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The House and Senate have passed different versions of the agriculture spending bill for 2012, and a conference committee of key lawmakers is now working to iron out the differences and pass a final bill in the coming days. One key issue to be decided is whether Congress will potentially add millions of tax dollars in new spending to allow foreign-owned horse slaughter plants to re-open on American soil.
Every year since 2005, the agriculture appropriations bill has included a provision de-funding U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections at horse slaughter plants, which ensured the permanent closure of the last remaining equine abattoirs in Illinois and Texas and has prevented other cruel horse slaughter plants from opening around the country. This year, the bill passed by the House retained that language — thanks to a successful amendment offered by

Each stroke of the airbrush contributes to turning the term ‘natural beauty’ into an oxymoron. While the word ‘natural’ seems to denote purity — people sans makeup or other forms of visual enhancement — the phrase now commonly includes “barely there” makeup and airbrushing. But when does retouching become too much? If you airbrush the divots and bruises on a picture of a potato, could you still identify it?
Extensive airbrushing and cropping involved in the photo-editing process even leads to the occasional ghastly accident: the mysterious hand grasping AnnaLynne McCord’s shoulder as she ostensibly strolled the beach in solitude; L’Oreal elongating Penelope Cruz’s neck to resemble that of an ostrich’s to promote skin care products in 2009.
Clearly, resembling disproportionate and feckless birds naturally seems undesirable, yet many aspire to look like models in other advertisements that are just as edited and just as

In 2001, a quirky romantic comedy called Kissing Jessica Stein debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival to a unanimously positive response. In 2002, it was released to rave reviews from critics. Everyone seemed to love the movie about the Jewish girl, tired of her unlucky bad blind dates with men, who decides to try dating a free-spirited woman. The film brought great attention to its talented unknown star and co-writer Jennifer

It is ironic how those loyal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have created a narrative of a success story of Netanyahu’s achievements where failure is clearly rampant. They point to the solidity of the governing coalition, the halting of the Gaza flotillas, the failure of the Palestinian UN gambit, the release of Gilad Shalit, the expansion of settlements and the standing ovation from Congress, all while defiantly opposing any of the peacemaking moves proposed by President Obama.
For Netanyahu’s supporters this is success when in fact the precise opposite is true. Israel is more isolated in the international community than ever before, its relations with allies have been frayed, it faces unprecedented threats from Iran and its proxies, and an uncertain regional security environment has emerged in full

At 6-foot-9, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange would have towered over the diminutive George Wallace, the state’s segregationist governor during the violent days of the civil rights movement.
But lately, the attorney general has been looking equally small.
When Wallace stood in the “schoolhouse door” to stop African-American students from enrolling in the University of Alabama, it was all for show. In a carefully choreographed scene, Wallace stepped aside when confronted by Deputy U.S. Attorney Nicholas Katzenbach and the National Guard.
Wallace’s infamous obstructionism that day in 1963 was nothing more than a symbolic gesture to satisfy the state’s segregationist voters. With Strange, we can only hope that his position is similar political posturing.
The issue today is Strange’s reaction to a request by the

The NYPD seems to have taken payback to a new level. The department appears to have retaliated against the brother of a deputy chief who earlier this year embarrassed a high-profile civilian deputy commissioner.
Last March, Deputy Chief James Shea, who headed the NYPD part of the Joint [NYPD-FBI]Terrorism Task Force, refused a possibly unlawful order by Deputy Commissioner of Counter-Terrorism Richard Daddario to remove classified FBI documents from the Bureau’s New York headquarters.
Daddario’s order to Shea occurred around the same time that Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence David Cohen ordered Inspector John Nicholson, the department’s number two man at the JTTF, to remove classified FBI documents concerning the killing of Osama bin

As our children were growing up, we all stumbled upon spontaneous “teachable moments,” and those opportunities don’t stop because our children are now adults. In their personal and professional lives, they encounter situations that calibrate on the doing-the-right-thing scale from legally correct to being a good person. Often they make those decisions on their own; sometimes they ask our opinion.
The Penn State scandal brings a teachable moment for both our children and us as parents. According to press reports, in 2002 graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed a former coach raping a young boy in the Penn State locker

What will the 2012 presidential election look like? Extremely close. And extremely frustrating. Voters will be forced to choose between fear of the unknown and fear of the known. The known? President Obama’s inability to turn the economy

