Monica Potts

While police violence, especially in communities of color, has been a pretty constant force, the amount of evidence for police brutality claims certainly has gone up. That was especially clear when a violent video surfaced last year of Oscar Grant, who sat handcuffed with his back to the wall in an Oakland metro station Jan. […]

Via The Root, Essence tells us that Henrietta Lacks, the Baltimore woman whose cells were the first human ones to survive and reproduce in culture, finally gets a headstone for her grave. After 59 years in an unmarked grave, Henrietta Lacks was honored with a headstone for her resting place, reports the Virginia Pilot. Friends […]

Republican governors of Gulf Coast states, like Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, have lately criticized President Obama for not being quick enough to intervene in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Nate Silver touches on the oddness of the Republican line: On the other hand, it’s not exactly clear what the critique is. The most widespread criticism of Obama […]

Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo punches a hole through Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s claims that he is opting out of the federal race-to-the-top grant program because it would result in Virginia lowering its state standards: While states do receive 40 points on their Race to the Top application for adopting the NGA’s standards, the program’s executive […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment that would repeal a ban on abortions for servicewomen even when those women paid with their own money. The amendment was introduced by Sen. Roland Burris and is now attached to the National Defense Authorization Act. The previous rule, which had been reversed by President Clinton with […]

Sex and the City began as one of the few shows on television that showcased female friendships both in the ways they really are and in the ways we want them to be, and ended as a retro, ultimately conservative show about how all women really want is a man. (Case in point: Samantha’s sexed-up […]

Monday is the one-year anniversary of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, one of the country’s few late-term abortion providers, and Sen. Harry Reid marked the occasion this morning: The tragedy of Dr. Tiller’s death, and of Dr. Slepian’s death – and of every atrocity like it – is independent of the issue of abortion. […]

DailyKos’s new poll on the Arkansas Senate race is showing Bill Halter doing better against the Republican nominee, John Boozman, than Blanche Lincoln. There are a couple of reasons for progressives not to get too excited about this. For one, Halter portrays himself in the state as being just as centrist as Lincoln, and even […]

Change.org’s Criminal Justice blog points us to a study from the University of Hawaii that tells us something we probably already knew but is nonetheless useful to have demonstrated in scientific form: Criminal juries are more likely to believe dark-skinned suspects are guilty. At least, that’s according to an experiment conducted by the university that […]