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President Barack Obama owes a lot to the Democrats of South Carolina. After his breakthrough win in the Iowa caucuses in January 2008, he lost to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and broke even in the Nevada caucuses. South Carolina represented the last sanctioned primary before 22 states voted on February 5th. With Clinton’s greater ...

Texas has had problems with redistricting – yet again. Last week’s federal court ruling that Texas’s 2011 plans for congressional districts and state legislative districts had both the purpose and effect of further reducing the representation of Texas’s already underrepresented racial minority populations is just the state’s latest salvo in the redistricting wars. Texas has found itself ...

Inimai Chettiar discusses the racial and voting implications of recent voter id laws with Michelle Alexander and Arianna Huffington on Huff Po Live September 4th, 2012.

On Thursday night, Mitt Romney officially accepted his party’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate. Although Romney has been the GOP’s presumptive nominee since late April, the delegate roll call at the convention this week made it official. There were more than 2,000 delegates — men and women of all ages and backgrounds, from all 50 states, the District ...

When, if ever, should the executive decline to defend in court a federal law it has concluded to be unconstitutional, and yet still enforce that same statute? The question is presented by the Obama Administration’s decision to enforce, but not defend in court, Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”). But the DOMA ...

In the space of two weeks, two different courts have come to two different results in evaluating the legality of two similar voter identification laws. In Pennsylvania, a state trial judge upheld the newly enacted voter ID law under the state’s constitution, while Thursday in Washington, a federal panel rejected Texas’ similar ID law under ...

Americans are rightly concerned about significant sums of corporate campaign cash capturing their elected representatives. Even more troubling, though less reported, is the flood of campaign money that has poured into elections for state court justices over the last two decades. Judges are supposed to be independent, fair arbiters of justice. In the Citizens United era, however, ...

Austerity is now “in fashion,” as governments respond to the revenue shortfalls of the crisis through deficit reduction plans and fiscal stability pacts, and economists blame it on the profligate spending of households and countries. Consumers, they say, bought houses they could not afford and countries consumed more than they produced, while loose monetary policies made this spending ...

Look behind the pomp and circumstance of the conventions and you’ll quickly discover the naked auctioning of our democracy. A marathon of invitation-only, lavish events sponsored by the one percent. Politicians and super-lobbyists grinning and gripping each other along with bottomless booze, jumbo shrimp, and billions of dollars in campaign, Super PAC and secret contributions. ...

During Mitt Romney’s time at its helm, Bain Capital cleverly invested in, and made enormous profits from, companies that The Washington Post describes as “pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components.” Where pioneers have gone, settlers have followed. Today, outsourcing by the country’s largest multinational corporations has become ...