Some dishes feature spices, bold or subtle, that together create nuanced flavor profiles. Forget them. This is about the dark side of spices.
Related: 52 Best Sandwiches of 2011
This is about the spiteful, mouth-on-fire, writhing-in-agony stomach pains that accompany eating dishes whose capsaicin levels are far above anything the average person should be consuming — if they’re smart that is. This is about looking for trouble, seeking pain, and testing your mettle.
Related: 44 Things You Can Do to Fight Hunger in America
This is about searching out the 10 spiciest meals in America — a list of dishes that the eater seeks out for business, not

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It may seem odd to quote Edmund Burke — a father of modern conservatism and classic liberalism — here in Huffington Post, but with some issues, political distinctions seem meaningless. It’s taken me a few days to begin to make any sense whatsoever of the disturbing and disgraceful story still unfolding at Penn State. Yet this much seems clear: what we are seeing at long last is another tragic example of the human cost of silence in the face of evil. In my life, the absence of silence is often

Four years ago, during a talk I was giving on Katharine Hepburn, to celebrate the publication of my book How to Hepburn, a woman raised her hand and asked, “But I heard Hepburn wasn’t a very nice person, especially as she got older.” Two years later, at my reading from The Gospel According to Coco Chanel after all the questions about Chanel’s greatest contribution to fashion, and whether or not she was really a Nazi spy, someone asked “but, wasn’t Chanel sort of a bitch?” I just published the third in my kick ass women trilogy — How Georgia Became O’Keeffe — and it’s only a matter of time before someone wants to know whether it’s true that O’Keeffe’s nickname was the A-hole of Abiquiu.
The questions are always asked by women. Even though there are men in the audience, men don’t seem to care much whether these legendary 20th century women were still, in the face of their staggering achievements, nice. Men are ahead of the game: they know that being thought of as a “nice guy” is tantamount to being thought of as a pushover, a

In the early 90′s I fell in love with Steve Jobs’ new NeXT computer. I had used a Macintosh since I was 19 but after Jobs was kicked out of Apple I gravitated to his new invention, which blew the Mac away. As Rabbi at Oxford, I regularly hosted world leaders to lecture to our students and I had to have Jobs. So I arranged a meeting with one of his top lieutenants and traveled to Redwood City,

While the federal government’s ideological conflicts have stalled many efforts to achieve environmental sustainability, here in New York the grownups running our state and city environmental agencies have managed to continue to make progress. Recently the state and city signed a draft agreement allowing the city to begin implementing its green infrastructure approach to reducing water pollution into the city’s hundreds of miles of waterfront. Hopefully, the federal government will allow them to implement this agreement.
Water quality in the New York Harbor, the Long Island Sound and the Hudson and East Rivers has improved dramatically in recent decades thanks to the success of national, state and local-level policies and regulations. These days there is a wonderful new bike/jogging path that brings you right next to the Hudson River, something unimaginable before the river’s

Sometimes when you are serving a big heavy meal, say, at Thanksgiving or Christmas, you need an appetizer that will satisfy people’s hunger without filling them up, ruining their appetite, or taking up precious calorie allotments they’re saving for things like Rita’s Sausage Stuffing and gravy. Seriously, one must leave room for these things. This simple appetizer is another one learned from my in-laws, the Cinquinos, and is something my father-in law’s mother from Abruzzi used to make. Nothing could be easier, and I promise there will be none left and no regrets.
Ingredients:
Bulbs of organic fennel
Good olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Directions:
You can do this two ways: One with the olive oil, salt, and pepper drizzled over cut-up fennel; the other with the fennel cut up with the olive oil mixture in a bowl for

The question on everyone’s mind since the news broke of the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State, and the ensuing firing and arrests of men heralded as leaders of a community and university for decades is, “How could they?” How could a man commit such terrible crimes? How could the witness not intervene? And how could men, respected men, with knowledge of these acts, not respond more aggressively, not make the safety and health of a child more valued than anything else?
The answer to these questions, according to decades of social science research, is simple. Our norms of masculinity — what we teach our boys and men about what it means to be male — is the primary reason why men disconnect from their own humanity and commit such acts of violence and betrayal.
The lone cowboy — the cultural icon of masculinity in America — suggests that “real men” should be emotionally stoic and independent; they should not need or rely on others; and they should, under no circumstances, cry. We repeat these expectations in our advertisements, books, movies and television

