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He's Got Some Splainin' To Do
Eric Holder has a family—and an all-American one, at that. That’s the first thing Democrats wanted everyone to know about Barack Obama’s attorney general nominee this morning. Before we got to Marc Rich and Puerto Rican nationalists and gun rights, Democrats wanted everyone to see the man who would be the first black AG as…
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Gaza: No Time To Play
One significant implication of the current fighting in Gaza crystallized for me a few days ago when I read the following post on my fantasy basketball message board: “Cats must think Obama is a %&$$# (rhymes with cushy).” They must—because the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the uptick in bombings in Iraq and the Gaza conflagration…
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Interracial Anxiety – Do You Have It?
Today is officially Martin Luther King’s birthday. Barack Obama will be officially named president of the United States of America in five days. Martin hoped that one day black and white children could walk hand in hand under the same flag; Obama believes Americans share far more similiarities with each other than they’re willing to…
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Burris Seated Today (We Think…)
The Buzz can only hope that at age 71, we’ll look as good as Roland Burris, who is actually the third African American U.S. Senator from Illinois in the last 11 years. But we’re also hoping that we pick up a little more humility along life’s journey. We’d like to avoid erecting a mausoleum for ourselves,…
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Are We Catholics Yet?
One seemed to have his destiny written for him at birth; the other methodically wrote his own. One had a cloistered upbringing that revolved around close family and powerful friends; the other lived an itinerant childhood and was a global student of life. One constantly questioned his place in the world; the other determinedly sought…
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Oscar Grant Greens
Yield: 4 to 6 servings Soundtrack: “30 Cops or More” by KRS-ONE from Edutainment and “Black and Blue” by Brand Nubian from In God We Trust Dedicated to Oscar Grant III, Adolph Grimes III, Sean Bell and countless others. Simple Stock Yield: about 1 1/2 quart Soundtrack: “Home” by The Modern Jazz Quartet from Blues…
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The New Black-Catholic Alliance
One of the fascinating demographic tidbits of the 2008 presidential election results shows that President-elect Barack Obama won a startling 54 percent of the Catholic vote—more Catholic votes than any other Democratic presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy (who garnered around 80 percent). To understand how a pro-choice, African-American candidate generated more support from American…
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Prioritizing the Middle East
Upon entering the Oval Office for the first time, the past 10 American presidents have found a towering inbox of priorities, near the top of which laid a thick, tattered file marked “Middle East.” President Barack Obama will be no exception. On Jan. 20, he will inherit the immediate consequences of the past eight years…
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CHIP-ing Away at Bush
Congress is likely to take its first meaningful swipe at the Bush era today by passing a long-awaited expansion of the public health insurance program for poor children. We spend more than $2 trillion a year on health care and still leave 1 in 9 kids without coverage, but Bush twice found reason to veto…
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Inauguration: A Novella
With so many families converging on Washington next week, the inauguration has become as much family reunion as historic event. Writer Curtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife, has penned “All Along, This Was What Was Supposed to Happen,” a wonderful novella for our sister site, Slate, about one such reunion. In this third installment, “Stars…