Category: Commentary

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The streets of South Tel Aviv were teeming with people. We first saw a very large wedding party heading towards a park. We then saw hundreds of young men hanging out, socializing, walking, and sometimes just looking for something to do. The shops were closed on this Jewish Sabbath […]

Last Friday, I gave the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech at the University of North Alabama in Florence. I was glowingly introduced by my niece, Rachel Gandy, who is a senior at UNA. I told the audience that having grown up in segregated Tuscaloosa, Ala., how satisfying it was to see “the […]

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates isn’t the first political appointee to analyze the work of an administration he served, even if that administration remains in power. In 1999, while President Bill Clinton was still in office, longtime staffer and confidant, George Stephanopoulos wrote of his disenchantment with his political mentor after the Monica Lewinsky story […]

TriceEdneyWireService — During the period of December-January of each year, the holidays speed through in rapid succession, leaving little time for measured thought and peaceful contemplation. First, comes the joy of Christmas and the associated effort to demonstrate our love of friends and relatives with the lavish gifts. This is followed by the hope that […]

Children are not little adults. Adolescents are not the same as adults. We’ve known this for years. The research showing that their brains are still developing is clear. Although young people act on impulse, they have the ability to positively change and have a productive future. That’s why it’s outrageous that in the 21st century […]

The 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s declaration of a war on poverty brought long overdue attention to his commitment. Today, with one in five children in America still raised in poverty, an accounting is vital as part of a renewed commitment. But largely absent from the debate around the war on poverty is any sense […]

As we mark 50 years since President Lyndon Johnson committed our nation to ending poverty in our country, President Obama is once again calling upon us to overcome “the defining challenge of our time.” All of us are being affected, he observed, by “the dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has […]

In 2013, race still mattered – especially at Fox News. According to MediaMatters, the watchdog group, last year was a banner period for race-baiting at Fox. “Viewers who spent 2013 absorbed in Fox News might be under the impression that an all-out race war has erupted across the nation this year, thanks to the network’s […]

Congress has itself to blame for its low ratings among the American people. Policymaking is all about choices; it is the calculus of weighing costs and benefits and the distribution of those costs and benefits. In theory, there are lots of policies that can make everyone better off, but they can only be accomplished by […]

This holiday season immediately follows National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. It is a national disgrace that in the capital of the world’s richest and most powerful nation, one-in-eight households struggle against hunger. One-in-twenty households report not having the resources at some point during the previous twelve months to buy food for themselves or their […]

The 2016 national elections are not that far away. It is timely and important that we not wait until then to begin having constructive discussions about who should be given the opportunity and responsibility to succeed President Barack Obama. The questions of the future of politics, economics and equal justice should never be avoided. Especially […]

“I assumed that with knowledge, sacrifice would automatically follow. In my youth and idealism I did not realize that selfishness is even more natural than sacrifice.” W.E.B. DuBois spoke those words when he reflected on the failure of his vaunted “Talented Tenth” concept. He was, as many of us are today, very idealistic about what […]