Politics

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is the first Latina Supreme Court justice. The Cambridge police dropped the charges against Professor Henry “Skip” Gates, an action supported by the mounting evidence that he was the subject of a false and racially charged arrest. But without a doubt, this has been a bad summer for conversations on race. It…

From CNN: Forty prison inmates were sent to hospitals, four of them airlifted, after a riot erupted at the California Institution for Men in Chino, a spokesman said. The melee broke out at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the Reception Center West facility, said Lt. Mark Hargrove, prison spokesman. The situation was under control as…

Whenever I read Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s now-famous 2001 lecture, “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” I think of my maternal grandmother’s words at the kitchen table: “¡Ay nena, no tienes que decir que eres negra!” Yes, my Mama Cristina had a thing about my choosing to say I was black. My mother is a white woman born…

From CNN: Drumsticks in hand, Derrick Tabb has found a way to transform New Orleans children from troublemakers to tuba players. Tabb, wearing a gold chain and a baseball cap, doesn’t look the part of a typical band teacher. But every weekday evening in the French Quarter, he beats out the rhythm on his music…

From Think Progress: Rep. Steve Kagen (D-WI) faced a “heated” discussion about health care at a town hall meeting yesterday, with people in the crowd who were heckling, interrupting, and filibustering him. One vocal attendee was a woman named Heather Blish, who identified herself as “just a mom from a few blocks away” and “not…

From CNN: NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Employers cut far fewer jobs from payrolls in July, according to a report from the government Friday, and the unemployment rate fell for the first time in more than a year. The Labor Department reported a net loss of 247,000 jobs in July, the fewest job losses since August…

The Senate, in a vote laden with history and partisanship, confirmed Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday as the 111th justice and the first Hispanic to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The confirmation of President Obama’s first high court nominee was a milestone for his presidency. But the Senate’s nearly 20 hours of debate over Sotomayor…

Between Jack Nicholson’s 1989 portrayal of the Joker in “Batman” and Heath Ledger’s 2008 characterization in “The Dark Knight,” something sinister happened to the villain’s iconic makeup. What had been a mask, with the clearly delineated lines of a carnival character, became simply war paint, and not very well applied. The visual change signaled a…

Not in the slightest. It’s true that some countries in the region are as poor as England under William the Conqueror, but that doesn’t mean Africa’s on the verge of doomsday. How many serfs had a cellphone? More than 63 million Nigerians do. Millions travel on buses and trucks across the continent each year, even…

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal jury convicted a former Louisiana congressman Wednesday of taking bribes on 11 of 16 counts in a case in which agents found $90,000 in his freezer. Former Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat who had represented parts of New Orleans, was accused of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes and seeking…