In my CNN.com column last week, I wrote that the first thing a candidate running for office needs to know about Latino voters is that they value nothing more than respect.
You've probably read those articles about how, in the United States, minorities are becoming the majority. That's a polite way of describing what is really going on. Namely, that the U.S. population is becoming more Latino and less white. More than any other group, it is Latinos who are driving demographic changes.
It used to be that when Americans thought of Mexico, they imagined a festive getaway where margaritas flowed, mariachis played, and every day was Cinco de Mayo.
As evidenced by media stories and public awareness campaigns, Americans have resolved to get tough on bullying. In that spirit, it's time to send a message to bullies with badges.
With the Supreme Court poised this week to hear arguments in the legal challenge to Arizona's immigration law, it's a good time to explain what this law and the ruckus surrounding it are really about.
The case against Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman -- which has, for the last several weeks, been exhaustively tried in the court of public opinion -- is now headed where it belongs: to a court of law.
You may have heard that a group of Republicans in Congress -- including GOP rock star and possible vice presidential pick Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida -- are getting ready to introduce their version of the DREAM Act.You also may have heard that Democratic lawmakers and liberal advocacy groups despise the Republican alternative and derisively label it "DREAM Act Lite."
Over the years, Americans have become familiar with terms such as "white" and "Hispanic" and even -- on government forms -- the more specific "non-Hispanic white." Now, courtesy of the mainstream media, there is a new phrase to add to our national lexicon: "white Hispanic."
Julian Castro is not cooperating. The mayor of San Antonio knows full well what I want to talk about, and yet he is determined to change the subject to what he believes is a much more pressing story. Where I want to drag him, my friend refuses to go.
Now that Rick Santorum has scored victories in this week's Republican primary contests in Mississippi and Alabama --this after his earlier win in Tennessee and Newt Gingrich's victory in South Carolina -- it's time to confront three questions:
Now that we have Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina, on the Supreme Court, the esteemed body will soon find itself in the middle of a telenovela.
For me, the issue of skyrocketing gasoline prices came into focus about four years ago, when the national average that Americans paid at the pump reached an all-time high of $4.11 a gallon. Today, the average -- up 30 cents in the last four weeks, and 13 cents in the last week alone -- is about $3.70.
Condescension is never appetizing. Not even when it's wrapped around a chimichanga.
Karl Rove is obviously a smart guy. And yet, recently, the political strategist and former senior adviser in the George W. Bush administration did something that wasn't very smart. He picked a fight with Clint Eastwood.
Responding angrily to a campaign ad from Newt Gingrich accusing him of being anti-immigrant, Mitt Romney insisted during last week's Republican debate at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville that he has no problem with immigrants.
Who's afraid of a harmless course in Mexican-American studies?
Some elections are fueled by passion. Others are guided by a sense of urgency. This one seems to be driven by ambivalence.
I bet it sounded like a good idea at the time. Now, not so much.
Is the border between the United States and Mexico, as some claim, a war zone that calls out for heavy-duty military hardware? Or is it simply, as others insist, a gateway between two countries that are friends and neighbors?
When is wearing a T-shirt with the American flag on it considered provocative?
After all the bad laws and bad publicity, Arizona got some good news this week when Senate President Russell Pearce was toppled in a special election.
Marco Rubio is writing his life story. Now the only question is: Which life?
In the Republicans' Las Vegas show this week, the headliner turned out to be Mitt Romney.
Let's understand what all the fuss is about with the Obama administration's ill-conceived "Fast and Furious" operation -- or rather what it should be about. It's not about assigning blame, or playing "gotcha," or covering up mistakes. It's not about Republican critics forcing top administration officials to resign, or those officials spinning whatever fantastic narratives are necessary to avoid doing so. It's about who pays the price when government agencies make bad decisions.
Eulalia Barrientos spent the last four months in a detention cell in New Jersey. After being apprehended by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June, the illegal immigrant was just steps away from being deported back to her native Guatemala.
Could it be that the reason our government is broken is because of which generation is running things?
Billionaire Warren Buffett has been thinking about the inequities in the U.S. tax system at least since June 2007. I know this because, during PBS' Democratic presidential debate in which I served on a panel of journalists, I asked the eight Democrats, including Barack Obama, what they thought of comments Buffett had made about the unfairness of a tax system where his secretary paid a higher percentage of her income in taxes than he did.
