WASHINGTON — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't a big guy — but he cast a long shadow. The nation's first black president dedicated the civil rights leader's granite memorial on the National Mall Sunday, along with King's children and friends. They spoke of King's vision, his courage, and his fight for racial and economic justice.
WASHINGTON - Demoralized liberals are trying to get their mojo back. Frustrated with Congress, outmaneuvered by the tea party and all but silent as the GOP swept the 2010 elections, liberals say they've had enough
WASHINGTON - In early 2002, federal agents who were hunting the anthrax killer were trying to winnow a suspect list that numbered in the hundreds. They knew only that they were looking for someone with access to the rare Ames strain of anthrax used in research labs around the world. Profilers said the perpetrator probably was an American with "an agenda."
MINNEAPOLIS -- Ashley Cassidy has spent most of her career trying to find a way to support herself without her parents' help. So far, it hasn't been easy. Cassidy has returned home twice after earning college degrees.
WASHINGTON-With the nation verging on renewed recession, President Barack Obama urged a divided Congress Thursday night to back his new $447 billion jobs package, which he promised would give a "jolt to an economy that has stalled."
BRATTLEBORO, Vt.-Rippling creeks became deadly deluges. Bridges collapsed into roiling waves. Dry streets turned into fast-rising lakes, closing in around stunned towns that never knew they might be in the path of a tropical storm expected to drench the coast, not the countryside.
The 3 million Americans who graduated from high school last spring have had to grapple with a big decision: whether to continue with their educations this fall. In today's economic climate, a growing number of families are questioning the value of higher education. Will an investment in college pay off? Or will it simply be a high-cost ticket to the ranks of the unemployed?
WASHINGTON-Saying the country does not have time for "silliness," President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged focusing on issues including high gas prices and the economy after the White House released his long-form birth certificate.
WASHINGTON-An Oval Office meeting Tuesday morning yielded no deal on a final budget resolution, raising the specter of a government shutdown at week's end. President Obama had called Tuesday's meeting in an effort to finalize a deal that Democrats have said was within reach but Republicans had yet to coalesce around.
ST. LOUIS-Brenda Nathan doesn't shy away from the perception of her chosen profession she embraces it. "I'm a complete nerd," boasted the California Polytechnic State University mechanical engineering major, one of 8,000 young people attending the National Society of Black Engineers convention in St. Louis recently. "I take pride in it."
WASHINGTON - When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was targeted for defeat last year with a map showing a rifle's cross hairs over her district, she worried it might incite violence. "When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action," she said, after Sarah Palin used the cross hairs to tell her followers of 20 House Democrats who should be defeated.
WASHINGTON - One of the most worrisome national security threats of climate change is the spread of disease, among both people and animals, U.S. intelligence and health officials say. But more than a decade after such concerns were first raised by U.S. intelligence agencies, significant gaps remain in the health surveillance and response network not just in developing nations, but in the United States as well, according to those officials and a review of federal documents and reports. And those gaps, they say, undermine the ability of the U.S. and world health officials to respond to disease outbreaks before they become national security threats.
Richard C. Holbrooke, the hard-charging diplomat who brokered peace in the Balkans and then took on an even tougher task as the Obama administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, died Monday night at age 69.
The Senate overwhelmingly advanced President Barack Obama's $858 billion tax-cut package Monday in a vote that heightened pressure on reluctant House Democrats and enhanced the likelihood of congressional approval for the compromise.
A majority of Americans want the Congress to keep the new health care law or actually expand it, despite Republican claims that they have a mandate from the people to kill it, according to a new McClatchy Newspapers-Marist poll.
LOS ANGELES -- State budget cuts and declines in philanthropy and endowments helped push the cost of college tuition up much higher than general inflation across the country this year, amounting to an increase of 7.9 percent at public campuses and 4.5 percent at private ones, according to a study by the nonprofit College Board.
WASHINGTON-The "tea party" movement, a loose amalgam of activists united chiefly by their determination to make government smaller, was on track to elect dozens of Republicans on Tuesday night and to confirm its standing as a rising power in national politics.
PORTLAND, Ore.- Both the White House and the Republican congressional leadership are quietly preparing for clashes between the two branches of government that could play out if the GOP takes control of the House and presses investigations into administration actions. Republican lawmakers who would be in charge of investigative and oversight committees plan to renew a stack of information demands that have languished before federal agencies over the previous 22 months and have indicated that, if victorious next month, they will use subpoena power if necessary to compel testimony and documents.
House, Senate outcome may ride on turnout
WASHINGTON – African-American voters could have a major impact on the outcome of 20 House of Representatives races and 14 Senate contests if they can reverse a pattern of low turnout in nonpresidential election years, according to a report that the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies released Thursday.
Tea Party claims mantle of change
Calling for change in an election is the norm it seems — and that's what the emerging Tea Party is all about. The conservative movement — some might even call it radical — is challenging not just Democrats but the GOP establishment as well.
PHILADELPHIA -- Gregory Dyer, a Villanova University senior, stood in an aisle at his campus bookstore searching for his introduction-to-art textbook. He gasped. New, "Living With Art" would cost the English major $130. Used, it was a mere $97.50.
Two years ago on Aug. 25, the Democratic Party gathered in Denver energetic and confident of victory to nominate Barack Obama for president.
What a difference a deep recession, two wars, a yearlong argument over health care, a tea party movement, a massive deficit, a minor scandal or two, a muddled message and partisan gridlock can make.
Wes Minton of Dallas watched his roommate sit around, drink beer, and gain close to the classic freshman 15 at the University of Redlands in California last year.
As someone who had struggled with weight most of his life, he didn't want that to happen to him.
Some African-Americans with leukemia, lymphoma and other diseases are unable to have lifesaving stem cell or bone marrow transplants because of a critical shortage of black donors, doctors and health officials said. Of the 8 million people who have registered as potential donors with the National Marrow Donor Program, just 600,000 -- 7 percent -- are black. That severely limits a black's chance of being matched with a donor for transplant.
Declaring himself an ally of American students in a fight against commercial banks, President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed a new law designed to free up more money for higher education by ending the role of banks as "middlemen" in the college lending process.
Lucy Horton -- just one of the millions of Americans out of work -- rushes out of English class at Harper Community College, a requirement for the associate's degree she is seeking in search of a better life. As the 49-year-old leaves the Palatine, Ill., campus, her 19-year-old daughter is just arriving -- same subject, different generation.
Some African-Americans with leukemia, lymphoma and other diseases are unable to have lifesaving stem cell or bone marrow transplants because of a critical shortage of black donors, doctors and health officials said. Of the 8 million people who have registered as potential donors with the National Marrow Donor Program, just 600,000 -- 7 percent -- are black. That severely limits a black's chance of being matched with a donor for transplant.
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