Politics

CNN turns 30 today and those at the head of the cable news network say they’ll continue to do what put them on the map. For Jim Walton, head of CNN worldwide, that is the key to continued success. Below is an excerpt of a Q & A Walton did during a Time Warner Investor…

For the past few weeks, all eyes have been on Rand Paul, the GOP’s choice to represent Kentucky in the Senate. Paul, who credits the Tea Party with his recent primary victory, burst onto the national stage by repeating his claim that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was wrong to force businesses to desegregate.…

As the Gaza flotilla fiasco unfolds, world leaders find themselves singularly impressed by Israeli government’s ability to shoot itself in the foot. In less than a day, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done more to damage Israel’s image than anyone previously believed imaginable. This was inept tactics and inept diplomacy resulting in…

Malawi President Pardons Gay Couple http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/africa/30malawi.html?ref=world Hope springs eternal after all. A gay couple sentenced to 14 years in a Malawian prison for “unnatural acts” was pardoned shortly after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations met Malawi’s president. In a press conference, President Bingu wa Mutharika stated, “These boys committed a crime against…

Someone on the Glenn Beck’s radio show had sense enough to tell him that teasing an eleven-year-old girl was not a good look and that he should probably apologize In a statement posted on his website Friday afternoon, Beck said he broke his own rule about “leaving kids out of political debates.” “In discussing how…

The impressive strides that African Americans have made in the leadership ranks of the military following integration have all but stopped in recent years, and they now occupy just a tiny share of the nation’s top military jobs. Nearly 62 years after President Harry R. Truman signed an executive order to   desegregate the nation’s Armed…

Sometimes I wonder if President Obama reads too many Ben Okri novels. As we transform from a U.S.-dominated, unipolar international order to a non-polar world, virtually everything about his Middle East policy as outlined in the latest National Security Strategy seems to have been infected by a kind of magical thinking. From Afghanistan to Israel/Palestine…

Every few years, some Republican leader gets caught giving voice to a stubborn and persistent yearning for the racial dynamics of the era preceding the civil rights movement — a yearning that remains a foundational, defining ethic for at least some GOP members. In 2002 it was then-Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who at a…

Charles Rangel , the more-or-less former chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, says that he is seeking reelection to a 21st term. This is despite the ethical investigations that led him to leave a perch from which his Harlem constituents and others expected him to achieve so much – and despite a…

As Jamaican security forces widen their search for reputed drug lord Christopher Coke outside West Kingston, many are raising questions about the operation and its outcome. With Coke still at large after five days of searching, just 22 guns seized and 73 dead, security forces now have to answer to an independent inquiry that the Jamaica Government says will…