NOTE: this column was originally published at MSNBC.COM on March 2, 2013. Back on November 8, 2012 I wrote this column about President Obama’s legacy after securing a second term. It seems I grossly underestimated myself, especially in light of this week’s oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder. Shelby is the latest case the court [...]

Justice has been served. Today a judge in Pennsylvania sentenced former Penn State University Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky to 30 to 60 years in prison for sexually abusing 10 boys over the course of his career. The picture above is that of a monster and he will rot in jail until God takes him from [...]

I’ve been asked over and over again for my opinion on Governor Romney’s vice presidential pick of Representative Paul Ryan (WI). Ryan is, if anything, authentic. And that’s a HUGE problem for Romney. Listen, Ryan is a smart guy. He’s a serious policymaker and he has proposed serious policy positions, many of which I’ve legitimately [...]

Today’s Supreme Court decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is watershed and a game changer. Simply put, Roberts’ decision will change the face of healthcare in America because now not only is it constitutional, it forces the GOP to be in favor of actual reform (something they’ve only given lip-service to for years).  The [...]

The death of Donna Summer isn’t political. I’d be remiss, though, if I didn’t write a brief post on the impact this woman had on my life. This five-time Grammy winner gave us great hits like Last Dance, MacArthur Park, Bad Girls, and She Works Hard for the Money. But what she gave me, with my [...]

There seems to be much ado about President Barack Obama being the first “gay President. Newsweek and the New Yorker magazines devoted their latest covers to this cause du jour. I get it but I’m not comfortable with it. This kind of hyperbole was used when then-President Bill Clinton was declared America’s first “black” president. [...]

I love when someone criticizes a group of people or a segment of the population but then adds that caveat “Oh, and I have a lot of  (                    )  friends.” This brings me to something I’ve been debating in my head for a while: what the hell [...]

Imagine today is March 23, 1962 and a black teenager is walking down the street with candy in his hand. He’s coming home from a segregated school to a segregated neighborhood. He can’t vote because he’s too young but it may not matter because depending on where he lives in America, he probably won’t have [...]

I have said on MSNBC, Twitter, and Facebook numerous times that we seem to be in a political environment where men have a surging desire to tell women what to do (or not to do) with their bodies. Many of my friends on the GOP side of the aisle  and frankly some on the left [...]

This morning’s news of another school shooting in Ohio is tragic. There’s simply no other way to describe it. When we send our children to school every weekday morning, we fully expect them to be safe and return home at the end of the school day (whether or not they’re educated is a different column for [...]