Rights and Democracy
Showing Our Caregivers We Care About Them
I am a physician and my husband works in finance. I work early hours and he travels for work. With two sons under the age of 6 and busy schedules, we needed flexible childcare and found this in the au pair program. After phone calls, emails, and exchanged photos of...
Michele Bachmann Bows Out
It looks as though we jackals of the "lamestream media" won't have Michele Bachmann to kick around anymore. With just a hint of Nixonian rancor in her voice, she announced — via a lengthy YouTube rant in the middle of the night a short while ago — she would not seek...
With Americans Moving Forward on Gay Rights, Why Won’t the GOP?
By the end of June, the Supreme Court will decide two related cases involving the right of gay couples to get married. We don’t know what the decisions will be, although it seems likely that gay-rights activists will have something to celebrate that day, even if it’s...
Scandal Season at the Obama White House
It’s not an easy task, defending President Barack Obama from his enemies. The “scandals” keep popping up like dandelions — all of them explainable, after a fashion. Taken together, the explanations begin to sound like “the dog ate my homework.” For example: No one...
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...
