Politics

Every great once in a while, something like Stanley Nelson’s wonderful documentary Freedom Riders appears and is so good that it exhausts all common versions of praise. In it, Nelson and his crew take on a period of history usually misunderstood: a particularly dramatic series of events in 1961, known as the Freedom Rides, when…

President Barack Obama’s sober assessment of the Cordoba House controversy late on Friday — “Muslims have … the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan” — has, as you might imagine, been met with dissimilarly unrestrained caterwauling. Possible Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said that…

By DeNeen Brown Social activists and civil rights leaders, among them the Rev. Al Sharpton, are planning marches and demonstrations — including the unveiling of a nearly four-story original sculpture on the Mall — on Aug. 28 to coincide with a rally organized by Fox News personality Glenn Beck. Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally, with former…

While the world focused its attention on the political cliffhanger in May that led to Great Britain’s first coalition government in 70 years, the U.K.’s minorities were making significant gains in national representation. A record turnout of minority voters in the closely contested race doubled the number of black, Asian (in the U.K., “Asian” usually…

Republicans are having a field day over President Obama’s comments about freedom of religion in reference to the mosque to be built on private land, two blocks away from the Sept. 11 site. Apparently, the president’s support of a plan to build a Muslim cultural center near ground zero is an indicator that he is…

Throughout 2009 and into the early part of 2010, the Tea Party movement was beginning to prove itself as an electoral force. Election Day results last fall and throughout the primary process this year demonstrated that the party’s collective energy and activism were enough to push its preferred candidates past their establishment counterparts to win…

She has lost her damn mind! —Facebook user I love is that she did it in the context of telling this woman that she shouldn’t be so sensitive about race — that if she couldn’t take a “few jokes” or racial slurs then she shouldn’t have entered an interracial marriage — I always knew that…

If you wanted proof of Charlie Rangel’s extraordinary clout in his hometown, go no further than the Grand Ballroom of New York’s Plaza Hotel on Wednesday night. The congressman’s 80th-birthday party is his traditional campaign fundraiser, and there was speculation for weeks in the media that politicians would stay away in droves to avoid the…

Tanaja Stokes, 8, was gunned down while jumping rope in the Chicago neighborhood of Roseland. While she was jumping rope with friends, two gunmen on bicycles rode up and open-fired. Chicago is in the midst of a summer filled with gun violence. To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court struck down the handgun ban…

During his 14-year reign as Haiti’s “president for life,” François “Papa Doc” Duvalier waged a war of attrition against his own people, looted the country’s finances and “disappeared” thousands of dissident voices. Duvalier, like capitalism, was no respecter of persons. Knowing this, one would not expect to find an abundance of Papa Doc memorabilia on…