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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes he is coming to a very different Washington this week. From his perspective, past visits have all been marred by that “pesky” Palestinian issue. On one occasion he was pressed to recognize the need for a “two-state” solution. Then he was chided about his settlement expansion

Dear Rush,
From one talk radio host to another, thank you so much for your recent attack on Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law Student who testified before Congress in favor of a policy that would include birth control as part of health care coverage. You called her a slut. You meant to insult Sandra. But because you called her a slut for exercising her right to speak up and demand birth control, you have stripped the word of its traditional, cruel

There is no doubt that the TED conference is remarkable place. But the simple fact is – most of the people who are on the stage, or in the audience are people who’ve built remarkable things. Scientists, Artists, Authors – the top of their field.
So – the first time that I went to TED I wondered, what was an entrepreneur doing in a room of accomplished individuals, and perhaps most importantly what would I be able to gain from being there. As it turned out – a

I’m divorced, as is 50 percent of the population. While going through my divorce, I read voraciously and swapped stories with other divorcees in an attempt to find insight into the pain that I couldn’t make sense of. Post-divorce, some women were brokenhearted, some celebrated their newfound freedom and some were happily remarried. But in all of my experiences, I never found someone who shared my perspective on divorce: Although I was the one who decided to leave, I still found myself completely devastated and filled with regret — my entire world turned

There are different periods of our lives that serve as a wake-up call or teach us serious lessons. My mom’s sudden passing was one of those for me. Here are some observations I took away from my mom’s funeral as well as this whole experience.
Life is not a dress rehearsal. Don’t put off what you can do today till tomorrow, as you never know how many tomorrows you really have.
I’m a big believer in creating magic moments for others, and I’m so glad I flew up to New York just two weeks ago to surprise my Mom on her 70th

A message from Georgetown President John J. DeGioia on civility and public discourse, in light of recent comments about Georgetown law student,Sandra Fluke
Dear Members of the Georgetown Community:
There is a legitimate question of public policy before our nation today. In the effort to address the problem of the nearly fifty million Americans who lack health insurance, our lawmakers enacted legislation that seeks to increase access to health care. In recent weeks, a question regarding the breadth of services that will be covered has focused significant public attention on the issue of contraceptive

Welcome to the 200th Friday Talking Points column!
Because of this momentous occasion, we are going to present a special column today which takes a look backwards at this column’s history. Because of this, the normal weekly Friday Talking Points and the awards we normally hand out will all get preempted. So if you’re looking for an update on what is going on in the political world, you’ll have to wait until next week, sorry about that. And if this sort of retrospective doesn’t appeal to you, well, there’s a whole Internet out there waiting, I’m sure there’s something better for you to read, somewhere else.
But before we even get to our review, we do have one piece of business which cannot wait, so we will quickly address it and move

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The FDIC closed another bank in Georgia this week bringing the total to three so far in 2012. Global Commerce Bank in Doraville, Ga. became the latest casualty of the bank clean up’s march through the South. The $143.6 million asset bank had been under capitalized for over a

To many, Syria’s third largest city was largely unknown until it became, in recent weeks, the site of a bloody siege pitting rebels against government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
In fact, Homs has a rich and variegated history that adds a special dimension to what’s happening today. That history helps us understand that rather than being a passive victim, Homs is once again serving as an engine of change, as it has time and again in the past.
Known as an Arab principality from the first century B.C.E. onwards, Homs became a vassal of the Roman Empire, but maintained its own royal dynasty devoted to the cult of the Sun. Several of its kings bore the name Samsigeramos, a Greek rendering of the Aramaic phrase “decreed by the Sun.” Throughout the second century C.E., Homs was instrumental in propagating in the Roman Empire the cult of the Sun, known in Latin as “Sol Invictus” (Invincible Sun).
No later than the middle of the second century, however, when Homs had become fully part of the empire, there were also Christians in the

The Internet and social media have changed the way we do business. But should it change the way people propose marriage? From tweeting “Will You Marry Me”, to enlisting Groupon to help put together a marriage proposal coupon, to the latest, “crowdsourcing” on the internet to “Help Me convince Katie to Say Yes.” Has it all gone too far? I think so.
In my opinion, proposing on the Internet is the equivalent of a virtual Jumbo-tron and we all know how devastating that can be. Although my profession as a Proposal Planner is sometimes criticized for taking the romance out of proposals, a position I vehemently disagree with, we always create personalized and sentimental proposals and the Internet just doesn’t fit the

