Breaking news: Americans don’t like Congress! What, you were expecting something you hadn’t heard already? Well, how about this: Congress is apparently so bad now that even Senators and Congressmen hate Congress. That’s right, a recent article in POLITICO asserts that some of our illustrious public servants are ashamed of their low approval ratings, and have resulted to disguising their true identity while in public. “It’s so bad sometimes I tell people I’m a lawyer,” Senator Lindsey Graham is quoted. This, no doubt, raises a few questions:

So, the passing of October also marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of the USA Patriot Act. The measure was controversial and, as you no doubt recall, gave the government unprecedented authority to invade the privacy of citizens of the United States in the interest of “national security.” How’s that working out? If recent studies are accurate, then not so well, or at least not in the way the law was sold to the public at large.

OPINION Ah religion. What has long been considered a great unifier of men has also been a great divider. Merely mentioning faith, even in passing, can be enough to start disputes between the most mild-mannered individuals. So it is with great care that I delve into this story, which, like its title so plainly states, details a group of scholars [...]

Now this was unexpected. Ann Coulter, conservative agitator extraordinaire, has joined the advisory board of GOProud, an organization representing “gay conservatives.” Don’t just take my word for it…

Christine Lagarde took the reigns as Managing Director at the International Monetary Fund, and in
spite of protest from opposition (Oxfam, a global development group, went so far as to call her ascendance “farcical”) it seems that Director Lagarde is in the spot to stay.

Debt. The four letter word has been a focus of media attention in the past few weeks, and while the President and Congress
drag out the drama in Washington, very real consequences are being felt by the nation at large.

I’m sure by now many have heard of the Family Leader “Marriage Vow” and the controversy that has unsurprisingly gone with it. After presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann hopped on board with the pledge, public outcry erupted over passages included in the document (the full title of which is “The Marriage Vow—A Dependence Upon Marriage and Family”) that took a less-than-popular stance on slavery:

The June issue of National Geographic shines the spotlight on a disturbing practice: child marriage. Girls, some as young as 5 years old, are forced into wedlock in areas across the globe.

Monday, June 20, the Supreme Court halted a proposed class-action discrimination lawsuit against the nation’s largest retailer – Wal-Mart. The lawsuit, which may come to symbolize a turning point in job-bias cases, alleged that Wal-Mart engaged in a practice of discrimination against female employees.

‘Yes we can’, Michelle Obama addressed the crowd during a speech at the Regina Mundi church in Soweto, South Africa. That optimistic tone was a theme throughout her weeklong Africa trip, the second solo trip she has made as first lady. she made it clear that her mission is to provide positive reassurance, and highlight the successes made by Africans over the years. Indeed, providing inspiration, particularly to youth and women, was a primary goal of the trip, evidenced by the Young African Leader’s Forum, where the first lady implored the next generation to prepare themselves for the future, and take the reigns in determining what course the world will take next.