Tim Einenkel

The Senate voted yesterday to overhaul transportation programs and keep aid flowing to thousands of construction projects while strengthening highway and auto safety. Todd Zwillich gives the nuts and bolts of the transportation bill and explains the politics behind its delay.  

In poet Kevin Young's new book, "The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness," Young offers a remarkable, encyclopedic essay on the history of African-American culture. Young explores how African-American culture and American culture have affected one another. The book, part prose and part essay, also explores how African-American culture has become an essential and inextricable part of American culture.

Common rose to fame as a rapper in the 1990s, and his childhood and teenage years clearly influenced his music. He's also found success as an actor, and now as a writer — his new memoir, "One Day It'll All Make Sense," which shares the title of his 1997 album, came out yesterday.

With the deadline quickly approaching for Congress to make a decision on whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, President Obama warned that failing to come to a negotiation could significantly impact the nation's economy and investors' confidence in the United States. Beyond that, some experts say Congress's slowness in developing a plan to face the debt crisis may be symbolic of something more—namely that America is in denial over the gravity of its debt problem. 

About two weeks from now, the State Department will randomly draw 50,000 names from the fifteen million entries for U.S. visas, as part of the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. The Diversity Visa program garnered attention recently, after news that a computer glitch invalidated a drawing in early May, obligating the State Department to nullify 22,000 visas it had previously awarded. 

After many months of speculation and political pressure, President Obama laid out his plans for U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan last night. His plans signal a shift in strategy, with Obama pulling troops out of Afghanistan at a faster pace than top military generals had initially recommended. Some senior officials have said on the record that rapid troop withdrawal will make it difficult for the remaining American forces in Afghanistan to complete their mission. 

This morning, reports have surfaced linking Bin Laden's death to intelligence gathered at the notorious Guantanamo Bay holding facility in Cuba. If keeping prisoners detained has resulted in the death of America's most-wanted tourist, what does that mean for how we'll treat prisoners in the future? We speak about this with Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan.

For years, the CIA hunted Bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Michael Hurley, senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission and a former CIA officer who served in Afghanistan after 9/11, helped lead the search. He speaks with us about the significance of Osama Bin Laden's death. 

The military carried out the attack on Osama Bin Laden, which resulted in his death late last night. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense and defense analyst at the Center for American Progess Larry Korb speaks with us about how the military carried out this operation. 

President Obama gave a statement last night, with little advance warning, on the dramatic U.S. attack on Osama Bin Laden. His statement confirmed rumors that had been swirling around Twitter and elsewhere for hours beforehand. 

Hip hop is filled with young artists who appear to live the Horatio Alger dream, ascending from impoverished urban neighborhoods to international fame and wealth.

But few of them have transformed themselves so often, and remained popular for so long, as Ice-T. An orphan turned family man and thief turned superstar, he famously went from singing about killing cops to playing a cop on the long-running and popular series “Law and Order SVU.”  He chronicles his rise from poverty to fame in “ICE: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption — From South Central to Hollywood.”