the browntable

The shooting today in Washington at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum turned from terror to murder when 39-year-old security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, one of the two individuals shot this afternoon, died at a local hospital. Details from the scene are still unclear, but the elderly man who opened fire at the crowded memorial has…

As the signature Obama legislation, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, gets moving across the country, how much are workers benefiting? Clearly, the government’s maddening, multi-trillion-dollar intravenous shot in the arm will provide some cushion for anxious workers and the unemployed in some areas. We’re already seeing signs of it—stuck in traffic as clogged commuter…

Ok, y’all, this is it. This is the moment of truth for determining whether we’ll have access to affordable health care for the foreseeable future. At Talking Points Memo, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich does a great job articulating why this is such a crucial moment: The insurance and pharmaceutical companies have begun their congressional…

Barack Hussein Obama opened his much-anticipated speech to Muslims world-wide with greetings of gratitude and peace — “Shukran” and “As-Salaam-Alaikum.” From there, the President set out to build a bridge between the United States, which was born out of revolution in the 1700s, and the Arab world, which was born out of revelation and faith…

President Barack Obama’s major speech in Cairo, Egypt lived up to the hype; not that, as the president said at the city’s Al-Azhar University, “a single speech can eradicate years of mistrust,” but that Obama is uniquely comfortable speaking plainly in the most uncomfortable of situations. And here—in a Muslim country not yet fully democratic,…

NEWSWEEK alumnus Richard Wolffe flags his juicy new book from the campaign trail: “Renegade: The Making of a President,” with an excerpt at the DAILY BEAST. He recounts a secret meeting in Chicago with the president’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, at the height of the furor surrounding a series of sermons Wright delivered at…

THE ROOT’s recent article on “The Rise of The Black Hipster” certainly sparked a lively conversation on the web. My piece, which reported on the cultural appropriation of white hipster style by young black folks, and the similar theft of black street style by white folks, was more of a description than an argument. Walking…

Sen. Ted Kennedy has fight in him still. He began circulating an outline for his own health reform legislation late last week, which he’s expected to flesh out today or tomorrow. It’s an important step, because Kennedy’s legislation rejoins the fight for a creating a public plan to compete with existing private plans. Sen. Max…

Last week, the WALL STREET JOURNAL ran a great piece about how the Obama family is changing the visual art on the walls of the White House. Over time, the Reagans, Clintons and both Bush White Houses have added to the expansive permanent collection of two- and three-dimensional art—and now the Obamas are looking to…

Conventional discourse on the state of the economy appears to veer off the crusty core of the issue: We’re undergoing a significant re-configuration, if not a total transformation of the way we make a living, exist, eat, clothe and house ourselves. All these will change in ways unfathomable during the 1990s age of innocence—reflected in…