No, Pope Francis Is Not the LGBT Person of the Year
The Advocate magazine put Pope Francis on its cover, proclaiming him the Person of the Year, offering a myriad of reasons why it passed up others, such as Edie Windsor. The best thing about this is...
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Letter From Cairo: Arab Winter and Revolutionary Regrets
CAIRO, Egypt -- It was on a lunch break during a tour of the ancient city of Memphis, under the shadows of Egypt's ancient pyramids that Tarek, a tour guide, became emotional. "Before the revolution,"...
View ArticleHundreds of Immigrants Are Wrongfully Detained Inside the Inhumane El Paso...
When I interrupted the president's speech to ask him to stop separating our immigrant families, Santiago Garcia-Leco was in his second week of custody at the El Paso Detention Center. He turned himself...
View Article9 Objectives that Obama Must to Accomplish in His Final Three Years
In the final three years of Obama's second presidency, getting America back on its feet is his target and if he can pull it off, it would solidify his place in history as an icon and one of the...
View ArticleUnder Amazon's CIA Cloud: The Washington Post
News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the...
View ArticleWhich Iran Will We Choose?
The historic interim agreement between the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) and Iran over its nuclear dispute is not just about enrichment, centrifuges and breakout...
View Article5 Reasons Being an Orthodox Rabbi Compelled Me to Support Gay Marriage
I am coming out of the closet. I am an Orthodox rabbi and an advocate for gay marriage. The history of the theological issue is complicated, but the moral issue is increasingly clear. Faith leaders...
View ArticleKim the Third
Several years before William Shakespeare wrote his first play, England was rocked by a bloody political scandal. Queen Elizabeth, the virgin monarch who had been on the throne for nearly three decades,...
View ArticleCan the U.S. Stop Itself from Widespread Surveillance?
On Monday U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that the NSA surveillance program was unconstitutional. The gist of his ruling is that collecting data on the telephone calls of every American...
View ArticleThe Budget Passed: How Military Families Can Take the High Road
Sitting around the sleek stainless steel table at a swanky San Francisco restaurant, a group of friends -- all well-educated folks -- wound up discussing a rather touchy subject. One of the diners, a...
View ArticleIt's Time to Investigate Pearson in Texas, Too
Thanks to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the charitable arm of testing giant Pearson will pay $7.7 million to end his investigation into whether it was illegally helping its for-profit...
View Article27,000 May Die Next Year Because Republican Governors, Lawmakers Refuse to...
A majority of Republican governors and state legislators, driven by relentless political opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), have rejected billions in federal funding, denied millions needed...
View ArticleAmerican Versailles
I first saw Washington, D.C. in 1974. I was astonished with the Greek vision of architecture on Capitol Hill. I could not get over my admiration for the beauty of the congressional buildings, the...
View ArticleMy Story Proves the Personal Is Political
This story was written and performed for Oral Fixation (An Obsession with True Life Tales) at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Texas on October 28, 2013. At a girls' night out in Los...
View ArticleWhat Went Wrong With the Promises of the Barack Obama Presidency
When Barack Obama and Michelle walked down the street in Washington after his inauguration in 2009, waving to the jubilant crowds, he really did represent hope and change for America. He brought to a...
View ArticleWe Won't Take No for An Answer, Mr. President
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/deportations-drop_n_4467617.htmlAs leaders with United We Dream and GetEQUAL, respectively, we know that the movement for justice for the LGBTQ community and...
View ArticleKufr Yuba Journal: A Jordanian Village, a School and the Syrian Refugee Crisis
A few days before Storm Alexa swept across Jordan, covering our cities, towns and villages with a gelid white blanket, I visited a Mine Risk Education football project at Khadija Um Al Mumineen School...
View ArticleFarewell to Health Care for America Now
Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the grassroots campaign that powered passage of the Affordable Care Act, is about to close its doors, as planned when the campaign started. But the images it...
View ArticleThe Meaning of a Decent Society
It's the season to show concern for the less fortunate among us. We should also be concerned about the widening gap between the most fortunate and everyone else. Although it's still possible to win the...
View ArticlePope Francis and the End of the Religious Right?
There he goes again! First, the pesky Pope Francis announced a return to a degree of humility and simplicity in the papacy -- no more ruby-red slippers of the sort fancied by his predecessor Pope...
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