Sacramento Observer
NATIONWIDE – Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits dropped last week by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 350,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell to a nearly five-year low of 356,750. Still, many state unemployment offices were closed Monday and Tuesday because of the winter holiday and could not [...]
WASHINGTON – For years, voices have cried in the urban wilderness: We need to talk about gun control. Yet the guns blazed on. It took a small-town slaughter for gun control to become a political priority. Now, decades’ worth of big-city arguments against easy access to guns are finally being heard, because an unstable young [...]
WASHINGTON – In the late 1960s, Black revolutionary H. Rap Brown, now known as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, was often quoted as saying violence is “as American as cherry pie.” More than 40 years after the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) firebrand made that pronouncement, the numbers supports his assertion. According to the Brady Campaign to [...]
NEW YORK — President Barack Obama has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2012. “We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” Time Editor Rick Stengel told NBC’s “Today” show, where he announced [...]
WASHINGTON — Democrats say meaningful action in the wake of the school shootings in Connecticut must include a ban on military-style assault weapons and a look at how the nation deals with individuals suffering from serious mental illness. Several Democratic lawmakers and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman said it was time to take a deeper look [...]
NEWTOWN — A man killed his mother at their home and then opened fire Friday inside an elementary school, massacring 26 people, including 20 children, as youngsters cowered in fear to the sound of gunshots reverberating through the building and screams echoing over the intercom. The 20-year-old killer, carrying at least two handguns, committed suicide [...]
WASHINGTON – White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2043, according to new census projections. That’s part of a historic shift that already is reshaping the nation’s schools, workforce and electorate, and is redefining long-held notions of race. The official projection, released Wednesday by the Census Bureau, now places the [...]
ATLANTA – Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said Tuesday he supports gay marriage as a “fundamental right,” taking an emphatic stand on the issue months after President Barack Obama declared that same-sex couples should be allowed to wed. When Obama came out in support of gay marriage in May, Reed said he was still “wrestling” with [...]
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court is taking a potentially historic look at same-sex marriage by agreeing to hear two cases that challenge governments’ different treatment of gay Americans. The focus in one case is California’s constitutional amendment that forbids same-sex marriage. The other case deals with a federal law that denies to those who [...]
WASHINGTON — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. That’s because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges. The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm [...]
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