Thanks to pitch-perfect performances by Jeffrey Wright and Adrien Brody, the flawed story of Chess Records somehow manages to sing.

People think of George Bush as being the first evangelical president. But Barack Obama may bring his own evangelical flair to Washington. For all the significant changes Obama is expected to usher in, religion may be one that some people didn't see coming.

A recent article on The Root argued against prosecuting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes. But peace and commerce in relatively stable Southern Sudan is no reason to turn away from genocide in Darfur.

A recent article on The Root argued against prosecuting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes. But peace and commerce in relatively stable Southern Sudan is no reason to turn away from genocide in Darfur.

Powell's endorsement repudiates both Bush and McCain and could drive undecideds into the Obama column.

The importance of Dunham in Obama's life has been the stuff of many of his campaign rallies. It's common knowledge that after attending schools in Jakarta, Indonesia, until he was 10 years old, Obama moved back to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, starting in the fifth grade and lasting until he graduated from high school. Obama has often credited Madelyn Dunham with giving him much of the motivation and the drive he needed to succeed—to in effect become the man he has become. "She poured everything she had into me," he said at the Democratic National Convention in August.

The campaign announced on Monday that Obama would be taking time away from the campaign this week to fly to Hawaii to attend to the health of his maternal grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, said to be gravely ill as a result of a broken hip and other health problems, the nature of which are none of your business or mine. Obama is expected to return to the campaign full-time on Saturday, somewhere in the western United States.