Uncategorized
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Is There a Link Between Vaccines and Autism?
I belong to a local parenting “listserv,” where moms and dads share information on everything from breastfeeding and circumcision to tantrums and teething. Over the past few weeks, there’s been a persistent topic of both curiosity and debate roiling through our group’s e-mails: vaccine slowdown. Vaccine slowdown, or spreading out the number of shots given…
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Closing Ranks–and Raising Hell, Too
A little more than two years ago, I was in the fourth month of a 6½-month deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom onboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). The Roosevelt is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with the sole mission of dropping bombs on enemy targets. We were somewhere off the coast of Iraq; we…
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Doubting Hillary
Give Hillary Clinton the benefit of the doubt. She was not, as she explained, suggesting that she was staying in the race because something horrible might happen to Barack Obama, the man who is denying her bid for the White House. She was only citing an example of a presidential-nominating contest that went into June…
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1-800-Who’s-Your-Daddy
I’m prepared to share a dirty little secret that many of my colleagues at Howard University School of Law would probably prefer I keep to myself. Some of our students are serious lawyers-in-training who seize every opportunity they can to keep abreast of the latest legal developments and to immerse themselves more deeply in the…
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The NFL's Rookie Mistakes
Sometimes reporters hype the most dramatic aspect of a story as a way of rooting for it to happen. Other times the press is just clueless. I can’t figure out which scenario is more likely after taking in the coverage of the big news from the National Football League this week. The story is that…
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Yesterday's News
In Brooklyn-based artist Dave McKenzie’s tantalizing first solo show “Screen Doors on Submarines,” our conversation about race spins and spins like a broken record, our thinking trapped in cycles and rituals like a buggy program stuck in a loop. The work on display at downtown Los Angeles’ REDCAT gallery through June 15 doesn’t necessarily show…
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Stay Black (and Green)
Similar to most kids, I liked new things. Especially when they were shiny. I remember how quickly I lost interest in playing with my C-3PO figurine after it started to dull. So you can imagine that I was a little put off by the fact that Paw Paw, my paternal grandfather, would always wash and…
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24: Obama's Torture Episode
Right now, liberals want me to release classified photos, conservatives deny that torture is illegal, and people that I work with may be involved in both. Home grown terrorists tried to blow up two synagogues and three U.S. soldiers were killed alongside 63 Iraqis. My name is Barack Obama, and today is the longest day…
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Untitled: The Album Formerly Known As
“Cause anytime we mention our condition, our history or existence/They calling it reverse racism.” —Nas’ “N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave & The Master)” Contrary to the recent flurry of reports regarding the name change of Nas’ ninth studio album from Nigger to Nas , Nas himself confirms a change, but sets the record straight about the record’s…