Find me a few stars of stage, screen and song with the principle and courage that Frank Sinatra showed when he stood up for his brother Sammy Davis Jr. in the 1950′s and you can change the world and help end this cold season of hardship and discontent.
At defining moments in American history, from the Great Depression to the Second World War, from the civil rights movement to the Kennedy years, the literary and entertainment worlds have played a powerful role at the vanguard of great events. We are at such a moment today. Imagine (see below) if the stars of the remake of Ocean’s Eleven would rally behind great causes today the same way the stars of the original Ocean’s were early combatants for civil rights that made possible the Kennedy

This is the “pilgrimage season” in Bodhgaya. Under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, on the west side of the Mahabodhi temple, a stream of people passes in silent contemplation. The great temple they are circumambulating dates from the Gupta dynasty (fifth to sixth century), the golden age of India, whose art and architecture it splendidly embodies. The setting is a large mandala-garden, laid out around the 150-foot tall tower, which has four smaller towers in the same style.
The pilgrims represent a diversity of ancient cultures, branches of the great tree of Buddhism that has enriched so many distinctive bio-geographical regions of

It was the longest time I’ve ever been without power. And curiously, I wasn’t in some remote town in South America, but in New York!
During the recent record-breaking October snowstorm, I spent four days in the dark. And when I say ‘in the dark’ I don’t just mean with no electricity, heat, hot water or functioning stove. The power outage that affected over three million people in the Northeast reminded me of the fragility of the human mind when people lack basic

All November, Meatless Monday focuses on things good and things meatless, the things that make our lives worthwhile and worth saying, “thanks.” Today, a big thanks to organic farmers.
During this summer’s drought, Brenton Johnson’s well ran dry. Then two weeks ago, he got hit with a sudden freeze. “Basil, eggplant, mint, sweet potatoes, green beans, even our fall potatoes — all that stuff, totally dead.” And yet the owner of Johnson’s Backyard Garden
in Austin, TX feels “really, really fortunate.” Clearly, the man is certifiable — certifiably organic.
Johnson and his crew grow organic produce for over a thousand community shared agriculture members on the 200 acres he converted from a historic dairy

Our raft bounced on the big waves coming at us from all directions as we squeezed through the narrow neck of the canyon. The crest of one wave lifted us while I leaned over and tried to dig my paddle into the water. As we crashed down into the trough between the waves, I stared at the next one poised in front of me like a wall of water several feet high. I shouted in exhilaration as I braced for the deluge, then sputtered as the wave slapped me in the

A repeated theme and concern of immigration violators is whether they may now or at any time in the future return to the U.S. in lawful status. Like many legal questions, the answer is, “It depends.”
The solution lies in the status in which a person seeks to return (as a nonimmigrant or immigrant) and the nature or length of prior violation(s). The rules are different for those seeking to return as visitors or as legal

A couple of weeks ago, I convinced my family to drive to the White Mountains and hike up to Lonesome Lake hut on the Appalachian Mountain Club trail. Our plan was to sleep at the hut and do some day hikes, maybe see a moose and the last of the autumn foliage.
“Won’t you be cold?” my mother asked.
“It’ll be great,” I assured her. “How cold can it get in October?”
Pretty cold, as it turns out. We hiked through freezing rain, hail, and even snow at the highest

One of the substantial changes in the arts environment that has happened with astonishing speed is that arts criticism has become a participatory activity rather than a spectator sport.
Every artist, producer or arts organization used to wait for a handful of reviews to determine the critical response to a particular project. And while a very few critics for a small set of news outlets still wield great power to make or break a project (usually a for-profit theater project which runs longer and therefore needs to sell far more tickets than any other arts project), a larger portion of arts projects have become somewhat immune to the opinions of any one journalist.
This has happened for three reasons.
First, far fewer people are getting their news from print media. There is a reason the newspaper industry is in

I have some very exciting news: This week I was honored with the “Oscar” of travel writing — the Society of American Travel Writers’ Travel Writer of the Year Award. In addition to this grand prize, my on-the-road blog posts won the gold medal for Best Travel Blog. Since I have so much fun sharing my travels with you — and the judges singled out your thoughtful comments as one of the strengths of this blog — this award means a great deal to me.
In celebration, I’d like to take some of my favorite posts out for a victory lap. Beginning Monday, I will run a “Best of Blog” series for one