Politics

I hate to say this, but unless President Barack Obama toughens up pretty soon, his presidency could be in trouble.  It’s too early to be sure, but the warning signs are beginning to accumulate. If unemployment, now at 9.5 percent, keeps rising, Democrats could lose House and Senate seats in the midterm elections next year, and, though…

As confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor begin before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, it’s probably best to keep some perspective on the significance of the proceedings. Unless there’s a violent crime in her past, Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Given Al Franken’s recent seating as…

On one level, it is easy to dismiss the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s crudely worded metaphorical threat to castrate Barack Obama for supposedly talking down to black people as the raving of an increasingly irrelevant, former big shot suffused with resentment at the rising star who pushed him off stage. That, after all, is the…

Political scientists investigating why the Republican Party attracts so little support from black voters don’t need to look farther than the extraordinary fashion in which GOP leaders have reacted to the death of former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms on the Fourth of July. The possibility that a black man might actually be elected president…

You’d think after Beatrice Vance of Illinois and Edith Isabel Rodriguez of California both died on the ER waiting room floor while hospital staff just looked on, that maybe hospitals would be on red alert to avoid this type of bad publicity—not to mention the loss of human life. But now there is the story…

Lately, I’ve had the most spirited debates with my students and friends, and I always come away feeling like the loser. I, for argument’s sake, draw a straight line between Barack Obama’s White House aspirations and the embarrassing spectacle of Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation. As soon as I dare utter “Thomas” in the same…

During the 90s, Washington, D.C. was Murder Capital of America. And I had about a half dozen friends murdered. The killings were not odd actually, for the times; however, these young men were middle-class black boys, who did not grow up in housing projects or rough, violent neighborhoods. Guns became so real back then, carrying…

Although I didn’t think it was possible, the latest Don Imus controversy is almost as ridiculous as the first one. Imus recently made an off-hand remark on his radio show about Adam “Pacman” Jones’ string of arrests, noting that “Pacman” was black. “There you go,” he said. “Now we know.” Some people chose to infer…

It looks like Barack needs our help. The Obama VP search team lost senior Democratic strategist Jim Johnson after revelations that he received favorable lending terms from Countrywide. Since neither of us are getting any special rates on credit and lending, we can weigh in on the running-mate choice with clear consciences. Here’s our analysis…

If you want clues to how this year’s presidential election will be fought, look no further than this past week’s Meet the Press on NBC, where the GOP telegraphed its aggressive messaging offensive and Democrats, as usual, sought to play at the smug intersection of fairness and above-the-fray. The entire show, like most political reporting…