The nomination of Eric Holder as the next U.S. attorney general has renewed concerns about the end-of-term clemencies granted by President Clinton. High-profile names such as Marc Rich grabbed headlines at the time, but many other people with no political influence benefited from the president's mercy. I am one of those people ...

President-elect Obama has now moved swiftly to name talented and creative people to Cabinet-level offices and the key members of the White House team. But a nagging thought keeps coming back to me: Why isn't he naming more women to bring our experience, creativity and energy to address the problems that face us? ...

Is our nation a democracy or a creator of political dynasties?  Or are we a combination of both?
As the United States Senate continues to gel, and as people jockey for appointings and annointings, it is interesting to ask how much "name" matters, and whether other factors propel politicians to prominence. ...

There was a perfect storm of factors that led to the Obama election. There was the extraordinary, and paradigm shifting assertion that we can believe in change, the audacity of the chant that "yes we can" organize and fight for the world we have envisioned. There was the profound discipline of the Obama campaign, a group of folk who shrugged off detractors, kept raising money, raising energy, making pragmatic decisions, and steamrolling forward ...

Think about it. A group of Southern, right-wing, Republican senators have stopped the U. S. Senate from approving a package of financial assistance to the big three auto companies who employ directly over 150,000 workers, but affect 3 million, including the suppliers, dealers and other small businesses linked to the auto industry. 
This kind of cold-blooded action on their part strikes me as just the kind of narrowly conservative, mean-spirited and reckless decision making that  the nation voted against in electing Barack Obama. ...

In violation of its pledge to the United Nations not to recruit children into the military, the Pentagon "regularly target(s) children under 17," the American Civil Liberties Union says.
The Pentagon "heavily recruits on high school campuses, targeting students for recruitment as early as possible and generally without limits on the age of students they contact," the ACLU states in a 46-page report titled "Soldiers of Misfortune ...

Asa Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington, DC, once said: "At the banquet table of nature there can be no reserved seats. You get what you can take and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization ...

Who says there are no slaves in America? The greatest domestic issue facing President-elect Obama is not the bailout of the bankers and insurers but the task of lifting tens of millions of hard-working American wage-slaves out of dire poverty. These are the folks who hold one- and sometimes two or even three low-paying jobs, work their tails off 60 hours or more a week, and are still stuck in poverty on payday with no hope of climbing out ...

With news that the economy is hemorrhaging jobs, President-elect Obama has stepped up to do the right thing. On the heels of the worst unemployment report that we've seen in more than a decade, a report that indicated that unemployment is 6.7 percent, African-American unemployment is 11.2 percent ...

On Oct. 4, 1957, history changed with the Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik I, the world's first man-made satellite. Americans were alarmed that we had been outpaced technologically and saw the Soviet feat as a threat to our national security. In order to catch up with the Russians, our nation swung into action and infused new funding and resources into scientific research ... To support this national initiative, schools upgraded and expanded math and science instruction at every level ...