By Leslie Proll
When President Obama took office last January, hopes were high that the right wing’s long stronghold on the federal courts had come to an end. LDF and other civil rights advocates were eager for a new day when fair and impartial judges would once again be nominated and confirmed in large numbers.

By John Payton
A year ago, we could barely contain our excitement as we contemplated a historic achievement. Barack Obama had won a decisive victory. There was widespread enthusiasm for his Presidency. Right after the election, Gallup reported that 68 percent of the public was proud that Obama was President. His choices of Senator Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State, of Eric Holder to be Attorney General and of Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense were well received. His Inaugural speech was brilliant. We were looking forward to acknowledging and confronting fundamental problems that have plagued our society for decades.

By Doug Miller
Maybe, just maybe, America’s retail bankers really don’t get it. Despite being hauled before Congress, derided by the president and sinking like a bar of gold bullion in an increasingly choppy sea of public opinion, maybe they’re just incapable at this point of seeing the balance sheet for what it really is.

By Jackie Jones
You may not be able to get rid of all the fees, but you can make a dent in the pile and put a little more cash in your pocket or your savings account.

By Stacey Patton
Could it be that all this sprucing up and stocking of healthier food has something to do with the influx of the neighborhood’s white residents?

By The Editors
The monthly report of the federal Department of Labor found that employers cut 524,000 jobs last month – the latest in a series of alarming monthly job losses that added up to a total of 2.45 million jobs lost during all of 2008. There is widespread agreement among economists that the huge monthly job losses are far from over.

by The Editors:
On Thursday, January 8, 2009, President-Elect Barack Obama addressed the nation’s growing economic crisis. He discussed both the severity of the recession and his vision for recovery.
Read an analysis of the speech and the full transcript.
President-elect Obama Economimc Recovery Plan – Speech Highlights

by TaRessa Stovall:
The butterfly effect – the concept that fluttering butterfly wings might set off minute changes in the atmosphere, affecting the path of a tornado far away – can be applied to the impact of America’s recession on many institutions, especially Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
With all of America’s mainstream colleges and universities [...]

It is now widely accepted that the precipitous slide of the American economy during the last three months is the worst economic crisis America has faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
A seemingly unending drumbeat of statistics from all sectors of the nation’s $14 trillion economy – grimly tolling our economic peril – have [...]

By Lee A. Daniels:
Perhaps they should re-stage the November 4 vote for president. Apparently now there are even more people who want to vote for Barack Obama than actually did on that day.
That’s the conclusion one can draw from post-election polls which show that the proportion of Americans who think Obama’s the right person for [...]