Politics

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…

Unsettling audio of a racist and threatening California debt collector has emerged just as Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and George LeMieux (R-Fla.) make the first moves on their End Debt Collector Abuse Act (EDCA). Introduced late Wednesday, the bipartisan bill is a series of amendments to the already established Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA),…

Last year, prosecutors in the county of Pottawattamie, Iowa, narrowly avoided a potential ruling by the Supreme Court that would have held them liable for their role in the wrongful conviction of two black teenagers. The two prosecutors in that case, Joseph Hrvol and David Richter, coerced false testimony from a 16-year-old witness, fabricated evidence…

In name and in theory, the premise is great: “One Nation Working Together.” Initially, the Web site looks the part as well. There is talk of uniting conservatives and moderates, liberals and progressives. There is the common goal of advancing prosperity for all Americans in a manner that is above politics and encompasses citizens from…

The Associated Press is reporting that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is the reason that “not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived” to Haitians who are in dire need of the aid. You may recall that both the House and the Senate passed a bill that would make $917…

I mentioned to a friend that I was planning to attend this Saturday’s march in Washington, D.C., and she replied, “Oh, the Jon Stewart march?” I said, “No, the march planned months ago by real activists.” She hadn’t heard of it. Lost in the kvetching and hand-wringing about Stephen Colbert’s appearance before a House subcommittee…

by Jane Black A child nutrition bill that was a centerpiece of Michelle Obama’s healthful eating campaign stalled in the House on Wednesday after anti-hunger groups and more than 100 Democrats protested the use of food-stamp dollars to pay for it. The bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate this summer, would have mandated strict…

Looking back, many Oaklanders say they started seeing signs of change, gentrification, about five years ago. Residents in neighborhoods that had been predominantly black or Latino started seeing new neighbors: young white singles and families. In fact, the groundwork for gentrification started more than 20 years ago, back in the 1980s and ’90s, when Oakland,…