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Muhammad Ali for many people was more icon than athlete. Like Jim Brown or John Carlos, he was someone who inspired African-Americans and Muslims to fight oppression, move beyond the comfort of success and speak out against injustice no matter the cost or inconvenience. Between the Will Smith-led biopic and various tributes over the years, most Americans know that Ali spoke out against the Vietnam War, converted to the Nation of Islam and was a global humanitarian.
The issue no longer was the heartbreaking tragedy of the killing of a prized and endangered animal. Nor was it simply heaving a big sigh of collective relief and much joy that a child was saved. The issue now was the enraged fingerpointing at the parents for bad parenting. Equally enraging was the counter-charge that the only reason there were such accusations was because they were black. Cincinnati police officials raised the stakes in the debate when they announced with great fanfare that the parents could face charges presumably for child negligence or endangerment.
Clinton’s ads could use Trump’s own words against him, but they may not stick; that’s why Trump has been called a Teflon candidate, as was Reagan. The Clinton campaign can try to brand Trump a liar, but though fact-checkers have given him a record number of pants-on-fires and Pinocchios, people aren’t joining or leaving him because of accuracy; that’s not what a protest movement is about. Besides, fact-checking just plays into Trump’s applause line that the media are disgusting liars.
“Voter ID laws disadvantaging older persons place a burden on the voting rights of those most likely to participate in the electoral process,” said Daniel Kohrman, a senior attorney with the AARP Foundation Litigation office in Washington, D.C. That’s because older citizens vote at greater percentages than younger people. A total of 33 states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls this year. (West Virginia's new law goes into effect in 2018).
The sea level rise it could cause may total five or six feet by the end of this century, twice the worst-case United Nations scenario of three years ago – “so high,” according to the front-page New York Times story quoting Pollard, “it would likely provoke a profound crisis within the lifetimes of children being born today.” Think of it: Along all 95,000 miles of American coastline – not to mention coastlines all over the earth – “immense areas will most likely have to be abandoned to the rising sea.”
The fading of Spanglish, not unlike Ebonics, could be a response to two separate trends we have seen over the last decade: terrorism and gender-empowerment. Spanglish flourished in the 1980s and 1990s. Two factors fueled its rise. The first was the economic collapse of Latin America -- an international debt crisis precipitated when Mexico was forced to devalue the peso in August 1982.
The announcement that Donald Trump has become the presumptive Republican candidate for president following his resounding victory in Indiana’s primary is being met with amused approval in—of all places—Mexico City. Forget the man in the street in Mexico City selling a Donald Trump piñata. Despite official protestations to his anti-Mexican rhetoric, Mexico’s elite may actually favor Trump.
Marijuana smoking is a recreational activity for many local Arab and Muslim Americans. But those who consume it continue to conceal the habit out of fears of social scrutiny, challenges with the law and uncertainty of where it stands in the religion. Michigan's marijuana laws continue to remain unclear. In the last few years, the laws have shifted drastically to decriminalize personal pot smoking in many cities and to allow medical marijuana patients an easier path for consumption.