Earl Ofari Hutchinson

[Editor’s Note: In view of the recent sexual scandal involving the disgraced former head of the little understood and presently leaderless International Monetary Fund, Dr. Hutchinson interviewed Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.]

GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul still wages war against civil rights. We shouldn’t be surprised since Paul repeatedly has gotten into hot water nearly every time he opens his mouth about anything that remotely touches on race.

GOP strategists and analysts sounded desperate, even panicked, when they implored Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to toss his hat in the Presidential ring.

President Obama made a wise decision in choosing not to make public photos of Osama bin Laden’s body. His reasons are pragmatic and compelling. DNA tests and other evidence showed conclusively that the dead man was Osama bin Laden. Releasing the gruesome photos wouldn’t satisfy the professional Obama bashers and conspiracy theorists, who would just claim that the pictures were doctored. Meanwhile, their release could further inflame Muslim hardliners, giving them another excuse for retaliatory action against U.S. personnel.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's announcement that he won’t seek the Presidency was no real surprise. His candidacy from the start was the longest of long shots. He consistently polled low single-digit figures among those that GOP voters said they'd back. His shoot-from-the lip defense of the White Citizens Councils and then tepid backtrack on that defense, and his feigned cluelessness about the brutality of Southern racism and the accomplishments of the civil rights struggle, typed him in the minds of millions as a borderline unreconstructed apologist for the Southern way of life, white bigotry.

Orange County GOP Central Committee member Marilyn Davenport’s email blast depicting President Obama and his family as monkeys was sick, vile and disgusting. But that was not the worst part of it.

President Obama’s re-election bid announcement was pro forma. There never was doubt whether he would run again. If the GOP has anything to do with it, odds are better every day he will win in a walk. It didn’t start out that way, though. The first year of his White House tenure, things looked shaky for re-election.

Are the recent headline cases of packs of young men violently and viciously raping young girls barely past the age of puberty a new and gruesome trend, a case of media sensationalism, or proof that these attacks are finally getting the attention that it should have gotten all along? There's an element of truth in all three possibilities.

Perennial Congressional gadfly Dennis Kucinich completely lost his political screws when he even uttered the word “impeachment” of President Obama over his action in Libya.

Businessman and possible GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain delightedly told a group of conservative New Hampshire Republicans that they shouldn’t blame him for a “bad” black President. The alleged “bad” black President is Barack Obama.