Politics

On Saturday, South Africa will roll out its red carpet and put on the dog, as only it can. If the past is anything to go by, there will be plenty of pageantry and poetry and a few staid speeches as big planes fly in salute over the old Union Buildings in Pretoria. It will…

Veronica Gallon went and got her gun. This was just the kind of thing she and her husband, George, had left the north Jacksonville ghettos to avoid: some guy banging and rattling the door in the middle of the night, like a crazed killer or God knows what. Veronica wasn’t having it. So she grabbed…

Detroiters go to the polls Tuesday to elect a mayor to finish out Kwame Kilpatrick’s unfinished second term—and then they’ll get ready to do it all over again.  The prize for the winner is a city in distress. Crime is up; schools are down; and unemployment is at 20 percent. Last year, the Detroit Lions…

“I would like to see an America where black and white actually listen to each other. These issues can’t be solved with rhetoric but with sound positive progressive inclusive policies. I want to see the Republican Party lead that debate because we are the Party of Lincoln and we must be an inclusionary party. .…

In the book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin wrote that Justice David Souter wept after the Supreme Court’s nakedly political, legally indefensible and bitterly divided decision in Bush v. Gore. And apparently it’s been downhill from there. I’ve been hearing for years that Justice Souter would be the…

On the 100th day of the first term of the first black president of the United States, lawyers for a small utility district in Travis County, Texas, walked up the steps of the Supreme Court Building to ask the nine justices of the court to dismantle a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of…

Michelle Obama is showing her humanity in a very interesting and very clear and personal way—it’s bringing people in, putting her hands in the dirt, not being controlled every single moment, and just carrying her own head. As the Yoruba people say—carry your own head. I admire her intelligence, and her phenomenal love for her…

First lady Michelle Obama has simply rocked these first 100 days as well as the decades before that have led her family and this country to our present day. Her grace, strength and intelligence in everything from pep talks at federal departments to engagement with the city in which she now lives demonstrates that without…

The first lady during the first 100 days has just been marvelous; she has helped to give America a new sense of hope. They’ve been a people’s family; they displayed a sense of caring and a sense of sharing and getting other people in America to look out for each other. But more than giving…

For those of us who call the nation’s capital our home, Mrs. Obama has become a neighbor and community activist. From Day One, she has been reaching out to the D.C. community, visiting the children from the city’s working-class and underprivileged households to tell them that her childhood was much like theirs and that through…