If anniversaries of terrible occasions are good for anything, they help us focus on not just the event in question, but its long aftermath. I continue to work with John Mutter, a Columbia University professor who studies the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The deep question has always been:...

Strong words. Decisive action. A promise of "unwavering support" followed up directly by the might of the United States government. In an emergency, for us and for our neighbors, this is how we hope our government will respond. On Day 4 of the Haitian earthquake catastrophe, this is how the...

Governing is a grind. Look no further than health care reform to know that what soared as rhetoric can look like confetti on the floor once the House and Senate get a hold of it. Easy for the cynic to believe that it doesn't matter who sits in the White...

Don't look back. Like some video star who walks away from explosions with nary a glance over her shoulder, my mother taught me that this was the way to deal with the traumas of life. She survived her youth with men who drowned their suffering in alcohol by moving forward,...

The New Orleans Police Department chaplain knows suffering. Joe Cull spends his days, and many nights, on the porches and in the parlors of neighbors' homes as he listens to those who have experienced fresh trauma. He did so before and after Katrina. He does so today.

But observers...

Republicans aren't the only ones who push aside the Geneva conventions for political expediency. Democrats did so for the last two years, opting to wait out the Bush administration before engaging them on their crimes against humanity.

I held my breath, hoping that this bargain would be short-lived. Once...

I hear a storyline hardening around Eric Holder's nomination. Instead of being celebrated for the accomplished and outstanding public servant that he is, Holder is being portrayed as more of the same Clinton-era politics that Obama was supposed to leave behind.

I disagree that Holder's nomination is just "more...

The glass. Did you see it? I'm referring to those two sheets that President-elect Barack Obama stood between as he spoke to us from Grant Park. Glass sheets so clear as to almost be unnoticeable, yet thick enough to protect the man in the event that someone in that crowd...

"I must steel myself for disappointment," says one friend. "I'm weighing Toronto vs Montreal," says another. "If McCain wins, Americans get what they deserve," adds one more.

Usually I would sympathize with such attempts at self-preservation. Many of us are emotionally invested in Tuesday's election in a way that's beyond...

"I've got an idea," said my friend Larry, "why don't you come down and ride out Gustav with me? Don't you want to experience a hurricane firsthand?" These plaintive questions were on my voicemail. I listened as I walked uphill on 145th in Harlem, laughing the entire length of the...

The Katrina dead. Three years later and we can still see the drowned rooftops, the hospital staffs begging for evacuations, the lines of wheel-chaired sick fading before our eyes. Some of us remember this because we saw it on TV. Some of us remember this because we were there. No...

She will mourn. She will need to take time off to recuperate from the crushing disappointment. At some point she will call Al Gore, the one person who will truly understand both her pain and the possibilities ahead. He is the one who can tell her from experience and by...

During the Clinton era, I lost hope in political life because I couldn't stand political language. I grew to despise how people in power used words only to dictate outcomes -- that the gap between experienced truth and the story spoken out loud seemed to grow into a chasm, dark...

In today's NYT, Paul Krugman writes about the "bitterness" of the Democratic nomination fight, writing that he feels that the most "venom" comes from the pro-Obama voices. He goes on to say that Obama supporters "want their hero or nobody" and that the "Obama campaign is seems dangerously close...

There's one law of physics I return to again and again when I wish to understand the world: for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

Look at yourself: you are the sum of all that you've lived and learned up until this point. What we did yesterday, what...

I recently had a "what MLK means to me" moment, and I have to say, it took me by surprise. I suppose I was at an obvious place for it to happen--the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis--but there's something about the often department store, herd-them-through vibe of museums that...

Yesterday at work, I snapped. OK, not postal. But I lost my "live and let live" attitude that I try to maintain with others when I'm at work or out socially.

I work for a university. One joy of doing so is being surrounded by smart, politically-engaged colleagues. The...

Mrs. Clinton: with your back smack against the wall, don't you think it might be time to do something so daring, so risktaking -- that yes, the whole world might just crumble around you if you do it, but at least you'll know you used every weapon in your arsenal...

So, the late-night comedians are back (or coming back). For many of us, there are warm places in our hearts and minds for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I think of the darkest times of the post-9/11 Bush years, and how I needed Jon Stewart and his writers to read...

Over the last year, many, including myself, have called for an 8/29 Commission to get to the bottom of what truly happened with the New Orleans levee-breaches and resultant floods. No one has spear-headed this call like New Orleans-based grassroots organization, Levees.org.

Recently, in collaboration with a...