Newt Gingrich has defined his campaign as a “choice between American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky”.  Gingrich casts himself as upholding the beliefs and values of the “founding fathers” under assault by President Obama, an agent of the radical left that wants to turn the U.S. into a “European style socialist state”.  It’s relatively [...]

What’s striking to me is the virtual lack of media coverage regarding the substance of these statements. They’re generally characterized as giving ‘red meat to the base’, as if the substance of what’s said is unimportant, what matters is the audience reaction and whether they’ve scored any points. The significance of making that statement in South Carolina, the state that launched the Civil War, on the only national holiday honoring an African-American was as important as Ronald Reagan launching his presidential campaign by declaring “I believe in states’ rights,” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the city where Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered in 1964.

When I look at the Republican Party today, the cartoonish cast of characters that purport to be its leaders (either as presidential candidates or legislative officials), the hateful and ignorant rhetoric that substitutes for substantive policy analysis and the slavish devotion to positions that make no sense (e.g. rejection of climate change, the so-called ‘birther’ controversy, supply-side economics) it occurs to me the GOP has morphed from a legitimate political party into something that resembles many modern day cults.

Children Of The Drug War —- Chapter 5 – Getting The Message Getting the Message: Hip-hop Reports on the Drug War Chapter 5: Hip-hop and the Drug War by Deborah Peterson Small Music and drugs are fellow travelers. Music is a universal medium of expression. Drugs have been used throughout human history by people of [...]

John 8 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the [...]

I first learned about the impact of the ‘war on drugs’ on Afro-Colombians when I attended the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001. It was there I heard the following testimony delivered by Ana del Carmen Martinez, an Afro-Colombian mother of seven. She is one of the tens of thousands of [...]