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Gays: Out of the Courts, Into the Streets
Yesterday’s California Supreme Court ruling upholding the voter-initiated ban on same-sex marriage was no surprise. But as I’ve written before, this is more of a political than a legal fight, so I was heartened to see tens of thousands of gay right supporters—of all races, by the way—flood the streets in protest. Out in Cali,…
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Obama’s Health Watchdog—Visionary or Bully?
The White House announced this morning that it has tapped NYC Health Commissioner Tom Frieden to run the overworked, underfunded U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s a bolder, potentially more consequential choice than it appears to those not familiar with Dr. Frieden. In his seven years as our city’s top doc, the man…
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Drug Czar Wants to End the ‘War'—Will He?
In his first interview as the director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy—otherwise known as the drug czar—Gil Kerlikowske told the WALL STREET JOURNAL that the Obama administration will put an end to the long, failed “war on drugs.” He said: “Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s…
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Foreclosure Plan Shines, Unless You Look too Close
The White House is today touting progress on its foreclosure prevention plan. The administration says mortgage servicing firms—the largest of which are owned by the big banks—have offered approximately 55,000 “trial modifications” to struggling borrowers since early March, and have sent letters urging another 300,000 borrowers to apply. These are good numbers, relative to the…
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More Proof Blacks Are Losing the Most Homes
We’ve known the foreclosure crisis is hitting blacks and Latinos hardest for a while, but the Pew Hispanic Center further substantiates the point in a report released this week. The report summarizes a bunch of new housing data, but here’s the most important stat: Blacks lost more homes between 2004 and 2007 than any other…
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Whose Stimulus is It?
The Associated Press adds today to a distressingly small body of media-watchdog work on the still unfolding stimulus. AP dug into the transportation dollars, which the White House talked up as a centerpiece of the initiative’s job-creation potential. Turns out shovels full of money are pouring into counties with low unemployment, while the ones struggling…
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A Cartoonist Says a Million Words
Can we just go ahead and give Tom Toles his next Pulitzer Prize now? If you haven’t been following the veteran cartoonist’s commentary in the WASHINGTON POST this year, you’re missing out. Never mind the millions of words spilled daily trying to sort out the economic disaster unfolding around us. Toles has been making plain…
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Um, Chocolate City is More Gay-Friendly than You Think
When I heard about Marion Berry’s wild, misguided rant against gay marriage in D.C., I had just one question: Who the hell cares? Let’s review the elements of this story for a brief, dispassionate moment. First off, Chocolate City has long had one of the more pro-gay, progressive municipal governments around. Let us count the…
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Don’t Sign That Document, Fool!
As I sat in George and Veronica Gallon’s kitchen, listening to them describe their months-long tussle with the mortgage industry, I couldn’t avoid the obvious conclusion: They’d made bad choices. Listening to them describe each small step along the road to foreclosure was like watching a predictable horror film. Put that promotional flyer down! No,…
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Foreclosure Follies
Veronica Gallon went and got her gun. This was just the kind of thing she and her husband, George, had left the north Jacksonville ghettos to avoid: some guy banging and rattling the door in the middle of the night, like a crazed killer or God knows what. Veronica wasn’t having it. So she grabbed…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
