Jim Crow laws stripped blacks of basic rights. Despite landmark civil rights laws, many public schools were still segregated, blacks still faced barriers to voting, and violence by white racists continued. Such open racism is mostly gone in America, but covert racism is alive and well.
Bob Beckel
Life is a series of chapters, and one leads to another to another to another, and God knows what it is.
I think a flat tax has merit. Anything would be better than the current tax code.
In 1984, I managed Walter Mondale's campaign for president. Mondale won the nomination after a bruising battle with Colorado Senator Gary Hart and Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Ideological purity does not now, nor has it ever, produced results.
I would be delighted not to see another celebrity, regardless of their political beliefs, come to Washington to make yet another appeal for some cause about which they know little.
Disney World is exactly the wrong description of how the Secret Service should operate in public. Their jobs are not about pleasing adults and children, but rather protecting the president and the first family.
We've come a long way from the days of Jim Crow, and yes, we elected a black president, but racism lives.
Most voters assume because these political 'pros' are on TV or write for national papers, they know politics. Sadly, most don't have a clue.
Trump is part of the reason you are suffering. Trump is the one playing on the not-so-level playing field where he wins and you lose.
The fact of the matter, it's that Trump is getting money from blue-collar workers who send him checks for $250. Why? Who is Donald Trump? It's not who he is, it's who he isn't. Not what he is for, what he is against - that is, everything Washington is doing.
Both parties are so entrenched in their ideologies and a desire to score political points and hold on to power that we never seem to agree on a problem, much less find solutions.
Liberal arts colleges have traditionally provided a forum for debating ideas. Avoiding controversy and 'playing it safe' by not inviting - or disinviting - speakers with 'controversial' views stifles debate.
Money is at the root of most that is wrong in American politics.
I have never analyzed a presidential election as much as I did the Trump-Clinton race of 2016.
Trump has predicated his whole campaign on the unfairness of the playing field. Big corporations, rich donors, big media, and trade deals that punish the little guy.
In the 1990s, the Democratic Party began to cozy up to their long-time enemies: Wall Street Bankers. They took their money and relaxed their regulations until the Great Recession forced the Democrats via Dodd-Frank to re-regulate the banks.
If politicians of both parties would spend more time legislating and less time attacking each other, we would all be better off.
My pop culture ended somewhere north of Elvis but not too far.
As a life-long liberal who has engaged in protests against the government and for civil rights, I am saddened at efforts by some of my fellow liberals to silence commencement speakers with whom they might disagree on some issues.
Congress votes for things the military doesn't want, and planes and other weaponry that cost a lot but don't work.
I salute South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham for their calls to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the Statehouse.
The hardest-hit taxpayers in our disgraceful tax system are those folks who pack Trump's rallies, especially in hard-hit Rust Belt states like Ohio and Michigan.
Republicans want to use Obamacare in the 2014 elections against Democrats who voted for it. They want to see it fail, even at the expense of people's health.
Domestic wiretaps, government television cameras blanketing our streets, spy drones by the thousands flying over our heads. It makes you wonder if the very foundation of this great country, which is liberty, is eroding right before our eyes.
It should be mandatory that any tax breaks go through appropriate committees and be voted on separately by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Republicans just don't get that their idea of scandal is not what the average American thinks is a serious scandal.
There have been plenty of Republican efforts to go to the extreme scandal zone. Impeaching Bill Clinton was a classic example. Fortunately, the Senate had enough sense to acquit Clinton, and the American people were behind him in huge numbers.
Schools alone are not to blame for underachievement. The breakdown of the family, poverty, and decaying cities with eroding tax bases have made a good public school education nearly impossible in many parts of the country.
It's time to review what damage the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has done to our political system.
The decision in McCutcheon v. FEC is a devastating blow in efforts to rein in out-of-control costs of campaigns.
In the black community, Trump's history of racial discrimination is deeply embedded.
On the road to the GOP nomination, Trump earned the reputation as a good debater by slandering and bullying his opponents, knocking them out with cheap shots and lies. On a crowded stage, Trump got away with these deplorable tactics.
Like many other Americans, I'm tired of the U.S. taxpayer paying for foreign wars, especially when the countries we defend have raked in huge oil profits.
Many good journalists have attempted to confront Trump about his many lies and failures, and have failed.
Putting fear into people is the principal goal of terrorists, and they have been successful.
Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis had enormous talent, and Elvis was the major contributor to an entirely new genre of music. Sometimes their exploits were distasteful to people, but they left behind an enormous body of work that endures.
When a black man is stopped by a cop for no apparent reason, that is covert racism. When a black woman shops in a fancy store and is followed by security guards, that is covert racism. It is more subtle than 1960s racism, but it is still racism.
I do oppose repealing Obamacare, because it's working for growing numbers of previously uninsured Americans.
It is Trump who plays with the tax code to pay no taxes; it is Trump whose Trump-brand products are made overseas by cheap labor; it is Trump who hires undocumented workers from Poland to work on his projects, then refuses to pay them minimum wages.
I came from a dysfunctional family - very dysfunctional. And my father used to find great humor in throwing me down the stairs.
I am not opposed to government efforts to stop terrorist plots. We are still seared by the memory of 9/11, and we should be.
As a former presidential campaign manager, I remember the final week of the campaign as being the longest and most important week of the campaign. The week doesn't seem to end.
Iranians have suffered economically under the U.S.-led sanctions.
I can talk to more persuadable voters in a week on 'The Five' than I could at CNN in a year, so it's worked out fine.
Republicans need to stop complaining about blacks voting over 90% for Democrats. If they're not willing to compete in those neighborhoods, they will keep losing those voters.
An early attempt at education choice was charter schools. These were meant to attract the best and brightest students and provide them a level of education they often could not find in their local school districts. The problem is that, of the thousands of charter schools, many are outright failures.
Hillary Clinton is in political trouble and perhaps even legal trouble over her use of private e-mail accounts and bypassing government-issued accounts containing substantial amounts of information that belongs to the federal government. But ultimately, I don't think this latest controversy will hurt her presidential ambitions.
Some credit is due to Trump for seizing the anti establishment mood of the country, but most of his success can be attributed to pure luck.
The questions I get invariably focus on Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. It's no secret Hannity is conservative, and O'Reilly certainly is not a liberal. Beck goes well beyond conservatism to some very strange places.
