News & Features

In a few weeks, Egypt will elect a president for the first time since a popular uprising that toppled a three-decade-old authoritarian regime under Hosni Mubarak. Violence is engulfing the country, claiming lives and spreading fear. Egypt’s Islamist forces, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood and their more conservative Salafist peers, are preparing for what seems to be an imminent clash, one that ostensibly takes center stage in the presidential election and will decide the fate of the secular government. 

Flirting—the penultimate romance language—is an endangered concept in 21st-century America.  Gone are the face-to-face conversations, where exposure to body language and tone of voice permit our pheromones to chemically determine compatibility.  “People just aren’t willing to engage in public. It’s so difficult to get someone to make eye contact…” claims Jane, a 20-something New Yorker.

Asian-Americans represent the fastest-growing demographic segment in this country and a critical voting bloc. But, according to a new first-of-its-kind poll, neither Republicans nor Democrats seem to be taking note. The Lake Research Partners poll is the first to gauge political attitudes among Asian-American voters, who are largely aligned with the Democratic Party – by a margin of three to one. 

In Tucson, the Mexican-American Studies department has been dismantled; the curriculum has been outlawed, its books confiscated and banned; its longtime director has been fired; the teachers have been reassigned; their classes and new curriculum are being monitored and state officials are going into classrooms to ensure that they and their students are complying with the unconstitutional ethnic studies ban, HB 2281. 

Sunday, April 29  marked the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles civil unrest -- the day in 1992 that community outrage erupted hours after a jury’s unjust acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers who severely beat an African-American motorist, Rodney King. Fifty-four individuals died during the six days of unrest. Another 2,400 were injured. Businesses were looted and destroyed, resulting in an estimated $1 billion dollars in property damage. 

Lee Atwater, the late Republican operative, is described by his numerous detractors as the godfather of contemporary xenophobic dog whistles to the baser instincts of a vastly Caucasian political party.  Atwater made his professional bones as chief dirty trickster for the 1978 U.S. Senate candidacy of his own godfather——fellow South Carolinian Strom Thurmond , a white supremacist who secretly fathered a child with a  black housekeeper.

U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism over the federal government’s arguments April 25  in a hearing on Arizona’s controversial immigration law SB 1070. The justices could issue a decision as early as June. Among the key questions at the heart of the case is whether states can enforce their own immigration laws. 

On April 17, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights listened to testimony from legislators, legal experts, law enforcement officials, and advocates expressing their views on the state of racial profiling in America. Members of the committee debated the merits of The End of Racial Profiling Act of 2011 – which supporters say would help strengthen ties between minority communities and law enforcement agencies that are supposed to serve them.