Politics

Read the washingtonpost.com Live Online discussion on THE NEW BLACK MANHOOD with The Root’s Marjorie Valbrun. Many Americans have undoubtedly had an Obama Meltdown Moment by now. It’s that instance when the unimaginable hugeness of the past year, the past few months and the past few days suddenly hits you and you say to yourself,…

My head aches. My legs throb. I want to sleep but can’t. I’m not hungry and don’t want to drink. But, boy, am I happy.  I’m no doctor, but I believe I’m suffering from one doozy of an emotional breakdown.  Even now, exactly seven days after the Obama family spent their first night in the…

In the four years since the “skinny kid with a funny name” vaulted to national prominence, President Barack Obama’s face has been subject to countless artistic riffs and interpretations—many of them for sale. Kitschy knickknacks inspired by Obama, from “rednecks for Obama” T-shirts to “the audacity of soap” cleaning products, are a boom industry. None…

David Paterson has spoken, and the junior senator from New York is… Kirsten Gillibrand. Wait, Kirsten who? “I recognize, for many New Yorkers, this is the first time you’ve heard my name,” Gillibrand said, after Paterson introduced her at a midday press conference. But, we’ll come back to that. But first, a word in defense…

Politics is full of rich oxymorons: peacekeeping missiles, business ethics and Gov. Rod Blagojevich, just to name a few. Add to those one that is being used ever more frequently these days: clean coal. In America’s industrial history, coal has been both dirty and deadly, but it has been anything but clean. The use of…

“Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions—who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.” —President Barack…

Chief Justice John Roberts re-administered the oath of office to President Obama Wednesday night in a move that Obama aides described as an ‘abundance of caution,’ after the Roberts took one said one word out of sequence while leading Obama in the oath on Tuesday. No one was really questioning whether Obama was president, but…

Barack Obama took the oath of office today as the 44th president of the United States and pledged to “begin again the work of remaking America.” Addressing a huge throng estimated at more than 2 million people on the capital’s Mall and millions of others watching on television, Obama recognized the multiple crises now afflicting…

It would have been too risky for the first black president to completely flip the script on inaugural protocol the first time out. Wouldn’t it have been nice to see Barack Obama stride to the podium in a stately East African tunic, complete with headgear and wooden staff?  But my Zamunda-styled fantasy inauguration, complete with…

I can’t help it; I gotta sing. “Aaaah-maayzin’ ger-ace! How su-weeeet thuh sound … ” What an amazing day to be black. What an amazing day to be an American. This is the day we never thought we would live to see, the one our grandparents prayed for, the one that inspired my wife Gayle…