Politics

Barack is not Spock. I’ve heard so much rhapsodizing recently about the obvious kinship of the “mixed-race” marvels that I had to set the record straight. I saw “Star Trek” last weekend. Good film, but when the Vulcan commander strolled across the bridge of the Enterprise, I was not reminded of the president. Others have…

At Morehouse, to Give Better than Receiving: Student Shooter to get Degree, Victim Will Not A Morehouse student who shot another student is on his way to receiving his degree while his victim has left the campus only three bullets richer according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Joshua Brandon Norris is catching a wrist slap for…

Domestic Terror Plot Thwarted in New York According to the Washington Post, Four men—James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen—were apprehended while plotting to use C-4 plastic explosives to bomb two Jewish centers in the Bronx, New York. The men also planned to shoot down Air National Guard planes with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles. Stuff like this…

‘Round and ’round and ’round we go with this torture thing, shouting and squawking in a decidedly partisan squabble, quarrelling over waterboarding and whether we should release certain damning pictures, arguing about whether we’re safer now or less safe now and who knew what/when/where. Fingers point and poke, and we talk on and on and…

Graphic storytellers spend their days mired in a world of fantasy and intrigue, where heroes and villains are rendered in black and white. In his book, How to Draw Noir Comics, illustrator Shawn Martinbrough broke down the basic artistic elements used to create these shady characters. So when The Root asked graphic novelist Joseph Phillip…

Jay Mohr Goes in on FLOTUS; Buzz Sees a ‘Missing Person’ Headline in his Future Comedian Jay Mohr of ‘being that guy whose name you don’t remember but who you totally recognize’ fame decided to give Madame Obama an ethering on the Jim Rome radio show, noting, among other things, FLOTUS’ stature and eyebrow game.…

Car hunting? Soon you’ll go farther for every dollar you spend on gasoline. President Barack Obama announced new, more stringent fuel efficiency standards Tuesday that would raise the mileage of each American-made car to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. The new law will affect cars beginning in model year 2012, and, environmentally, could make…

What is Michael Steele doing? In his latest speech declaring a new day for the GOP, the Republican Party chairman offered up yet another rough and tumble takedown of the Democrats, filled with biting rhetoric and at times lackluster, backward-looking policy initiatives. Among many terse one-liners came a declaration “that the era of the GOP…

*According to the Associated Press, Martin Luther King’s family has become temporarily functional enough to authorize the use of the good doctor’s intellectual property for the purpose of making a feature-length biopic. Steven Spielberg is attached to produce, hopefully having shook off the bad juju from that Indiana Jones debacle. *Having mastered playing blind Black piano virtuosos,…

Recently, longtime Catholic priest and freedom fighter Father Michael Pfleger and members of his parish—the Faith Community of St. Sabina in the South Side of Chicago—made an eloquent plea for justice by flying the American flag upside down in front of his church. Hoisting a flag with the union down is done very rarely and…