ELWOOD, Ill. — Vice President Joe Biden hailed America’s fighting men and women Monday as the “spine of this nation,” while President Barack Obama’s Land of Lincoln tribute in Illinois got washed out by a severe thunderstorm and high winds.

NEW ORLEANS — The best hope for stopping the flow of oil from the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has been compared to hitting a target the size of a dinner plate more than two miles into the earth, and is anything but a sure bet on the first attempt.

CHICAGO — Good friends, good food and the comforts of his own home. President Barack Obama enjoyed all three when he brought his family home to Chicago for a long Memorial Day holiday weekend. It was the first family’s first sleepover at their red-brick home in more than a year.

From the NY Times: MEMPHIS — For two decades, Tyrone Banks was one of many African-Americans who saw his economic prospects brightening in this Mississippi River city.

From the Chicago Sun-Times: An interesting “stand-off’’ of sorts developed outside a barbecue President Obama was attending at a friend’s house Saturday night between followers of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on one side and members of the press and the U.S. Secret Service guarding the president on the other.

BLANTYRE, Malawi — Malawi’s president on Saturday pardoned and ordered the release of a gay couple sentenced to 14 years in prison, but said that homosexuality remains illegal in this conservative southern African nation.

PHOENIX — U.S. Justice Department officials told Arizona’s attorney general and aides to the governor Friday that the federal government has serious reservations about the state’s new immigration law. They responded that a lawsuit against the state isn’t the answer.

COVINGTON, Louisiana — A risky procedure is failing to stop the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, and BP said Saturday it is considering scrapping it in favor of yet another method to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

From Yahoo News: Perhaps you saw news footage of President Obama in Grand Isle, La., on Friday and thought things didn’t look all that bad. Well, there may have been a reason for that: The town was evidently swarmed by an army of temp workers to spruce it up for the president and the national […]

Does the generation that elected our first Black president really know what to do with its new found “Black Power?” How should we use our “Power” to influence the world? WATCH: Washington Watch with Roland Martin – The New Black Power

As I listened to White House and BP officials describe the frantic search for an answer to cap the massive oil leak one mile below the Gulf Coast, all I could think about was the movie, “Apollo 13.” In the film starring Tom Hanks, some of the nation’s best and brightest working at NASA feverishly […]