Obama Backtracks Position On Super PACs
In order to help close the financial gap between his campaign and its republican contenders, the Obama campaign reversed its long-standing opposition to super PACs. The reversal marks the beginning of...
View ArticleWhat Did Clint and Chrysler Mean by 'Half Time in America'?
On Superbowl Sunday, Clint Eastwood appeared in a two-minute ad that has been dubbed "Half Time in America." Sponsored by the Chrysler car company, it shows a Detroit that escaped the jaws of defeat to...
View ArticleThe Debate Over Obama's Birth Control Mandate
Since Obama announced his birth control mandate that requires faith-based employers to pay for contraceptive coverage, church officials have waged against the controversial bill. Last Friday, President...
View ArticleRick Santorum, Satan, and American Politics
In a talk delivered in 2008, Rick Santorum asked the students of Ave Maria University, "If you were Satan who would you attack in this day and age?" The former Senator went on to answer his own...
View ArticleHow Does America Apologize for Koran Burning?
Tuesday marks the seventh day of violent protests in Afghanistan after several copies of the Koran and other religious artifacts were burned in a Baghram air base. Although the President has issued a...
View ArticleNewt Gingrich's Super Tuesday Strategy
Newt Gingrich hasn't been able to wrestle a significant percentage of voters since South Carolina. The former speaker of the house's super PAC, Winning the Future, is going on an ad buy blitz in seven...
View ArticleSuper Tuesday: A Look at Blue Collar Workers
On Super Tuesday, 437 delegates are up for grabs, and just like in Michigan, America’s blue collar workers are going to play an important role especially in three of the main battleground states: Ohio,...
View ArticleThe Monkees' Davy Jones Dies of Heart Attack
Davy Jones, the pint-size lead singer for the Monkees perhaps best known for singing "I’m a Believer," died of a heart attack on Wednesday at his home in Indiantown, FL. He was 66 years old. The...
View ArticleTaking a Page from the Obama Playbook?
As voters from 10 states across the country head to the polls on Tuesday, Republican candidates will be hoping to secure as many of the 437 delegates as possible. To win the party nomination, a...
View ArticleEric Holder: US Can Target Citizens Overseas
Attorney General Eric Holder outlined the United States’ legal defense of using lethal force against U.S. citizens overseas if that citizen is posing a terrorist threat. Holder’s speech, delivered...
View ArticleDoes the GOP Alienate Women Voters?
In recent weeks, the Republican party has had a difficult time charming a key slice of its political base: women. For his part … Rick Santorum has been advocating against women’s access to...
View ArticleSuper Tuesday Exit Polls Hold Clues for General Election
Coming up, The Takeaway looks closely at exit poll results from Super Tuesday contests around the country with Republican Strategist and The Takeaway contributor Ron Chrsitie and pollster John Zogby.
View ArticleDoes the GOP Need to Fix its Primary System?
Here's a question you may not have asked yourself: why does the Republican party hold primaries and caucuses at all? Is there a better system than the long, drawn out process of staggered elections...
View ArticleBe Careful What You Tweet
It was a case of crime and punishment in the digital age when Cincinnati-based mechanical engineer Mark Miller took to Twitter with a series of politically heated missives about a local municipal...
View ArticleDoes the South Still Influence the GOP?
The South has played a crucial role to the Republican Party for decades. Since 1996 every Republican presidential nominee has had some personal connection to the South. Furthermore, each of those...
View ArticleThis Primary, the Deep South May be Less Predictable
For Republican hopefuls, capturing the Deep South means capturing the base of American conservatism. But southern voters have yet to decide on any one candidate, and southern sensibilities are...
View ArticleRethinking Afghanistan After Civilian Killings
Information continues to trickle out about the American Army Staff Sergeant who allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians over the weekend. Who is he? What were his motives? For some, the killings have...
View ArticlePrimary Election Wrap-up: What's Next for the GOP after Alabama and...
More than halfway through the Republican primaries, there is still no clear frontrunner. It's a three-way race with four men running, and the guy that no one paid any attention to last year keeps...
View ArticleGOP Candidates Recalibrate Strategies After Primaries in Alabama and...
Rick Santorum won both GOP primaries in the South yesterday. He took 35 percent of the vote in Alabama and 33 percent in Mississippi. Do these results spell the end of the road for Newt Gingrich? And...
View ArticleHuman Rights Abuses Across Syrian Borders
According to new reports from Human Rights Watch, Syria is laying landmines across its borders with Lebanon and Turkey. Steve Goose, arms division director for Human Rights Watch, called the use of...
View ArticleGoldman Sachs Employee's Public Letter of Resignation
When Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith handed in his letter of resignation, he did so in the most public manner possible — by posting it in the pages of The New York Times. In his letter, the former...
View ArticleNew Details About the Psychological State of Alleged Shooter in Afghanistan
Comments by the lawyer for the U.S. soldier who allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians on Sunday has shed new light on the psychological state of the soldier in question. The lawyer, John Henry Browne,...
View ArticleFriday Follow: Santorum Takes Primaries, HBO Show Runs out of Luck, March...
Every Friday, The Takeaway convenes a panel to look back at the week's big stories. This week Rick Santorum wins Alabama and Mississippi, March Madness sweeps the country, and liquid detergent becomes...
View ArticleHomeschooling on the Rise Among African-Americans
According to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHEI), about two million American children (about 4 percent of all American students) receive their education at home. The NHEI claims that...
View ArticleAre Hate Crime Laws Necessary?
