Health care reform, especially with the rising number of Americans losing their jobs and health benefits, is one of the more pressing public policy issues of the day. Yet, to borrow a phrase from Attorney General Eric Holder, too many Democrats and Republicans are cowards when it comes to taking on the powerful insurance and health care lobby.

For President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it was Earl Warren. In Richard M. Nixon’s case, it was Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell. And for George H.W. Bush, it was David Souter. In those instances, justices appointed to the Supreme Court voted contrary to the way those appointing them had expected.

One of the most important milestones in anyone’s life is the purchase of their own home. Throughout history, homeownership has served as the defining symbol of prosperity and accomplishment—yet it is a symbol that has not always been equally accessible for all those seeking it.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is qualified to be a justice on the Supreme Court.  If the Senate chooses to confirm her she will be only the third woman, and also the first Latina justice to be confirmed. 
But will they confirm her? Already we are hearing rumblings that a woman spunky enough to assert that a wise Latina might differ from a white man in her interpretation of the law is “race conscious”. And those who are sitting in a race neutral fog are loaded for bear.

Signed amid controversy in 2001, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law shook up the nation’s public education system. This legislation made schools accountable for student achievement; if students continually failed to meet minimum test scores, schools were placed on probation.  Classroom instruction methods were changed, too, with increased focus placed on ‘teaching to the test’, taking away from more in-depth instruction.  Several years have now gone by, giving analysts enough time to assess how the law, if at all, impacts student performance.  According to the Civil Rights Project, NCLB isn’t working.

President Barack Hussein Obama delivered a 54-minute speech from Cairo, Egypt to the Muslim world. One analyst described this speech as being more powerful than his speech delivered in Philadelphia regarding race in America after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright incident. Due to his diverse heritage no combination of US presidents could, in my opinion, do what this speech did so quickly. He is an African American man with a Muslim father, he lived in a Muslim country with the largest Muslim population in the world.