Politics
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How Barack Obama Is Paving the Way for a Palin Presidency
It does not take a pollster, partisan or psychic to see a harbinger of things to come in Massachusetts voters’ choice of a Republican to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. If Barack Obama’s next three years in the White House are anything like his first, he will surely be a one-term president. And for black…
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Schizophrenia as Political Weapon
“There is a schizophrenia, as the psychologists or the psychiatrists would call it, going on within all of us. And there are times that all of us know somehow that there is a Mr. Hyde and a Dr. Jekyll in us….There’s a tension at the heart of human nature. And whenever we set out to…
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Judicial Activism From the Right
It’s hard to appreciate the full measure of how aggressively the conservative five-justice majority imposed its will in Citizens United, the Supreme Court’s decision declaring limits on corporate political speech unconstitutional, unless you read it alongside another of the court’s decisions released the same day, Wood v. Alabama Department of Corrections. By now we all know that…
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Tell Me, Peggy Noonan, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin: What Does an American Look Like, Anyway?
“He’s a sort of new sort of Republican. Old style was a Boston Brahmin liberal Republican.… What followed that was the scrappy Reagan Democrats, ethnic and working class. This is something new now, regular guy, looks like an American…” —Wall Street Journal Columnist Peggy Noonan on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” This is the kind of thing…
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Requiem for Martin Luther King Jr.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has rightfully been celebrated as one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century, but he doesn’t get the credit for his significant influence on African-American music. Most music lovers and civil-rights-history buffs know that James Brown, the “Godfather of Soul,” headlined an unforgettable concert in Boston on…
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In Defense of John Edwards
After months of media and suburban coffee-klatch speculation, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards confessed to fathering a love child with his ex-mistress, Rielle Hunter. In a statement released to NBC’s Today Show, the 56-year-old Edwards said, “It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she…
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Supreme Court Decision Gives Corporations Dangerous Clout
Fasten your seat belt. The Supreme Court’s horrendous decision lifting restrictions on corporate campaign spending sets the stage for an escalation of rough and tumble politics the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 19th century. Whatever chance President Barack Obama had of reining in the influence of lobbyists and influence peddlers has vanished. …
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Scott Brown’s ‘Negro’ Dialect
When Senator-elect Scott Brown becomes president, odds are some reporter will write a political tell-all called Game Change – Part Deux: The Race of a Lifetime…Again. It’ll be a behind-the-scenes look at Brown’s trailblazing campaign to “transcend” Obama and become the first “post-Obama” president—with firsthand insider accounts from people on the ground who made it…
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Blacks and Roe v. Wade
Today marks the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. For the last 37 years, the case has remained in a constant state of controversy, with anti-choice activists using any vehicle available to chip away at the right to choose. The most recent manifestation was seen in…
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How Martha Coakley Saved Barack Obama
Any Massachusetts voter who pulled the lever for Sen. John McCain in 2008 and Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown in 2010 is on pretty firm ground. They didn’t want Obama then—and they don’t want him now. Voters who chose President Barack Obama but went for Brown in this week’s special election just canceled out their own…