the browntable
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Really, Pat Buchanan?
THE ROOT recently ran a story about why failed, racist Republican politician turned commentator, Pat Buchanan—the devil we know—is better than the devil we don’t. Adam Serwer argued: His rants, while offensive, aren’t persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already agree with him. But they discredit the notion that the Republican Party has entirely moved on…
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Health Reform Rises from the Dead
For those of us who questioned how hard the White House and its congressional allies would fight for health care reform, the answer is here. The devil remains in the details, of course, but in the last couple of days Barack Obama has put Republicans and conservative Democrats alike “on notice”: Get on board or…
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Swagga Goes International
Is Jay-Z George Bush? SLATE sister site FOREIGN POLICY recently compared hip hop to geostrategy. Mark Lynch takes on the recent back-and-forth between rapper Jay-Z and less successful (though still famous) MCs like The Game, Nas, and 50 Cent, using Jay-Z’s diss tracks, and his responses to those of others, to form a crudish theory…
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Double-Edged Steele
RNC Chair Michael Steele’s antics are a lot easier to explain if you consider the possibility that he’s a double agent working for President Barack Obama—ponder this… A few months back, CNN reported that Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ house slave, William Jackson, was an agent for the Union army. Davis spoke with his generals openly…
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Sonia Sotomayor's Confirmation Hearing: The Drinking Game
The first session of judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing was a meaningless display of platitudes. Some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, like Lindsey Graham, saw the writing on the wall: “Unless you have a complete meltdown, you are going to be confirmed,” he told her. And with that said, just about everyone else in…
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Sotomayor v. Sessions
“There you go again.” By that, I mean the GOP. Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, can’t seem to grasp that American jurisprudence is about more than just the application of the law to the facts, or that our Constitution has proven time and time again to be one of the most…
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Obama Taps Regina Benjamin as U.S. Surgeon General
President Obama today announced his intention to nominate Dr. Regina Benjamin to the position of United States Surgeon General. In doing so, Obama adds to his roster of daring and creative appointments: Benjamin is a Morehouse-trained physician and specialist in rural poverty and health outcomes who would be the second black woman to serve in…
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VIDEO: Obama Speaks at Slave Fort in Ghana
Barack Obama rounded out his trip abroad with a stop in Accra, Ghana over the weekend. There, he spoke to the nation’s parliament and paid a visit to a maternal health clinic in Accra, before finishing up with a moving visit to Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle—the point of no return for thousands upon thousands of…
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Before Obama, Google Gets to Africa
Hours before president Obama touches down in Ghana, good news for Africa and Web 2.0: (Via the Stimulist) Google’s mission is well-known by this point: to organize the world’s information. But now Google is focusing on making sure that the world includes Africa. Many of their search functions to this point have been available to…
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Palin's New Jack Pity
Maybe Sarah Palin is just tired of it all in a “stop the bus, I want to get off” kind of way. Probably not. Yesterday, Double X’s Emily Bazelon took a charitable stab at taking Palin at face value by asking, “does Sarah Palin have a point?”—maybe there’s no way she can push a legislative…