Politics

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…

So what furry creature scurried across the Rose Garden steps while President Obama gave a statement on his Wall Street reform bill? Obama seemed not to notice the furry visitor, but his audience certainly did.  After the statement, when Obama was out of earshot, reporters and photographers started arguing about the species of the creature, The Associated Press reported. Was it a rat?  A mouse?  A mole? “I would partially rule out rat,” said Russell Link,…

Better Late than Never: New bank rules for lenders and borrowers http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100521/ap_on_bi_ge/us_financial_overhaul From our better late than never file, new rules for banks and consumers have emerged following the housing bubble that burst and decimated the economy. After much debate, Congress is getting tougher on the lenders and borrowers by creating new bank rules. Banks…