Politics

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…

The president just wrapped up a live town hall conversation with young voters that covered a wide range of topics, including education, bullying, homosexuality and the incarceration of black men. They asked some tough questions, including one from a man who bluntly asked, “Why should we still support you?” If you saw it, tell us…

It’s been astonishing to read the near-universal agreement among leading legal ethicists and Supreme Court watchers on the view that there is nothing untoward or even problematic about the emergence of Virginia Lamp Thomas — wife of Justice Clarence Thomas — as a Tea Party leader, even after Mrs. Thomas publicly denounced the president of…

By David Swerdlick Sometimes President Barack Obama gets it right. He was all over Chile’s February earthquake. When the news broke, he was on the White House lawn pledging support for the recovery. He was there for miners killed in a West Virginia coal mine collapse. He recruited former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W.…