ArcaMax

Until recently, Illinois state Rep. Jonathan Carroll, a Democrat, says he has avoided talking much in public about his childhood experiences with isolation punishment.

But he was moved to blog about it after the chilling revelations in a recent investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois of the disciplinary policy called "...Read more

Now that Cory Booker has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, it must come as a relief to some of his critics that white people still have an opportunity to be president.

I'm referring, with my sarcastic tongue firmly in cheek, to the critics who thought the New Jersey senator was being a bit too candid when he complained a few days...Read more

Yes, like numerous other people across the civilized world, I was oddly surprised but not really shocked to hear that Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, and his American-born wife, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, have decided to pretty much call it quits on the royalty thing.

Many other observers were far more upset. Suddenly Brexit, the ...Read more

Can a political party be too inclusive? Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apparently thinks so.

In a lengthy New York magazine profile this week, the New York congresswoman responded with a groan when asked what role she might play as a member of Congress if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected president.

"Oh God," she said of the...Read more

Remember when presidential candidate Donald Trump told a mostly white rally crowd in Michigan in 2016 that "at the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95% of the African American vote"?

How's that working out? Alas, he has a lot of ground to make up.

Yet, he hardly could have sounded more determined at the November "Black ...Read more

Here we go again. While the U.S. House was voting for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled against Obamacare's individual mandate requirement that nearly everyone must have health insurance or pay a penalty.

Yes, that raises the possibility once again that the entire ...Read more

He was the last of the firsts.

That's probably how Richard Gordon Hatcher, one of the nation's first black elected big-city mayors, most often will be remembered.

Hatcher died Friday night at age 86 in Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago. He was elected mayor of Gary at age 34 on ...Read more

Could President Donald Trump be charged under his own executive order?

I had to ask myself that after he signed an executive order to crack down on anti-Semitism on college campuses, only a few days after insulting his audience in a weekend speech to a national Jewish organization in Florida.

What else can you say about a guy who pats you on ...Read more

Remember when candidate Donald Trump sought black votes by asking somewhat sarcastically, "What do you have to lose?" One answer now comes from President Trump's chosen attorney general: How about your police protection?

At a Justice Department awards ceremony to honor outstanding police officers Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr called on...Read more

A lot has changed in the 50 years since the predawn Chicago police raid that left two Illinois Black Panther Party leaders dead and four other members wounded.

For one, I'm a lot older now. Illinois chairman Fred Hampton, who was 21, and member Mark Clark, 22, were about the same age as I was then and were robbed of that opportunity.

I used to...Read more

Joe Biden and I share a problem that's not always easy to talk about. In fact, that's the problem. We stutter. That makes a lot of things hard to talk about.

Now that the 77-year-old former vice president is running for president, many people understandably are asking whether his notorious gaffes, bloopers and stumbles are related to his age.

...Read more

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a woman of uncommon intelligence. But like all of us mortals, she sometimes makes mistakes.

Take, for example, the Massachusetts Democrat's embarrassing retreat on "Medicare for All." Please.

After weeks of being pressured to show some details as to how she would expand Medicare to cover all Americans and not just ...Read more

Having followed Deval Patrick's storybook rise from childhood poverty on Chicago's South Side to become the second black governor in U.S. history, I have a nagging question about his announcement that he's running for president: Why now?

He apparently wants to rescue the party from itself, although polls indicate most Democrats may not feel in ...Read more

Are black British actors black enough to play black Americans?

That prickly question has buzzed through black conversations and Twitter feeds since at least the casting of David Oyelowo -- the British son of Nigerian immigrants -- to play the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Ava DuVernay's 2014 "Selma."

Now it's back with the casting of black, ...Read more

Back in 1965, only a couple of years after the term "baby boomer" caught on as a label for the generation born in the wake of World War II, one 17-year-old high school newspaper columnist tried to explain his generation to his skeptical elders:

"Although we still have to face our responsibilities someday," he wrote, "our first impulse is to ...Read more

I know it's not easy to sort out the alleged conspiracies and counter-conspiracies involved in the House impeachment inquiry, but hang in there.

Most important in my humble view is this: When House Democrats voted in near-unanimity to adopt rules for public impeachment hearings, they effectively locked their party into an argument for the 2020 ...Read more

Formerly defined as simply the opposite of being asleep, "woke" in the era of Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement frequently describes an awareness of important facts and issues, particularly in areas of racial and social justice.

However, as the crowdsourced and up-to-the-minute Urban Dictionary more recently offers, "woke" also can ...Read more

In their exhausting task of trying to defend President Donald Trump's fishy behavior in the Ukraine scandal, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been flailing this way and that, propping up questionable arguments, only to watch them fall like dominoes.

So far, violating -- or maybe illustrating -- the Washington maxim that if you're arguing about ...Read more

Apparently unable to make excuses for President Donald Trump's possibly impeachable behavior in regard to Ukraine, congressional Republicans have decided to just make a fuss.

For those who are taking the time to keep up with it, that probe took on new urgency after Marie Yovanovitch, the ambassador to Ukraine whom Trump fired, testified on ...Read more

Considering how she has been polling 2% or below in the crowded Democratic presidential field, you might think Rep. Tulsi Gabbard would appreciate the old show business saying that any publicity is good publicity.

Yet, gratitude was not to be found in her response to Hillary Clinton's strong hint, without mentioning her by name, that the ...Read more