Category: Color of Law

On this 80th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as I look at the state of human rights in the world I ask myself, “What would Dr. King do?” Look at the situation in the Mideast, particularly the current bloodshed in Gaza. These attacks, a violation of international humanitarian law, can…

Forty years ago, in many states, my marriage to my wife would have been illegal. In fact, we would have been regarded as criminals and locked up for miscegenation, or “race-mixing” as they called it. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, which found that…

There is perhaps no greater depth of sorrow one can experience than the loss of one’s child. It is the type of feeling that you would not wish on your worst enemy. Regardless of the age of death – whether a baby, a child or adult – or the circumstances – death in utero, or…

Lee Atwater, GOP political operative and mentor of Karl Rove, was a Machiavellian conman and a purveyor of sleaze. And through the various political campaigns he ran, he not only won races, but also destroyed lives in the process. I was reminded of all of this when I watched the recent PBS documentary on Atwater…

Are we a winner? Yes, I think we are. “And never let anybody say ‘Boy, you can’t make it,’” as Curtis Mayfield once told us… It was the fourth day of the eleventh month of a new era, And we were there, But there were many who had come before us, Oh, they’ve been waiting…

“Terrorist!” “Traitor!” “Kill Him!” “Bomb Obama!” “Obama Bin Lyin!” These are the words one can hear from the crowds at the McCain-Palin rallies. Through race baiting and inflammatory xenophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Obama rhetoric, the GOP presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and their surrogates, have whipped their supporters into such a frenzy, one can only include that…

Perhaps it is the understatement of the century to say that that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska— that Trojan Moose running mate of Senator John McCain—knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy. The person who aspires to be a heartbeat away from the presidency only received her first passport last year. And the extent of her…

The first fallacy is that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street, and that increases in worker productivity lead to wage increases. If that were true, then as Wall Street boomed, the average family would not have witnessed a stagnation or decline in their standard of living. Capitalism depends on making…

The Republican Party made it clear at their 2008 convention that they have no love for community organizers. The overwhelmingly white crowd in Minnesota cheered at the speech made by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin – GOP vice presidential candidate and Trojan Moose – mocking Senator Barack Obama’s community organizing experience. “I guess a small-town mayor…

When I look at the 2008 Republican ticket for president and vice president, I can’t help but ask: What kind of Simple Simon nonsense is going on here? At the top of the ticket you have John McCain, whose only claim to fame was that he was captured by the “enemy”. Not much of a…