Achy Obejas

Assata Shakur

Last week, on the 40th anniversary of her arrest, the FBI suddenly put Assata Shakur, aka Joanne Chesimard, on the Ten Most Wanted Terrorists List. She is the first woman to reach such criminal heights. The reward for her capture has been doubled to $2 million.

But that move might say less about Shakur’s alleged crimes than about President Barack Obama. His willingness to use a black woman—a black woman whose political roots date back to a time when official U.S. government policy was to destroy the black liberation movement—to play this kind of politics is soulless.

Because have no doubt whatsoever: putting Shakur—who is at worst a cop killer—on that list has less to do with her and any recent activities to justify her promotion to terrorist status than it does with helping to make an argument to keep Cuba on the terrorist nations list, an appointment that reflects political game-playing more than reality.

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Miguel Guevara, 73, a Chávez loyalist, stands in his home in Caracas next to an election poster for Chávez’s chosen succesor, Nicolás Maduro. (Leo Ramirez/AFP/Getty Images)

The most important number to come out of April’s disputed Venezuelan election is not Nicolás Maduro’s margin of victory (1.5 or 1.8 percent, depending on who you ask). Forget, too, the3,200 electoral irregularities alleged by opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.

The figure that should be weighing on everyone is 645,000—the number of voters, roughly, who switched sides, giving their vote to Hugo Chávez in October 2012 and then choosing Capriles in April instead of Maduro, Chávez’s chosen political heir.

And to be clear: That number, 645,000, comes not from Capriles, or from the State Department or the European Union, but from Venezuela’s own National Electoral Council (CNE), which resolutely proclaimed Maduro the winner over Capriles. In other words, Venezuela’s own Chavista-controlled and highly partisan electoral board acknowledges the Socialist Party coalition lost more than a half million votes in a mere six months.

Why the big switch?

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Tim Tebow: I’m Christian.
Media: Keep it to yourself!
Jason Collins: I’m gay.
Media: This man’s a hero!

Oh, the self-pity, the false equivalency!

Both men became free agents in their respective sports recently, both making news, but that’s about where the similarity in their situations begin and end.

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In this April 17, 2013 file photo, Washington Wizards center Jason Collins, right, battles for a rebound against Chicago Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich. Collins is the first male professional athlete in the major four American sports leagues to come out as gay.

When I was in 20s, my queer friends and I had a phone tree. One of the most fun excuses to call was when a gay character would pop on TV. These were like rare birds or comets. There was a certain delight in seeing them, even when they were terribly written or acted, or when their ultimate effect was negative. For us, who rarely saw ourselves reflected in the flickering light of media ordinariness, seeing another member of our species in almost any circumstance was an affirmation that we existed, that we were, in fact, everywhere, however covertly.

I was thinking about those times again after reading Jason Collins’ moving coming out storyin Sports Illustrated. We live at a time when queer people have never been more ubiquitous in media and out in the world. However unequal we may in fact be, we’ve never been more equal. But Collins’ description of life in the NBA closet harkened back to a darker and lonelier time, a time when the stakes of being found out could be life-altering and devastating.

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Sequester cuts caused travel delays at airports across the country before Friday’s congressional votes.

Not that Democrats have ever been particularly good negotiators, but it’s possible President Barack Obama’s namby pamby adjudicating may have rubbed off on them, to bad effect.

Just last Friday, finally given a chance to show their courage in the sequester battle, the Democrats blinked — hard. by agreeing to a bill that allows the Federal Aviation Administration to bypass, at least for now, sequester-mandated cuts, the Democrats actually agreed to a strategy that basically hands the budget battle victory to the Republicans.

Do you remember the sequester? It was supposed to be so damn bad both sides in Washington were going to be forced back to the negotiating table, bipartisanship would have no choice but to emerge from the bitter pill of automatic cuts to the federal budget, without regard to need or politics: Head Start, the military — every favorite program was going to be guillotined.

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Immigration reform activists hold a sign in front of Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013.

Who would have thought that Donald Trump could be right about anything?

I’m referring to Trump’s speech last March to a half-empty room at the Conservative Political Pac Conference, when he railed against immigration reform while several other GOP bigwigs struggled with trying to bring the Republicans along on the issue.

But The Donald, in characteristic slash-and-burn style, railed with a warning about a path to citizenship – and not just the moral meaning of it, the way former Sen. Jim DeMint, who now heads the Heritage Foundation did, or based on national security concerns, however faux, like Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has posited.

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(AP/File)Ted Cruz may end up being a determining factor on immigration reform.

The Boston bombing is casting a long shadow over the immigration bill penned by the bipartisan Gang of Eight, but that — the idea that border procedures need to be tightened to keep out the likes of the immigrant bombers (who were 8 and 15 when they arrived here) — is the least of the bill’s problems.

The first is that the only political team that needs this bill is the GOP. And because the Republicans have such a nasty recent history on immigration (self-deportation, anyone?) and are so split on the issue, the Democrats don’t really have to do much of anything to benefit. When it comes to the largest voter bloc invested in the immigration bill — Latinos — there are so many other issues that push them away from the GOP (the umpteenth attempt to repeal Obamacare, positions on education and taxes), that Democrats can just stand by and whistle. If the bill passes, it will be a victory for them and the crossover Republicans, but if it dies, it’ll be the Republicans’ fault. So no need to break a sweat.

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