http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-05/obama-photographer-pete-souzas-best-pictures/7570382

White House photographer Pete Souza is estimated to have taken over two million pictures of US President Barack Obama during his time in office. As the President's tenure approaches its end, take a look back at some of the most striking images Souza has shot over the past eight years.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2016/09/15/woman-files-5m-suit-after-jail-reassigns-her-gender-to-male-puts-her-in-all/



When Fiordaliza Pichardo, an attorney and city councilwoman from Bonao in the Dominican Republic, was detained at the Miami International Airport en route to see the birth of her first grandson on an old New York warrant, she never imagined she would end up in a Miami jail for 10 hours surrounded by at least 40 male inmates.

On Thursday Pichardo’s attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against the Miami-Dade Corrections Department seeking $5 million in damages and an effort to repair her reputation.

Despite the fact that Pichardo, 50, has been married to her husband for 32 years, has three children, and is also a grandmother, a nurse employed by Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, examined her and determined that she exhibited “non-traditional male characteristics and male reproductive organs,” and placed Pichardo in an all-male jail cell.

According to the suit, as a correctional officer was placing her in the cell, he said to her in Spanish, “Suerte si te veo viva manaña.” (You’ll be lucky if I see you alive tomorrow.”)

http://mainebeacon.com/gov-lepage-the-enemy-is-people-of-color/



In a press conference meant to address a series of racist and violent comments he has made over the last two days, Maine Governor Paul LePage again attempted to justify his remarks about categorizing alleged drug dealers by race, arguing that doing so was an appropriate way to “identify the enemy.”

“The enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin,” said LePage.

It’s not clear how LePage believes that his anecdotal, race-based scrap-booking is helpful in addressing the underlying issue of opiod trafficking and abuse.

LePage made a series of false statements during the interview, which Press Herald reporter Scott Thistle broadcast live on Facebook, including that his voicemail to Rep. Drew Gattine was meant as a private communication. During his call, LePage said he hoped Gattine would record his obscenity-laced rant and share it publicly.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/rise-irreligion-gops-real-demographic-crisis

In the past several years, many trees have been felled and pixels electrocuted in the service of discussion about the impact of Hispanics on the American electorate. No one knows for sure which way they’ll vote in the future but everyone is interested in discussing it. Curiously, though, an even larger political shift is taking place yet receiving almost no attention whatsoever from political reporters — the emergence of post-Christian America.

Judging solely from the rhetoric and actions of the candidates who sought the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this year, you would be hard-pressed to tell much difference between 2016 and 1996, the year that the Christian Coalition was ruling the roost in GOP politics. Sure there was a lot more talk about the Middle East than before, but when it comes to public displays of religiosity, many of the would-be presidents have spent the majority of their candidacies effectively auditioning for slots on the Trinity Broadcast Network.

Even Donald Trump, the thrice-married casino magnate turned television host, went about reincarnating himself as a devout Christian, despite his evident lack of familiarity with the doctrines and practices of the faith.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, both of whom won Iowa in past years, dropped out after failing dismally in the Hawkeye State’s caucuses. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal quit months before even a single vote had been cast. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, despite being significantly better financed and supported by more conservative leaders than previous Christian nationalist candidates, was barely able to win any primary states at all; his main strength was in caucus states where popular appeal wasn’t as important.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-latinos-20160820-snap-story.html

He has said that Democrats take black voters for granted and have ignored their needs while governing cities with large African American populations.

“America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future,” Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said of his Democratic opponent at a rally in Michigan on Friday.

After waging a yearlong campaign marked by divisive and racially coded rhetoric, the Republican nominee reached out to African Americans several times last week.

He insisted at rallies in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan that he would do a better job than Clinton at creating jobs and improving schools for black families.

In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won 6% of the black vote, according to exit poll data. Trump is seeing single-digit support among African Americans in most polls. In some states the billionaire businessman is polling at 0%.

Clinton’s campaign responded to Trump’s outreach by pointing out that he had been sued for housing discrimination and was a prime figure in questioning whether President Obama, the nation’s first black president, was born in the country.

“Donald Trump asks what the African American community has to lose by voting for him,” Marlon Marshall, Clinton’s director of state campaigns and political engagement, said in a statement. “The answer is everything from a man who questions the citizenship of the first African American president, courts white supremacists, and has been sued for housing discrimination against communities of color.”