AOL News has a new home! The Huffington Post.
Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!Hot on HuffPost:
See More Stories
Executive Behind Lavish Conference Leaves Agency
Walker Recall Effort Struggles To Gain Momentum
Civil Rights Act
US Sues School for Denying Teacher Leave for Muslim Pilgrimage
By Lauren Frayer - AOL News(Dec. 14) -- The U.S. government is suing a suburban Chicago school district for refusing to grant a Muslim teacher unpaid leave to go on a Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Attending the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca once in a lifetime is one of the five central tenets of the Islamic faith. Safoorah Khan, a middle school teacher in the Berkeley school district, about 15 miles west of Chicago, applied for an unpaid leave of absence in 2008 to go on the Hajj, but her request was denied. She ultimately quit her job to attend and later filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal ...
Arizona's 'Sheriff Joe,' Immigration Firebrand, Squares Off With Feds
By Andrew Cohen - Politics DailyThe Justice Department upped its political and legal pressure on Arizona and its most notable lawman Thursday when it sued Maricopa County and Sheriff Joe Arpaio for allegedly failing to adequately cooperate with a civil rights investigation that predates the state's controversial anti-immigration measures. Although the lawsuit -- filed in federal court in Phoenix -- is not directly connected to the more recent immigration controversy surrounding the passage of S.B. 1070, Arpaio has been an outspoken critic of federal immigration policy and a vocal supporter of the state's new enforcement ...
Robert Byrd's Baffling Career: From Segregationist to Senate Sage
By Walter Shapiro - Politics Daily"He's a real reactionary. The Democrats made him their whip and he was in the Ku Klux Klan when he was young." The speaker was Richard Nixon in 1971, according to H.R. Haldeman's White House diary, as he toyed with appointing West Virginia's Robert Byrd to the Supreme Court after Senate liberals had rejected his first two picks. At that point in time (or any point in time), it was a ludicrous notion because the self-made Byrd had attended law school while serving in the Senate and had never practiced. And even a president who had exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement ...
Robert Byrd: Rising Up Out of a Racist Past
By Paul Wachter - Politics DailyLike another long-serving senator, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, West Virginia's Robert Byrd was once an unrepentant racist. He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and, as senator, filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours and then voted against it. In a 1945 letter, Byrd wrote of his fears that he might "see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels." In 2001, in a nationally televised interview, he used the phrase "white [n-word]." But Byrd worked hard to distance himself from his racist past, and did so (unlike Thurmond, who bolted to the GOP) within the Democrat ...
Rand Paul Shakes Up Campaign Staff
By Christopher Weber - Politics DailyRand Paul, Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky and son of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, has replaced his campaign manager. The shake -up comes a week after the campaign scrambled to explain comments Rand Paul made during media appearances when he refused to fully embrace the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that legally ended segregation in the United States. Jesse Benton, the campaign's communication director, was named manager Wednesday, replacing David Adams, The Washington Post reported. Benton, who worked for Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Texas) 2008 presidential campaign, pointed out that ...
Opinion: Rand Pauls in Sheep's Clothing
By Ian Millhiser - AOL News(May 26) -- Poor Rand Paul. After he spent just a few days speaking out against the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters, no one wants to be his friend anymore. Yet, while Paul's overactive mouth transformed him into a leper among right-wing lawmakers terrified that he will damage their poll numbers, Paul's beliefs are far more common than these lawmakers let on. Paul's specific objection to federal civil rights law should seem odd, even to those who share his libertarian outlook. In the Louisville Courier-Journal interview that elevated his beliefs into the national spotlight, Paul ...
Rand Paul, Michael Steele: Fighting to Keep the Liberty in Libertarianism
By Mary C. Curtis - Politics DailyIt was fascinating to watch the talking heads on weekend round-table discussions try to talk Rand Paul out of the hole he dug for himself. In particular, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's defense of the Kentucky Senate candidate seemed ambivalent and a bit painful. Paul's trouble came with his musings that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 may have overreached when it forbade private businesses from discriminating, that the federal government's condemnation of BP's oil-drenched transgressions is too harsh and that, when it comes to Gulf spills and fatal mining disasters, ...
Does Racism Run in the Paul Family?
By Paul Wachter - AOL NewsANALYSIS (May 21) -- As the pundits continue to chew over Rand Paul's comments about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it's worth noting that it's not the first time a Paul family member has been accused of racism. During his successful race for the the Republican nomination for Kentucky's Senate seat, much was made of Rand Paul's political lineage -- his father is Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, known for his strong libertarian positions. But in 2008, as the elder Paul was making his bid for the GOP presidential nomination, another aspect of his beliefs drew attention when The New Republic exposed the ...
Paul Sparks New Controversy After Race Flap
By Mara Gay - AOL News(May 21) -- Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky today called President Barack Obama's outspoken criticism of BP after the oil spill "un-American" and accused him of putting "his boot heel on the throat of BP." Paul, a rising star of the tea party movement who beat out a GOP favorite to win Kentucky's Republican primary Tuesday, also defended remarks he made about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying he's being "trashed" by Democrats who want to ruin his campaign. After criticizing the president for attacking BP, Paul moved on to reference the April 5 disaster at a West ...
Republicans Should Repudiate Rand Paul's Civil Rights Stand
By Peter Wehner - Politics DailyThe best news Democrats received from Tuesday's election was not the victory of Mark Critz over Tim Burns in Pennsylvania's 12th District. It was the Senate primary victory in Kentucky of Republican Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul. The reason is that Democrats are going to take the views of the younger Paul, also a libertarian, and place them in bright neon lights. They understandably want him to become the face and intellectual representative of the modern GOP -- especially on matters of race. As much of the political world knows by now, Rand Paul has on several occasions indicated that he ...
Follow Politics Daily
POPULAR
- Nancy Pelosi Confirms House May Skip Up or Down Vote on Senate Health Bill
- Debrahlee Lorenzana: A Double Take on Those Double D's
- Campbell Brown Quits CNN With Shockingly Frank Farewell
- Palin Earnings Estimated at $12 Million
- The Five Most Racist Obama Cartoons?
- Jimmy Carter Leaves Church Over Treatment of Women
- Soraya M., Stoned to Death for Being an "Inconvenient Wife''
- No posts are available.
News From Our Partners
- Dragon arrives at space station in historic 1st
- Picking new leader, Egyptians search for superman
- Egyptians vote in first free presidential vote
- Moon chips from Vegas casino mogul sent to NASA
- Egyptians vote to rid nation of autocratic rule
- More Stories »
- 'Masters of the Universe' Sure Have Fragile Egos
- Romney: My Mistakes 'Haunt Me'
- Newt Lauds Romney: He's Like Eisenhower
- Irked Senate Panel Votes 30-0 to Cut Pakistan Aid
- GSA Bash Organizer Steps Down
- More Stories »
- Know Your Enemy
- Obama’s Challenge in Egypt
- The Edwards Waiting Game
- Are Doctors Doing Too Much?
- The Pagan Cult of Reagan
- More Stories »
- Ambition Counteracting Ambition
- Robert Blagojevich Speaks Out
- In Iowa, Obama Calls Romney's Words 'A Cow Pie of Distortion'
- In Iowa, Obama Calls On Congress to Act on Clean Energy Tax Credits
- Romney Has Interesting Morning in Inner-City Philly
- More Stories »
Top News
More News
More on Aol
Local News
More Blog/Sites
Sites and Services
HuffPost Politics