Politics

She had been ignoring signs of cancer for months. A relative of mine (I’ll call her “Mary”) had no health insurance. Self-employed, she made too much money to qualify for public health programs for the poor, but she did not make enough money to pay for private insurance. When debilitating pain rendered her unable to…

In an interview set to air Wednesday, Chris Brown sits down with Larry King to discuss the events of February 8th. Click here to see the preview. Hmmmm. You don’t remember, Mr. Brown? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, we buy that. How do you explain the other incidents that have recently come to…

With the same zeal and energy that helped get President Obama elected in November, supporters of health care reform are using the same approach when it comes to health care reform. From The Washington Post: The initiative began Wednesday with a rally at a labor hall in Phoenix that featured the Obama sunrise logo and…

When Hurricane Katrina forced Charity Hospital to close four years ago, it was a dream come true for many officials in Louisiana’s state government who had long wanted to see it shuttered. Charity was the troubled medical facility that poor and uninsured residents of New Orleans turned to as their last resort for medical care.…

President Barack Obama led the nation Saturday in mourning and remembering “the greatest legislator of our time,” celebrating the indelible impact of Edward M. Kennedy as a senator for nearly a half-century and leader of America’s most famous family during tragedy and triumph. Delivering an emotional, simple eulogy for Kennedy that capped a two-hour Roman…

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is being lionized as an extraordinary legislator, a champion of civil rights, health care and education, and the caring patriarch of America’s royal family. He was all that. For African Americans, however, he was even more. Ted Kennedy was a white liberal who believed in black power, black political power, and…

For the last several years, New Orleans has been working to bill itself to the movie industry as the “Hollywood South.” Yet with a wide-open mayor’s race to replace the term-limited and oft-investigated C. Ray Nagin on the horizon for next February, New Orleans might be bringing an unwanted side effect from its California courtship:…

A piece of gruesome history is on its way to Washington DC. From the Chicago Tribune: Plans are in the works to exhibit the casket that once held the body of lynching victim Emmett Till at the Smithsonian Institution’s planned National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington when it opens in 2015.…

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s skills were never more successful and constant than in the area of civil rights: for minorities, for women, for the disabled and for immigrants. Over nearly five decades, the Massachusetts Democrat, who died Tuesday at age 77, assumed an increasingly important role in framing the nation’s civil rights laws and in leading…