Politics

What a difference a generation makes. We’ve gone from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference founders’ sexcapades—infamously taped by the original TMZ gang, J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI voyeurs—to the continuing buffoonery of their heirs and disciples. The evolving scenario involves charges and counter-charges over who’s running the joint; characterizations of opponents as “thugs,” “renegades”…

Palin accuses Obama of being in bed with Big Oil From the pot calling the kettle black file, pundit/pundit Sarah Palin is accusing President Obama of not responding to the BP Oil debacle sooner because of donations made to the Democratic Party. The former governor of Alaska, who has championed more off-shore drilling, which by…

In 1999, when Sheryl Breslin’s daughter entered kindergarten, she was already playing with a medical kit and expressing a desire to be a doctor. Sheryl, like all parents, had high hopes for her child and had saved $1,000 for college. She wanted a nice home and wanted her daughter to go to a good college,…

By New Years Eve of 2001, I’d bought a house, had a new baby and got married in a short, six-month burst. I was in a new neighborhood in the middle of Washington, D.C., where I was too lazy and too scared to run on my own. When I casually mentioned to my neighbor, Von…

About a week after 9/11, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case that began in a sleepy, college town in upstate New York. That case, Brown v. City of Oneonta, involved one of the most egregious cases of racial profiling in decades. An elderly woman in the upstate New York college town reported…

President Obama has been criticized for not taking a more aggressive stance on immigration. His critics say he doesn’t want to be caught up in a contentious issue with important elections ahead. This author says it’s more complicated than that. With his crammed domestic agenda and teetering approval ratings, President Obama is moseying away from…

In a place as fond of a good time as Trinidad and Tobago, it’s no surprise that much of its election on Monday is being fought through calypso and chutney, creolized up-tempo Indian rhythms. On the airwaves and political platforms, these musical manifestos truncate the issues in catchy choruses for the party faithful and others…

Barack Obama took the oath of office as a United States senator on January 4, 2005, and promptly began running for president. Very quickly, he began using the peculiar kind of celebrity that comes with being a senator to introduce himself to Washington, to a new generation of political power brokers, and, more broadly, to…

Are you living paycheck to paycheck, counting down the days until your next direct deposit? Do you find yourself in the same basic financial state you were in five years ago, with a slightly better salary and slightly nicer stuff? If so, you’re not alone. Recent research confirms that high-earning African-American households lag far behind…