When you refuse to acknowledge a group of people in all their nuances and complexities, or depict them as predictable and one-dimensional, or dictate for them a code of acceptable behavior, it is a blatant sign of disrespect.
Wednesday night's GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in Simi Valley, California, produced some strange happenings.
An emerging storyline about Republicans' presidential choices is that there aren't enough of them. At least that's what the media assure us with headlines like: "There's room for more GOP candidates."
How cruel can the Obama administration be to illegal immigrants, as well as to their families and supporters?
With Barack Obama, it has always been about race. And it probably always will be.
I hate to say it, but Americans might just need to "reboot" the millennial generation. This is the cohort of 50 million people now between 18 and 30, the children of baby boomers or older members of generation X. And as researchers and other experts have trained their attention on them, a profile has emerged: Speaking broadly, millennials are tech-savvy, highly educated and have incredibly high self-esteem even if they haven't done much to deserve it. (To be sure, not every millennial is college educated and exhibits all these traits; we're speaking broadly.)
It was something you don't see every day: the president of the United States being lectured by a group of self-declared illegal immigrants who were just out of puberty.
Let's face it. Most Americans couldn't care less about soccer. Until, that is, a group of foreign nationals who presumably live in this country boo the U.S. team, disrespect the national anthem, and wave the flag of the nation they left behind. Then we care a whole lot.
Where the debate over gun control intersects with concerns about border security, things are getting complicated for a political party that has painted itself into a corner with alarmist rhetoric and short-term thinking.
About once a month, I'll hear from an illegal immigrant who wants to go to Harvard.
When it comes to jobs, the hypocrisy of Republicans is working overtime.
As Anthony Weiner is about to find out: When you're a politician, not all lies are the same. There's a big difference between breaking a campaign promise by failing to deliver on something and breaking the public's trust with an outright falsehood.
Beltway pundits tell us that the main obstacle to Republican primary voters falling in love with undeclared presidential candidate Mitt Romney is that, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed into law a health care bill that resembles "ObamaCare."
In August 2005, as part of a public arts project, David Smith -- aka "The Human Cannonball" -- was fired out of a cannon across the border from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego. He was caught in a net 150 feet from the border, and he had his passport in hand just in case he had to show it to the U.S. Border Patrol.
For most people, war is a headline in a newspaper or a video on television. But when you live in this city, it's a fact of life.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is soft-spoken, low-key and restrained in his rhetoric. Now, would that be any way to run for president?
When a bill is too radical for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, well, that is saying something.
Given how toxic the GOP brand is to many Latinos, it's ironic that the first Republican presidential debate will be on Cinco de Mayo.
We don't know who will be the Republican nominee for president next year. But we do know who stands a good chance of being the Republican nominee for vice president: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Under our system, two things are crystal clear: Law enforcement agencies are required to treat children with more care than adults, and U.S. citizens have certain rights that are not to be abridged -- including the right to due process.
The United States is becoming an Hispanic country. And it's happening much faster than anyone expected.
A lot of Americans don't like illegal immigration. But what they like even less is the idea of having to live without the labor provided by illegal immigrants.
What if, as Americans, everything we thought we knew about the politics of border security were wrong?
Who would have thought it? Wisconsin is the San Diego of the Midwest.
It was a monstrous act, the sort of thing to which even a word like "evil" scarcely does justice.
What's Arabic for: "Spineless school administrators who teach all the wrong lessons by caving in to fear, hysteria and prejudice?"
Members of Congress recently gathered on the steps of the Capitol to observe a moment of silence in honor of their wounded colleague, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, as well as the six people who were killed and 13 who were wounded in last week's shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona.
The kickoff of a new year -- and, for that matter, a new decade -- is a good time to look down the road and make a pact with ourselves about the kind of people we want to be and what we're willing to do to get there. These aren't just goals, but resolutions.
In a cute movie called "Bedazzled," Brendan Fraser plays a heartsick young man trying to woo the girl of his dreams, and Elizabeth Hurley plays a fetching variation of Satan who offers to help him for the usual going rate of one soul.
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