Politics
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Obama's Gulf Choices
Understand that the BP oil spill currently tarring the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t just affect Louisiana but the entire country. A third of domestic seafood in the United States comes from Louisiana waters: oysters, crabs, shrimp, redfish, trout, crawfish and catfish are all caught and farmed there. It’s the largest fishing industry in the lower…
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The 'Jim Crow' Injustice of Crack Cocaine Continues
Nothing symbolizes the conflicted state of U.S. race relations more than the tortured odyssey of crack cocaine. Federal sentencing enhancements for the drug, which we now know is pharmacologically indistinguishable from powder cocaine, date to the Reagan administration. They have had an astonishingly injurious impact. Although surveys show that most users of cocaine, in all…
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Your Take: Why Elena Kagan is a Good Choice for the Supreme Court
I am writing to follow up on some of the concerns I am hearing about my colleague Elena Kagan’s civil rights record and whether she would be a fit candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. While it is certainly up to the President to find the ideal person and to look at a number of…
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A Supreme Snub by Obama
President Barack Obama needed only to look across his dinner table each evening or in the bed next to him each night to see a well-educated and well-qualified black female attorney who could have made a great U.S. Supreme Court nominee. For reasons surpassing my understanding, however, the president apparently did not include a black…
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NEWS STAND: Libya Crash Survivor, Gulf Pollution, Maxwell and Jill Scott on Tour and more..
Miracle at Tripoli: 103 Dead as Jet Crashes in Libya; Child Survives Crashhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37100560/ns/world_news-africa 103 people were killed when a plane crashed in Libya, while trying to land at Tripoli airport. The Afriqiyah Airways plane was flying from Johannesburg to Tripoli, when it crashed killing the crew and all but one passenger. Amazingly, a child survived…
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Dorothy Height and the Sexism of the Civil Rights Movement
Please permit a final few words about Dr. Dorothy I. Height before she’s assigned a slot in the Black History Month index. Here are some frank thoughts about her role as a woman of the movement versus a man of the movement. Although she was a legendary figure, I reject a lot of the phony…
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Ethiopian Diaspora Frustrated by U.S. Policy
Chris Flaherty, an American documentary film producer who’s married to a woman from Ethiopia, started a hunger strike early last week in front of the White House to convince President Obama to push for democracy in Ethiopia. Occasionally, someone would wander over to Flaherty to look at his homemade poster boards with photos of Birtukan…
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Roland Martin Jabs Back at Stewart
Roland Martin defends his fashion choices (after a brief word from TV One sponsors).
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We Need More Than Obama's Trust To Support Kagan
Today, as expected, President Barack Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Kagan, the first female solicitor general (and also the first female dean of Harvard Law School), is by all accounts brilliant and extremely qualified. And to hear President Obama and some of his supporters tell it, Kagan…