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We now live in a post-assimilation America. The 50-year-old rules for racial advancement are obsolete. There is no racial barrier left to break. There is no office in the land to which an African-American can ascend — from mayor to attorney general and the presidency — that will serve as a magical platform for saving black people and our nation’s soul from its racist past.

We cannot engineer a more equitable nation simply by dressing up institutions in more shades of brown. Instead, we must confront structural racism and the values of our institutions.

the exceptionalism of Mr. Obama’s biography couldn’t save us from the Tea Party revolution, Republican obstructionism, police brutality, voter suppression and Islamophobia.

With days to go until the presidential inauguration, the hope for the traditionally sedate transition between the old and new administrations has been anything but. Instead feelings of fragmentation and anxiety spurred by the brutal presidential campaign and its aftermath prevail. There are still millions who distrust the “other America”, stirred by bitterly divisive political, racial, and religious rhetoric that has torn our national unity to shreds.

We have become a nation of victims. Every group with a sobriquet that survives two news cycles feels that it has been wronged. From ‘deplorables’ to Democrats; fly-overs, free-thinkers and fundamentalists; populists and progressives – all believe that they have been ignored, disappointed, and beaten down. All of us need to listen to find a better way.

Thousands of people showed up in freezing temperatures on Sunday in Michigan to hear Sen. Bernie Sanders denounce Republican efforts to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, one of dozens of rallies Democrats staged across the country to highlight opposition.

"I'm going to get really sick and my life will be at risk," said Bible, an online antique dealer.

Davos forum chief: 'It's important to listen' to populists

The head of the Davos economic conference says "it's important to listen to the populists" and hopes to welcome Donald Trump one day to "hear his ideas."

Chinese President Xi Jinping is perhaps the standout among 46 heads of state attending this year. Schwab said WEF organizers had to be "realistic" that Trump wouldn't attend because his inauguration Friday is on the conference's last day.

Gipper's memento: Reagan's signed oath of office goes up for sale

Even Ronald Reagan needed most of January to begin signing the correct year, and the proof is in a one-of-a-kind document inscribed by the Gipper and given to a trusted aide the day the 40th president took the oath of office.  

After giving the 41-word oath to Chief Justice Warren Burger on Jan. 20, 1981, Reagan inscribed and dated the printed version he'd used for practice for a trusted aide. Expand / Contract The written oath was used by Reagan to practice for his swearing-in ceremony in 1981. (Raab Collection) “To Nancy – who ‘brightens the corner where we are,’ Ronald Reagan 1/20/80,” he wrote to Nancy Clark Reynolds, a longtime friend, aide and member of the Reagan transition team.

It is true that Donald Trump is, by all measures of the law, the legitimate president-elect and will legitimately be inaugurated our 45th president

there is another way of considering legitimacy, another test that his election doesn’t meet: That is when legitimacy is defined as “conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards.”

Here, Lewis and his fellow believers are on solid footing. Trump has bucked our conventions; his life is rife with percolating conflicts; Comey outrageously threw a wrench in the works with his meaningless, last-minute letter about Clinton’s email (which is now, quite rightly, being investigated); and the intelligence community has determined with high confidence that Russia interfered in our election in an effort to hurt Clinton and help Trump, their desired candidate.

Mr. Trump has made similar comments before. But the fact that he made them in a joint interview with two European publications — The Times of London and Bild, a German newspaper — and did so days before assuming the presidency alarmed European diplomats.

“They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia,”

Mr. Trump was critical of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, including airstrikes in Aleppo that American officials say have hit hospitals and killed civilians, saying it had led to a “terrible humanitarian situation.”

The "alt-right is having a falling out -- in some ways with their President-elect, but in perhaps even more instances with each other. And it comes on the eve of an alt-right inaugural celebration called the DeploraBall -- a play off of Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" campaign remark.

Every time we allowed ourselves to be even remotely optimistic, some new reminder arrived that we, an immature electorate, had elected a child.

In eight years in the White House there had been an uninterrupted stretch of calm and decency. In eight years there has been no scandal, not even a whiff of scandal, coming from the White House. That is a profoundly difficult thing to do, especially with the two houses of Congress in Republican hands and the president’s every move or hope met with biblical opposition.

For eight years we have been able to look to the White House and see a president who thinks and acts with cool deliberation, whose every sentence is well-considered. Anyone can disagree with President Obama’s policies but it cannot be denied that the first family acted with unerring decorum and amenity.

When Finnish Teachers Work in America’s Public Schools

Kristiina Chartouni, a veteran Finnish educator who began teaching American high-school students this autumn, said in an email. “I am supposedly doing what I love, but I don't recognize this profession as the one that I fell in love with in Finland.”

In Tennessee, Chartouni has encountered a different teaching environment from the one she was used to in her Nordic homeland—one in which she feels like she’s “under a microscope.”

This is a remarkable day in the history of our country. We have never over our centuries inaugurated a man like Donald Trump as president of the United States.

We’ve never had a major national leader as professionally unprepared, intellectually ill informed, morally compromised and temperamentally unfit as the man taking the oath on Friday.

Many Americans think their families and their neighborhoods are being denuded by the impersonal forces of globalization, finance and technology. All the Republican establishment could offer was abstract paeans to the free market. All the Democrats could offer was Hillary Clinton, the ultimate cautious, remote, calculating, gesellschaft thinker.

Spicer compares 'alternative facts' to getting different weather reports

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer defended the concept of "alternative facts" in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity Tuesday night and claimed that his statement about Donald Trump's inauguration audience had been twisted by the mainstream media.

One weather report comes out and says it's going to be cloudy and the next one says there's going to be light rain. No one lied to you.

Bana Alabed: Syrian tweeting girl pens letter to Trump

Bana Alabed, the seven-year-old Aleppo girl known worldwide for her tweets from Aleppo, has written an open letter to Donald Trump.

"You must do something for the children of Syria because they are like your children and deserve peace like you," she wrote.

What is interesting about the business world is that there are two kinds of reactions.

Corporate leaders are learning to live with Mr Trump (“normalising” him in the current jargon). It is partly necessity (his threats can do them damage) and partly genuine enthusiasm—he plans to cut both their personal and their corporate income taxes.

But there is a much greater suspicion among analysts, particularly among those who work for European banks. Indeed I can’t recall any other President being talked about in such a hostile tone.