Politics

CAUCUS SLAMS OBAMA President Obama’s jobs speech yesterday got mixed reviews – as could be expected, with approval and criticism dividing largely along party lines. But one key constituent group – the Congressional Black Caucus – made it clear to the first African-American president that is was not happy. The President proposed a number of…

It isn’t often that Russians climb in bed with Rwandans. Yet, as the much-hyped United Nations climate summit convenes in Copenhagen this week, 56 world newspapers united against the growing threat of catastrophic climate change. An editorial urging global action to deflect the worst effects of fossil fuel dependence appeared in major news outlets, including…

The White House jobs summit may have provided some good photo-ops for the administration, but it must go beyond that and deliver jobs for the American people. With the unemployment rate still in double digits, it is time for government to do what government is meant to do: step in when private forces are inadequate…

Joel is trying. At 41, he’s never landed a full-time, permanent job. He got started early in the underground economy, selling drugs as a young man in the Bronx and Richmond, Va., which landed him in prison. He served his time and quit dealing a long time ago, but a criminal record sticks to you,…

– The Coup “Sneakin’ In” If you’ve ever slid past a long line of impatient partygoers at a packed Las Vegas club on Saturday night, you know how good it feels to get in. Whether you styled-off the bouncer with half a hundred or you were on the VIP guest list, there’s nothing like it.…

Often the true account of a major disaster cannot be told until years have passed. Rather than dim the memory, time often refreshes the search for the truth—and the listeners’ willingness to reject convenient “real-time” explanations and elisions. That was true of the lies eventually exposed about the government’s response to 9/11, and it happened…

President Obama, like Candidate Obama before him, has relied heavily on the Big Explainer of a political speech to get him out of any number of tough political spots, from Jeremiah Wright to the financial meltdown to the outrage over big bailout bonuses. These speeches have a signature architecture, which may be described as Obama’s…

After nearly 15 years of writing about AIDS, I’m forced to acknowledge that nobody needs to hear much else from people like me about this epidemic. For too long the conversation about HIV in black America has been one-way: Wonks talk, sometimes people listen and then it’s over. So on this World AIDS Day, we’re…

Not long after President Obama’s election, the former Chief Judge and one of the most conservative members of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a startling and unprecedented op-ed that appeared in the Washington Post called “Storming the Court.” In it, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who for years joined with Jesse Helms in opposing…

That man who sits atop the federal government organizational chart is clear evidence of the enormous progress the country has made in regard to its troubled history with race relations. But it has very quickly become a dominant meme of the Obama age to debate the extent to which the stupendous changes at the top…