As the webcam-spying trial of Rutgers student Dharun Ravi comes to an end, some people have questioned whether hate crime laws are necessary at all. On the one hand, they dole out harsher punishments...
View ArticleWill Parent Trigger Laws Improve Schools?
In some states, parents frustrated with the public school system may have a new tool to fix their child’s education. Parent trigger laws, passed in some form in four states already, give dissatisfied...
View ArticleSantorum Focuses on Pennsylvania After Romney Takes Illinois Delegates
The day after Mitt Romney took 54 delegates in Illinois, Rick Santorum has set his sights on Pennsylvania, where he served two terms as Senator. His speech last night from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,...
View ArticleAlbert Einstein's Documents Going Online
Albert Einstein's entire archive of manuscripts, letters, theoretical musings, and personal correspondences are going online. More than 80,000 pages of material, owned by the Hebrew University of...
View ArticleOne Month Anniversary of Trayvon Martin's Death Marked by Protests and New...
Yesterday marked the one month anniversary of Trayvon Martin's death. The 17-year-old was shot and killed while visiting his father by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain....
View ArticlePresident Embraces "ObamaCare"
Democrats want to clear the air around ObamaCare. Dubbing the Affordable Care Act "ObamaCare" has helped the GOP to win the perception war around the Obama Administration's signature piece of...
View ArticleCommunity College Re-thinks Payment System
In California overcrowding and underfunding has made it impossible for many community college students to get into the packed courses they need for job training or transfers to a four-year college....
View ArticleWisconsin Focused on Possible Recall of Governor Scott Walker
Tomorrow's primary in Wisconsin is an important one for Mitt Romney, who is looking for a boost that will secure the GOP presidential nomination. But the presidential primary takes a back seat for...
View ArticleSyria to Enact Kofi Annan's 6-Point Peace Plan
Syria says that it will start to implement Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan. But skeptics fear that Syria's government will not fully comply with the plan or with its April 10 deadline. The plan calls...
View ArticleHas the Case of Trayvon Martin made Sanford the New Birmingham?
Sanford, Florida, where 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by 27-year-old George Zimmerman over one month ago, is currently host to the worst kind of attention a small town could possibly...
View ArticleCrowdsourcing Sexual Violence Data in Syria
In the ongoing reporting of the Syrian uprising, there has been little information about the violence committed against women. Using a creative web based tool, our guest hopes to fix that. Lauren Wolfe...
View ArticleMan Who Lied About WMDs Goes Public
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi is one of the most important people in the 20st Century, but most people only know him by his CIA codename: "Curveball." Mr. Janabi was a CIA informant whose information...
View ArticleEnd of Month Hunger Affects Student Discipline
A study of schools throughout the city of Chicago has found that detention and suspension rates increase towards the end of each month and sharply decrease at the beginning of the next. The main...
View ArticleNew Census Data Reveals Shift from Suburbs to Cities
New Census data released Thursday shows that the annual rate of growth in American cities has now surpassed that of the suburbs for the first time in 20 years. Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the...
View ArticleBully Rating Reveals MPAA's Inner Working
The director and studio behind the documentary "Bully" won their battle to have the movie’s rating lowered from the restricted R-rating down to PG-13. Even though it doesn’t have any explicit sex...
View ArticleRace and President Obama's Historic Reelection Campaign
Before he was even in the Senate, Barack Obama claimed that he was inspired to move to Chicago by Harold Washington, a man who would become the city's first African-American mayor. What else do these...
View ArticleIs the Sanford Police Department Inept?
Following the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, the Sanford Florida police department has been criticized of using poor judgement, conducting elementary investigations, and making...
View ArticleMarlins Manager's Comments Heat Up Baseball Season
The baseball season is just warming up, but Miami Marlins Manager Ozzie Guillen has wasted no time getting himself into hot water. Just five games into his career with the team, Guillen started a...
View ArticleSyrian Violence Continues Peace Plan
Violence continues in Syria, a day after the UN-backed ceasefire deadline. Kofi Annan voiced his hopes that both sides would come to follow the six point peace plan which required the Syrian government...
View ArticleFollow Friday: George Zimmerman's Facing Charges, Santorum Exits the Race,...
Every Friday, The Takeaway convenes a panel to look back at the week's big stories. This week we hear more about the arrest of Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, Rick Santorum's exit of the GOP...
View ArticleALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Voter ID
The American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative non-profit, is making headlines for their decision to disband its "Public Safety and Elections Task Force." The Task Force was a major policy...
View ArticleBlue Dog Day Afternoon
It’s a tough time to be a moderate Democrat in the halls of Congress. Only 24 so-called blue dog Democrats remain in Congress, and as the November elections near, several of them are looking at tough...
View ArticleU.S.-Afghan Relations Continue to Fray
The war in Afghanistan is now 11 years old, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier for America to achieve a graceful departure from the region. Yesterday the LA Times posted 18 photos online of...
View ArticleHacking Scandal Arrives in U.S.
Over 4,000 people have been identified as possible victims of phone hacking since the News of the World scandal first made headlines. The parent company News International has paid out millions in...
View ArticleThe Scopes Trial Redux
In Tennessee a new law goes into effect today that will allow public school teachers to teach alternatives to such scientific topics as evolution and climate change. The bill (H.B. 368/S.B. 893) is...
View ArticleFollow Friday: Secret Service's Public Scandal, Death of a Radio Icon, War on...
Every Friday, The Takeaway convenes a panel to look back at the week's big stories. This week we hear more about the Secret Service’s risqué public scandal in Colombia, the death of radio icon Dick...
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