In no national election since 1860 have politicians been so Negro-minded as in 1936. There were 32 blackamoor delegates and alternates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last June. Fortnight ago, after much soul-searching, Democratic National Chairman James A. Farley picked his Negro campaign managers. Last week the Republicans completed their slate of Negro managers. Estimates of the amount of money both parties will spend to corral the Negro vote before election day ran as high as $1,000,000. All emotion ...

In the nearly 10 months since the Democrats' health care bill became law, bureaucrats have been feverishly writing new regulations, and the first wave of reform has arrived. There are tax credits for small businesses to cover employees; kids can stay on their parents' policies until they are 26; co-pays for preventive care went away. But to most Americans, the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has felt less like the dawn of a ...

Since his election, President Barack Obama has emphasized the importance of developing new sources of energy and cultivating the jobs that will come with them. "I am convinced that whoever builds a clean energy economy, whoever is at the forefront of that, is going to own the 21st-century global economy," Obama told a bipartisan meeting of governors at the White House on Wednesday. But, increasingly, the President's new clean economy seems to rely on old sources of ...

From the opening lines of The Fear, Peter Godwin makes it clear he does not intend to write a neutral chronicle of the land of his birth. "I am on my way home to Zimbabwe, to dance on Robert Mugabe's political grave," he writes. "The crooked elections he has just held have spun out of his control, and after 28 years the world's oldest leader is about to be toppled." Godwin never gets his victory jig. He was writing ...

It was fateful that Paul Ryan released his budget plan the same week Barack Obama launched his re-election campaign — because we will now see what matters most to Obama. The President has talked passionately and consistently about the need to tackle the country's problems, act like grownups, do the hard things and win the future. But he has also skipped every opportunity to say how he'd tackle the gigantic problem of entitlements. Ryan's plan is deeply ...

Sudan’s Future Is Now, U.S. Envoy Says A day after Sudan’s leader coasted to victory in a fraud-tainted election, a senior Obama administration official defended the vote, and said the United States should turn its attention to getting southern Sudan  ready for its likely future as an independent state. “If we don’t redouble our efforts, and work so hard, we know what the predicted outcome will be: it will be violence,” Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, the administration’s special envoy to Sudan, said ...

What reform could dramatically remake America and become law by Christmas? Not health care. While a health care bill crawls through the Senate, bills of equal significance are speeding through the Banking and Finance Committees of both chambers of Congress and will share the spotlight this week on Capitol Hill. And because of the odd politics of finance, and an aggressive behind the scenes push by the Administration, real financial reforms have a better chance of becoming law by ...

On Saturday morning, about 12 hours before the U.S. House of Representatives passed sweeping legislation to expand health-care coverage to almost all Americans, President Barack Obama did what he does best: He gave an inspirational speech meant to rally recalcitrant House Democrats. Many in the room credited Obama with swaying the last of the fence sitters. "A few members that were leaning no told me afterwards that they'd been moved to vote yes," Rep. Rob Andrews, a New Jersey ...

Talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his election opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, have broken down, a Western source close to the Afghan leadership told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Friday.

An umbrella group affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility Tuesday for a pair of weekend bombings that killed 160 people in Baghdad.Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who visited the scene shortly after the explosions, said holding the elections as scheduled would send a strong message to the attackers. "The cowardly attack ... should not affect the determination of the Iraqi people from continuing their battle against the deposed regime and the gangs of the criminal Baath party, and ...