Like many groups, each year the NAACP issues a Civil Rights Report Card, grading members of Congress on issues important to African-Americans. Every year they were in office, both Kerry and Edwards received As. When Cheney served in Congress from 1977 to 1988, he received an F every session. Of course, President Bush has never served in the House or Senate, making it more difficult to assign him a grade.

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As we meet here in Athens, the US is in the middle of a gigantic electoral contest. It is difficult to convey the fervor and intensity of this great fight. Some have compared it to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, others to the momentum behind the efforts to found the industrial unions in 30s, still others to the movement against the Vietnam war. But whatever the comparison, back home, it is seen as perhaps the greatest and most important battle of our lives.

New voters are swelling the rolls and threatening to upset the assumptions of corporate pundits and polling organizations. Although Republicans are vigorously signing up white voters in the suburbs and exurbs, it appears the GOP is being out-organized by Democrat-led drives in Black and Brown precincts across the nation.

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When Dick Cheney confessed to Gwen Ifill of PBS, the moderator of last night’s vice presidential debate, that he did not know anything about the struggles faced by African American women with AIDS, his admission spoke directly to one of the defining characteristics of the Bush administration: the decided lack of interest in or concern for the difficulties faced by the most oppressed, most troubled sections of the US population.

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Military recruiters are well aware that the economic situation for Latino youth is relatively bleak and have targeted Latino communities as one of the primary objectives for their efforts in coming decades. The targeting of Latino youth for military recruitment was initiated by former Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera who once declared that "Hispanics have a natural inclination for military service."

As the November 2 election comes closer it is clear that Latino voters will be a critical element of the growing forces opposing the Bush administration and Republican control of Congress. At the beginning of 2004 anti-Bush forces were worried about the Latino vote because of support for Bush reported by opinion polls in the wake of 9/11.

The right to vote is fundamental to any real democracy. The African American people from slavery to today have had to wage a hard, bitter and bloody struggle for this right: it is therefore a sacred and basic part of achieving full democracy and equality for all and an important gauge of the strength of US democracy.

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Hopefully, this month’s third rebuff of the Bush administration by a US District Court of the 2003 partial birth abortion ban (PBA) act passed in Congress and signed immediately by President George W. Bush, will be an omen of things to come, with the final defeat coming on November Second. Democratic candidate John Kerry is opposed to such a ban and he has pledged he would appoint judges to federal benches that agree with his stand.

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On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Karl Rove went public with the GOP’s battle plan. Speaking of Bush, he said "People know who he is and they know what his beliefs are and they know who he is and they know what his beliefs are." Is that clear enough?

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As election 2004 approaches, impact at the voting booth of the nation's two largest immigrant-dominated populations—Latinos and Asians—is increasing. But, Urban Institute analysis underscores that voting levels among Latinos and Asians lag well behind the groups' population growth, largely because many new immigrants are not yet citizens and their children are still too young to vote. As a result, the full political force of ongoing demographic change will be felt over decades, not years.

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The Republican Convention in New York apart from being a mediatic spectacle full of choreographed movements destined to attract the attention of voters, collect the ballots of those who are indifferent and neutralize the actions of the adversary reveals the presence of two opposite forces in the United States' society and the development of a political struggle that tends to characterize a whole period of the world's most powerful imperialist country.

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A new proposal that calls for detailed questioning of immigrants after they receive emergency medical care is drawing criticism from both immigrant rights advocates and healthcare providers. Critics say such questioning may cause immigrants to avoid seeking emergency health services out of fear that information gathered by hospitals will be shared with other government agencies.

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The racial slings and arrows are easier for the sporting public than the uncomfortable truth. The straight dope is that the US no longer owns a patent on the game of basketball. Unlike 1992 when the first Dream Team of Magic, Larry and Jordan posed for pictures and signed autographs for opponents and then won by 40.

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Across the country there is a growing anti-Bush feeling, but that alone is not enough. To win requires that millions be convinced that the differences between Bush and Kerry are real, substantial and consequential to their lives on the whole range of issues: Social Security, Medicare, health care, overtime, minimum wage, public education, affirmative action and much more.

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John Kerry and John Edwards left the Democratic National Convention July 29 to barnstorm across the country, buoyed by ringing calls both inside and outside the convention for George W. Bush’s defeat as a menace to world peace and democracy.

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The United States was born from the struggles of the settlers for the right to have a say in their lives and their future. The Boston Tea Party in 1774 mobilized the citizenry around the slogan, "no taxation without representation." This is still the beacon call for today’s African American community and other segments of our multi-racial and multi-national country. It is imperative that the African American community be fully mobilized in this presidential year if Bush and his band of warmongers is to be defeated.

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The government of President Hugo Chávez was swept to power in Venezuela, an oil-rich country in the northernmost part of South America, through democratic elections in 1999. Chávez's government identified the major problem in the country as being the fact that the country's vast oil wealth was not being used to alleviate poverty, as 80% of the country's 24 million inhabitants continued to be impoverished.

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ST. LOUIS – Voters here in the Show Me State want George W. Bush to show them one good reason to give him four more years in the White House in the Nov. 2 election. Missouri labor and its allies have seen enough already and are working hard to "show Bush the door in 2004."

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By now everybody knows that Martha Stewart has been sentenced to 5 months in prison for lying about a phone call. I think it was Jeffrey Toobin who said, "The government has sent a clear message to all Americans. If you lie, you’re going to suffer the consequences." Isn’t that just rich.

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Coverage of the San Francisco ruling earlier this month on the abortion ban shows how the political polarization surrounding reproductive rights has invaded the supposedly impartial territory of journalism.

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