Politics

Just last weekend, a veteran Chicago law enforcement officer said he was hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the city’s longstanding handgun ban because it would help address the city’s intractable gang problem. “That way everybody would be able to carry a gun,” said the veteran officer, who patrols the border of…

As adults wrestle with rising foreclosure rates and disappearing jobs, child-development experts are reporting that children may end up shouldering some of the most severe, long-lasting consequences of the recession of 2008, according to the Foundation for Child Development (FCD). Working with an index of 28 indicators of quality of life called the Overall Composite…

I wish that last week Barack Obama had not accepted General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as commander of the war in Afghanistan.  I wish that instead the president had picked up the phone and unceremoniously fired the blabbermouth military man as soon as he digested the insulting and insubordinate comments uttered by McChrystal and his staff…

In this installment of Theater of the Absurd, Alvin Greene may be in a heap of trouble. While professing his innocence, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s office are investigating the finances of Democratic U.S. nominee Alvin Greene, to see if he broke any laws in obtaining money for…

It’s already well-known that Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice of the United States. But first … the show! Elena Kagan is one in a long line of Supreme Court nominees who were confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee for another position before they were nominated to the…

Elena Kagan had better get ready to fight for her nomination. In addition to the GOP, which is questioning her ability to be nonpartisan, civil rights organizations have resisted endorsing her Supreme Court nomination because of her record on hot-button issues like affirmative action, racial profiling and immigration. The National Bar Association isn’t enamored with…

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will break her silence and respond to Republican Party concerns that she cannot be nonpartisan, based on her unwillingness to enforce Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell while dean of Harvard Law School. Huh? We thought they might be upset about her lack of judicial experience. Silly us. The GOP should go…

Baltimore puts a higher percentage of its population behind bars — 0.6 percent, or more than 4,000 people on any given day in 2009 — than any other city in America, according to the Justice Policy Institute report Baltimore Behind Bars, released in June. (Cook County in Illinois and New York City both incarcerate less…

CNN and MSNBC recently announced new television hosts: Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker on CNN and Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. These three fit the description of cable television’s network news and chat fest champions like Greta Van Susteren, John King, Bob Schieffer, Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. They are all white, and cable news has…

There is an old saying: “Knowledge is power.” True of many aspects of life, it is of paramount importance in facing the crisis of HIV/AIDS in the black community. As an African-American medical expert, I know that the single biggest factor fueling the AIDS epidemic in our community is that too many of us don’t…