Politics

A few weeks after I moved into my condo in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, I saw a group of black men—ages from 20s to 50s—standing in front of my building. As I unloaded my groceries, I introduced myself as the new gal on the block. They seemed genuinely shocked at the neighborly…

The Republican Party has finally found the outer edge of political cynicism; it’s located in Macomb County, Mich. Operatives there have figured out an upside to the foreclosure crisis roiling black neighborhoods: It enables mass voter-registration challenges and thereby offers a powerful opportunity to suppress the vote in Democrat-leaning districts. An enterprising journalist for the…

I don’t know why anyone—myself included—ever let themselves think that a black man could run for president of the United States without igniting the sort of racial backlash we’re witnessing in the current campaign. I don’t know why anyone—myself included—ever believed that the Republican Party would forego its time-tested, coded appeals to prejudice and character assassination…

I can’t wait for Nov. 4. It’s not just because I’ll finally be casting a ballot in my first presidential election (though, don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty friggin’ stoked about it). But really, I’m in tip-toe anticipation of that first Tuesday in November, because I’m hoping, hoping hard, that on Election Day, all the…

Now that we’re in the home stretch of an unexpectedly competitive presidential race, it’s easy to get caught in the weeds of poll numbers and day-to-day horserace analysis. Who’s ahead today? Was that an exploitable gaffe? Was that advertisement a lie? These are the questions dominating news rooms, chat rooms and many living rooms across…

Unless you’ve been under a rock (or a hurricane) the last three days, you know about Wall Street’s meltdown. What many people don’t get is exactly what impact it might have on their personal finances. That’s understandable since it’s easier to believe that what happens to rich investment bankers is unrelated to our own efforts…

I’m an Alaskan. I grew up in Wasilla. Sarah Palin was my mayor. She explored the idea of banning books at the library where my parents taught me how to read. There have been many interesting pieces of journalism introducing my gun-toting, moose burger-eating former neighbors to the rest of the country, and most have…

It’s difficult to remember just how ho-hum the political stakes felt in the 1990s, a time when our country’s prosperity and stability made leadership seem secondary to things like ideology, faith and personality. People who came of age in that era could still debate deep, academic questions like whether history is shaped by the person…

Every hurricane season, Haitians at home and abroad gird themselves for the inevitable loss of life that comes with the torrential rains and winds. But this season has been especially hard, as one storm after another has battered the island, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Tropical Storm Fay struck in mid-August. Hurricane Gustav…

“He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it—my Harvard tie? Like, ‘Oh, sure,’ he went to Harvard.” —Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) from Trading Places (1983) All summer long, John McCain has been selling the idea that a guy who graduated at the top of his Harvard Law class, who went from living on food…