Barack Obama on his invitation to Rick Warren to provide the invocation at his inaugural:

What we have to do is create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.

Rick Warren:

But the...

In a column on the overwhelming black vote (black female vote in particular) in favor of California's Proposition 8, the New York Times' Charles Blow noted two main trends: a particularly irrational form of religiosity; and black, female self-pity and resentment. He then insists that we dare not question...

I've often wondered what it might mean to "feel" American--to truly accept its glories and shame as my own. Looking at and listening to the Cindy McCains, George W. Bushes and Ronald Reagans of the world, I've wondered. The country they describe bears so little resemblance to the one in...

According to a SurveyUSA poll, 58% of black voters support Proposition 8, which would enshrine irrational fear and rank bigotry into the California Constitution in order to deny gays the right to marry. Black support is 10% higher than support of any other ethnic group. This is ironic, considering...

In the final debate, McCain was Presidential. Only the President was Nixon. The man behaved like an bitter, petulant child. He was righteously pissy throughout the evening. He was trembling. He was in a flop sweat of desperation. He obviously wanted tough but achieved the titanically silly--like your doddy old...

American governance got stuck somewhere mid-20th century. It ambled along, hit a bog and kept on marching, lifting one leg high in a plucky arm-swinging gate and planting the next. We felt the heart's determined thump, saw the mud splashing madly and never realized that, collectively, most of us weren't...

President Obama. God that sounds weird. I certainly never thought I'd hear the like in my day. I had written that I was deeply worried about Obama's chances of winning against a half-sane white Republican in a general election. Luckily, the Republicans didn't nominate one. They nominated John McCain. He's...

What can one say? John McCain has chosen the Far North's Betty Boop as his running mate. A 72 year-old cancer survivor who has refused any but the most perfunctory look at his health records has chosen as the leader of the free world should he succumb in his first...

Before: Oh God. An hour and a half of this. I'd rather claw my own eyes out with spork. I know who I'm voting for. If John McCain saved six black babies from drowning tomorrow, I wouldn't vote for him. I'm already pissed. PBS's Ray Suarez just said that McCain...

Andrew Sullivan, squawking the name "Milton Friedman" as if it magically disappeared the ridiculous, sat on Bill Maher's show blaming the financial crisis on American consumers who bought houses they couldn't afford. He was arguing against Naomi Klein's thesis that the crisis belonged squarely at the doorstep of an ideology-obsessed...

Why isn't the Obama camp attacking Republicans for crying "sexism" left and right? Why isn't every Dem surrogate out there mocking Palin and her defenders with the same condescension with which Republicans and Obama surrogates mocked Hillary Clinton for suggesting that her gender was held against her?

On the...

Fifty percent of this year's Republican playbook is typically divisive Rove Culture Wars. The other fifty percent is all about racial signs and symbols. Georgia GOP Congressan Lynn Westmoreland finally came right out and called Obama "uppity," kindly leaving the inevitable to our imaginations.

The Republicans have not changed. They...

At some point, Barack Obama had to decide if he wanted to be President, or a prophet; if he wanted to lead a government, or a Movement. In the primary, the whole "Movement" schtick worked. He was the insurgent, he had an front-running opponent he could vilify, and the issue...

Three years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the homes of hundreds thousands of Louisianans, too many residents are still unable to afford to rebuild their homes or find an affordable place to rent, according to a new housing report by the national research and advocacy group PolicyLink.

After a couple of slave rebellions in the early 19th century, American Christianity shifted irrevocably from a catalyst for slave liberation, to an additional shackle securing black men in bondage to white ones. After the Vesey and Prosser rebellions, whites largely oversaw slave worship to ensure that blacks were...

My father was a career military officer, so pardon me if I don't genuflect at self-important, self-serving mentions of our "brave men and women in uniform," too often invoked by those who never served, or never knew anyone who did, or who fought like hell and worked every angle not...

At some point or another, every political campaign digs itself a hole, trips over its own feet and falls face-first into it.

In hyping its 'learn who the VP is via text message' stunt, the Obama camp has done just that.

"No other campaign has done this before. You...

Dearest Diary,

Just had a chat with Cheney. God he's freaky. He said he was pushing me to McCain's folks for VP. Somehow he made it sound... scary, like he'd pack me off to Gitmo if I didn't get picked. "It's yours to lose," he said, glowering. Something's wrong...

Everybody considers Obama through the self-reflective prism of his blackness while pretending to ignore the fact that Obama is black. White Democratic primary voters made all manner of unsupported assumptions about Obama based largely on his skin. There was absolutely no indication that he was a progressive true believer.

I guess the Uppity One on a World Tour was just too much for their lily-white hearts. There are, after all, rules. In the Willa Cather world the Washington press corps inhabit, decorum is life. Birth and breeding will out. George Bush has the sense and sensibility of a trailer...