One of the most important milestones in anyone’s life is the purchase of their own home. Throughout history, homeownership has served as the defining symbol of prosperity and accomplishment—yet it is a symbol that has not always been equally accessible for all those seeking it.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is qualified to be a justice on the Supreme Court.  If the Senate chooses to confirm her she will be only the third woman, and also the first Latina justice to be confirmed. 
But will they confirm her? Already we are hearing rumblings that a woman spunky enough to assert that a wise Latina might differ from a white man in her interpretation of the law is “race conscious”. And those who are sitting in a race neutral fog are loaded for bear.

Signed amid controversy in 2001, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law shook up the nation’s public education system. This legislation made schools accountable for student achievement; if students continually failed to meet minimum test scores, schools were placed on probation.  Classroom instruction methods were changed, too, with increased focus placed on ‘teaching to the test’, taking away from more in-depth instruction.  Several years have now gone by, giving analysts enough time to assess how the law, if at all, impacts student performance.  According to the Civil Rights Project, NCLB isn’t working.

President Barack Hussein Obama delivered a 54-minute speech from Cairo, Egypt to the Muslim world. One analyst described this speech as being more powerful than his speech delivered in Philadelphia regarding race in America after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright incident. Due to his diverse heritage no combination of US presidents could, in my opinion, do what this speech did so quickly. He is an African American man with a Muslim father, he lived in a Muslim country with the largest Muslim population in the world.

Close your eyes and think about the words summer school. What comes to mind?

If you picture a room full of children clapping, chanting, laughing and learning to fall in love with books and reading, you could be imagining the experience thousands of children across the country are about to have over the next few months as they participate in the Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools® program.

With too many Minnesotans losing their jobs, health care, and homes, I set out in my first year in the Legislature to fight for the people in our community so that our voices and priorities could be part of our state budget solution. We were able to pass progressive reforms to combat the home foreclosure crisis and broaden health care coverage to more children, but in other important areas, the Governor used his veto power to block the forward thinking reforms we need to emerge stronger from these difficult economic times.