Rights and Democracy
The Swinging Electorate
It's official: African Americans are the nation's most important swing state. Last summer, I predicted that the African American vote would tip the scales in the 2012 election of Barack Obama. My organization, the National Urban League, foresaw a continuation of a...
Don’t Fence Me In
No job now, Provides the pay, To let me find, A place to stay. Many folks with big incomes are responding to the tensions of America's growing economic inequality by moving into gated communities. This isn't new, just growing more common. Ten percent of us are already...
Rep. Gohmert Wins Nincompoop Roundup
My state of Texas seems to have an inordinate share of nincompoops in public office. But it's only fair that office holders from other states be considered before deciding which one is the nincompoopiest of all. Give credit to Pennsylvania, for example, whose GOP...
Heritage’s Immigration Nightmare
The Heritage Foundation's recently unveiled and long-awaited report on the Senate immigration proposal certainly brought the ultra-conservative think tank lots of attention. But it's not the kind that's likely to prove influential. Republican leaders, including Rep....
Turning Journalism into a Joke
If you hear someone talking about journalism these days, they're usually complaining about how the industry is collapsing. Or how terribly biased the media is, one way or the other. But every time the annual White House Correspondents Dinner rolls around, the word...
Ohio’s Poorly Performing School Assessment
I recently learned that I teach at a persistently poor performing school. It happened after Ohio bureaucrats unveiled new, "more rigorous" criteria for determining success and failure in the state's public schools. My district, previously deemed worthy of "continuous...
The War on Sex
Abortion, condoms, Things that vex, Those who would Prohibit sex. Fewer American teens are getting pregnant and the national abortion rate is falling. Time to break out the champagne and the bananas flambé, right? But many religious zealots aren't celebrating these...
Whitewashing 8 Awful Years
Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that we saw George W. Bush on TV reading The Pet Goat to some second graders. Now he's all grown up and has an entire , super-duper, king-sized library filled with big books and other neat stuff — all dedicated to him. Bush's...
Shameless Bipartisanship
A quick Google search of "politicians are" returns the following four suggestions: like diapers, sociopaths, the lowest form of life, and liars. A recent Public Policy Polling study found politicians to be less popular than the conqueror Genghis Khan or cockroaches....
The Pot Prohibition Runs Its Course
Half a year ago, Colorado and Washington voters approved ballot measures to make marijuana legal in their states. But ending the pot prohibition can't happen overnight, even after electoral wins like that. Just ask Gil Kerlikowske, the nation's "drug czar." "Neither a...
