Politics

Critics of President Barack Obama have plenty of political fodder, both legitimate and unfair, to knock the administration during these pressing times. However, one of my biggest disappointments with the Obama White House so far does not have its origins in Obamacare or the failed stimulus package.  Instead, it stems back to the promise that…

by Nia-Malika Henderson What a difference a year makes. In 2009, Forbes magazine ranked First Lady Michelle Obama the 40th most powerful woman in the world. But this year she grabbed the top spot. To get there, Obama leapfrogged over her billionaire pal Oprah Winfrey; took out Beyoncé, who sang for the Obamas’ first dance at the…

Lawrence Ross is the author of the Los Angeles Times best-seller The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities. His newest book, Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses, is a blunt and frank look at the historical and contemporary issue of campus racism on predominantly white college…

When former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder first pitched the idea of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden swapping jobs in 2012, it sounded like a ridiculous stunt. It still sounds like a stunt, but it’s starting to sound a bit less ridiculous. The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward upped the ante this…

When radio host Earl Caldwell put on-air questions to me on New York’s WBAI-FM Friday about the upcoming trial of five U.S. soldiers charged with the wanton killing of three Afghan civilians, I measured them against the horrors of the My Lai massacre and the widespread — and unreported — killing of hundreds, if not…

Since this article was written, the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has been repealed. In January 2011 the article was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. During the recent heated debates on Capitol Hill about repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” former Army Sgt. Tracey L. Cooper-Harris sent a poignant letter to President Barack Obama…

Wynton Marsalis spent the weekend jamming with Cuban legends ahead of a concert series that will put musicians from the two Cold War enemies onstage together. The visit by Wynton Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra kicks off a season of unprecedented cultural exchange, with the American Ballet Theater scheduled to perform in…

On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized for a diabolical human experiment conducted in Central America 64 years ago and engineered by the U.S. government. From 1946 to 1948, scientists deliberately infected Guatemalan research subjects with syphilis to study how well penicillin worked. Sound familiar?…

Tens of thousands of people gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday to demand jobs and justice from the government. Called “One Nation Working Together,” the rally was the culmination of months of planning by more than 300 partner organizations, which included the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the Human Rights Campaign and the…