the people polled thought their taxes had gone up. In truth, taxes were cut for 95 percent of working Americans — and a conscious decision…

I haven’t yet read Condoleezza Rice’s memoir about her parents, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family. But already I’m annoyed. I’ll admit that I’m discomfited by all of the figures from the Bush administration who have managed to emerge unrepentant, their records unexamined by independent prosecutors, some hawking books and all displaying a kind…

You can’t win for losing. Ask Michelle Obama, who is traveling down the campaign trail for the first time since 2008 — that’s how serious these midterm elections are, folks — to help some Democratic candidates. A conservative watchdog group is now on her case for what it says is electioneering after she reportedly encouraged…

Valerie Jarrett, who has known Barack Obama for nearly 20 years, is not only one of the president’s senior-most advisers but also one of his closest friends. Formerly a Chicago attorney, Jarrett, 53, co-chaired Obama’s transition team in 2008, and she now serves as the assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement.…

By Lenny McAllister Some of the glimpses of President Barack Obama in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine article reveal a myriad of emotions and regret for acts of both commission and omission so far during his presidential term. For Democrats — especially those currently running away from Obama in their desperate fight for congressional…

By Lauren Williams Kaya Henderson, the interim chancellor of D.C. Public Schools (DCPS), has inherited a complex legacy from Michelle Rhee, who resigned her post Oct. 13. Nationally, Rhee’s sweeping changes to schools in the nation’s capital made her a leader in the education-reform movement. Locally, many of those reforms, particularly performance-based teacher firings — 165…

By Jon Jeter First, the day: It was a brilliant autumn morning 15 years ago Oct. 16 when nearly a million black men assembled peacefully and purposefully on the National Mall in Washington D.C., to talk, show our mutual support and urge one another on. An almost cloudless sky, I remember, was bluer than reality;…

By Cord Jefferson In Bill Clinton’s now infamous 1994 introduction to the youth of America, he took center stage at a Viacom-sponsored young-voter forum and was asked if he wore boxers or briefs and if, were he gifted a second chance, he would inhale pot. Today, at an event hosted by MTV’s Sway Calloway and…