Politics

Talk about being kicked while down. It looks like government subsidies to help pay insurance premiums for the unemployed will be going away. Under President Obama’s economic stimulus law, the government provided a 65 percent subsidy because many unemployed could not afford the exorbitant insurance premiums. The aid expired May 31, 2010 and has yet…

To his credit, the nation’s first black U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has not shied away from discussing race and its impact on our criminal justice system. Shortly after he was confirmed, he famously said that ”in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of…

A number of writers have questioned the much-hyped black Republican surge after many of the candidates failed to win nomination in the latest round of primaries. The Root’s Cord Jefferson asked ”Whatever Happened to the Black Republican Wave?” as if black Republicans have failed in some regard. Granted, black Republican politicians did not deliver many…

As I prepare to travel to South Africa to attend the 19th FIFA World Cup event, I am reminded of the incomparable power of sports.  Perhaps it is because I am a politician that I am so acutely aware of the fact that through international competitive sports we as a global community have managed to…

Pope Springs Eternal: Begs forgiveness, promises action on abusehttp://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/europe/view.bg?articleid=1260882&srvc=rssDuring a Mass in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI begged forgiveness from clerical abuse victims and promised to “do everything possible” to ensure priests don’t rape and molest children ever again. This mass marks the end of the “Vatican’s Year of the Priest,” a yearlong celebration…

The consensus emerging from Tuesday’s primaries is that there’s no real consensus. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter called it for women: ”With only six women governors, 16 women senators, and 74 women in the House, female candidates are fresher for voters looking for change.” TIME’s Jay Newton-Small says pragmatism won: ”If Washington wasn’t quite the winner tonight,…

The last time The Root checked in with former ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, it was to get her thoughts on what it takes for black women to make it in politics. She was, after all, the first black female senator in Congress, serving in Illinois from 1993 to 1999. She was also ambassador to New…

While everyone else was paying attention to Nikki Haley and Meg Whitman in Tuesday’s primaries, an African American named Alvin Greene ran over former four-term state lawmaker Vic Rawl to win South Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary. An unemployed 32-year-old veteran who paid $10,400 to register as a candidate and then bought not even a single…

Alvin Greene, a 32-year-old, unfunded, unemployed veteran who is black and lives with his mother in Manning, S.C., ran away with the Democratic nomination for the Senate in the Palmetto State last night. In the November general election, he will face first-term GOP incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint, who many expect to seek the GOP presidential…

State officials plan to seek order blocking 12,000 nurses from strikinghttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/state-officials-plan-to-seek-order-to-block-12000-nurses-from-striking-thursday.htmlDon’t get sick in California. State officials are planning to seek an order to block 12,000 nurses from striking at all five university hospitals. Nurses are striking because of the universities’ “unwillingness to provide adequate staffing that puts patients at risk.” In preparation for the…