Free Republic

I WAS NESTLED in my bedroom on Sunday evening happily watching one of my favorite reality-TV shows, when I started feeling guilty, almost like I was cheating. Not on my husband, mind you, but on Barack Obama. There I was, an ardent Obama supporter, watching real-estate mogul Donald Trump's trainwreck of a TV show, "Celebrity Apprentice." I knew I should jump up in righteous indignation and change the channel to something else, but I didn't. I was wrong, wrong I tell you. I should have been boycotting The Donald instead of mindlessly enjoying the spectacle of Meat Loaf's on-screen maniacal...

Commentary: The Red State-Slave State Connection is all too Real Commentary: The Red State-Slave State Connection is all too Real Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 By: Last week while I was up at Harvard University meeting with black columnists from around the country, including several of my BlackAmericaWeb.com colleagues, Michael Dawson took me to school with his map that shows the overlap between Republican red states and the old Confederacy and slave-friendly territories. Dawson is a professor of government and Afro-American studies who specializes in the ways that race and politics intersect. I was sold. His map spoke to the...

By the time the letter marked "Return to Sender" was opened by an employee at the Montgomery County jail, prosecutors had assembled a strong case against Quinton J. Thomas: They had the cooperation of a woman who said she helped Thomas plan a robbery, and they had cellphone records that appeared to place Thomas near the Germantown parking lot where the victim of that planned robbery was fatally shot. Things looked so bad for Thomas, in fact, that his attorney had been urging him to consider pleading guilty to first-degree murder. Irritated, Thomas wrote a friend to complain about the...

As you can see from the title of this column, I’m not too crazy about Al Sharpton. There are a number of reasons for the dislike, which has finally spilled over in light of his recent insistence on the firing of Don Imus – although, for the record, I want it known: I don’t like Don Imus either! Radio personality Don Imus, left, and Rev. Al Sharpton appear face-to-face on Rev. Sharpton's radio show, in New York Monday April 9, 2007. Imus issued another apology for referring to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" on his morning show...

REALLY? THE FACTS Many Americans are quick to plop down large sums of money for trendy haircuts or trips to upscale salons, but some hairstyles can carry unforeseeable costs. Tight ponytails, cornrows, buns, chignons, twists and other hairstyles that pull on the scalp for prolonged periods can result in irreversible hair loss, a medical condition known as traction alopecia. There are no figures on how many people in the United States have experienced the problem, but it is probably most common in women and children. It is also prevalent among African-Americans and East Indians, groups that are more likely to...