the browntable

An incredibly important bill on climate change is being debated on the floor of the House today. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, whose lead sponsors are Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) will cut carbon emissions by 17 percent below 1990 levels, promote investments in renewable energy sources, and implement the…

Of course, the #1 jam off of Michael Jackson’s 1991 album, “Dangerous,” suggests that it “doesn’t matter if you’re black or white.” But among the most heated controversies surrounding the recently passed musician was his public struggle with his appearance, his racial identity and his skin color. Jackson was diagnosed with vitiligo, a pigment-erasing skin…

The word is out, the king is gone: International music icon Michael Jackson died today after being rushed to a Los Angeles hospital following a sudden heart failure. No doubt more details will emerge as the story plays out in California, but initial speculation suggests that the 50-year old Jackson may have overtrained for a…

I was struck when, in commenting on the unrest in Iran, Barack Obama invoked Martin Luther King, repeating the borrowed line that King made famous: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”  Because already, as I watched the demonstrations in Iran, my mind took me back to the days…

Republican South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, infamous stimulus naysayer and presidential aspirant, has been missing since Thursday. Let’s just keep it one hundred and call it what it is: Sanford got “touched in the head,” as the old folks used to say. But is there anything wrong with that? Bob McAlister, chief of staff to…

Fifteen years after 37th U.S. President Richard Nixon passed away, thousands of papers and over 150 hours of tapes from Nixon’s oval office—made between January and February 1973—have been dumped, via the National Archives, into the American collective consciousness. (Check the audio files and some documents here). And as you would expect, they’re quite the…

It’s another pivotal week for your chances to get affordable health care in the near future. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to roll out its plan for a system-wide overhaul this week. That’s key because Finance has been the central battleground for getting a bipartisan bill—and things don’t look good for getting one. The…

President Obama has accepted an invitation to the opening ceremony of the first World Cup to be held on the African Continent, according to the head of FIFA, the world soccer federation. From ESPN: President Obama, whose late father was Kenyan, has indicated he will attend the event on June 11 next year when the…

The three part opening act of Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden came to a close this Tuesday as the same crop of 5th graders from Washington’s Bancroft Elementary School, who had broken ground in March and planted seeds in April, came to the South Lawn once more for an end of year “Harvest Party.”…

The 1994 massacre in Rwanda remains unimaginable 15 years later. And those 100 days of violence continue to echo through time, with equally unimaginable ramifications. Photographer Jonathan Torgovnik has documented one of them in a terribly affecting project on the mother-daughter relationships that grew up out of systemic rape. In 2006, he began a three-year…