Tyler Clementi’s death on Sept. 22, 2010 was one of several highly publicized youth suicides that fall. In several cases, media coverage and political discourse connected these tragedies to cases of on- and offline harassment saturated in homophobic sentiment. Research among students suggests that these hostilely charged environments are the norm rather than the

The release of the film, The Lorax, based on the children’s book by Dr. Seuss has stirred a bit of a controversy. The book, published in 1971, has long been considered a fable about the plight of the environment as it is faced with industrial greed. However, it seems that the

In the wake of Whitney Houston’s tragic death, many people have talked about the late singer’s problems with cocaine — and how drugs affect the brain. When it was later speculated that prescription drugs mixed with alcohol may have led to Whitney’s demise, people also talked about the dangers of painkiller abuse. But what about the dangers of excessive drinking, which can be equally life-threatening? As Frank Bruni wisely pointed out in the New York Times, alcohol is directly linked to about 80,000 deaths a year — yet far too often, its dangers “recede from focus.”
So, let’s bring the destructive powers of alcohol into sharp focus. Here are the facts:

After viewing the video that actress Julianne Moore created for Moms Clean Air Force, I was so impressed by Julianne’s strong reverence for the environment and protecting children’s health that I held a mini-JM film festival and made my husband sit through a few of my favorites…
The Kids Are Alright, Crazy, Stupid Love, Nine Months, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, The End of the Affair, Far From Heaven… but, I could not bring myself to watch Hannibal again!
So, when I spied Julianne Moore’s name on the cover of this month’s Architectural Digest, I grabbed a copy and languished over the magazine spread of Julianne’s flourishing lush, green outdoor retreat. The yard is even equipped with a canine comfort station for her dog, Cherry, and a freestanding basketball hoop for her “two sporty guys.”
Gardens in full bloom need constant maintenance. How do you keep your outdoor space well tended, and also keep the garden air clean? It just so happens the EPA has a wonderful document called “Your Yard and Clean Air”:
Small power equipment emissions from lawn mowers, snow blowers, chain saws, leaf vacuums and similar outdoor power equipment are a significant source of

Mark Thoma provides an excerpt from Noam Scheiber on Peter Orszag’s attempt to let all of the Bush tax cuts expire. In short, Orszag wanted to extend the “middle-class” tax cuts for two years (letting the tax cuts for the rich expire); then he expected the middle-class tax cuts to expire as well. President Obama was interested in the plan, which Scheiber takes as evidence that “the president is a true fiscal conservative.”
Thoma frames this as a bad thing:
I like and respect Mark Thoma a great deal, and I generally think of him as a mainstream Democrat on economic issues, neither a socialist nor a “moderate Democrat” (what we used to call a Republican). To me, his post is evidence that many Democrats think that most of the Bush tax cuts were and are a good

With a bounding pulse of 2,949 Twitter and Facebook mentions per hour over the weekend, the 2012 NBA All-Star Game can be deemed an “engaging” success.
“Our mission for All-Star is the same as our goal every day of the year, which is to enhance our fans’ engagement and enjoyment of the game,” Melissa Rosenthal Brenner, the NBA’s Vice President of Marketing. “And that’s really what social media is for us. It’s a way for fans to interact with each other on a global basis.”
Goal accomplished.
The marquee event was available to fans in 215 countries and territories in 45 languages, making it the most broadly distributed All-Star in league history through new TV partnerships, digital innovation and by engaging 241 million followers globally through social media.
The number of followers is just one social media metric the NBA monitors throughout All-Star and beyond.
“We look at everything from trending topics to individual post engagement on Facebook, as well the volume and sentiment of mentions across all platforms,” Rosenthal Brenner

Do you have any of the following symptoms? Checking Facebook to see who had more fun than you last weekend. Anxiety when your plans for the evening fall through. Fear of spending a Saturday night in your own room. If these symptoms sound familiar to you, you may suffer from “FOMO,” a disease that afflicts over 75 percent of college

The Missing Twin: Part One
The loss of life here in Jacmel is far less than in Port-au-Prince but the burden is still heavy. There are of course the ordinary deaths that come with age, and the losses of younger people cut down by accident, sudden illness, or murder. And in the background for everyone in this coastal city, and all the surrounding communities, as well as in Port-au-Prince, is the tide of losses that came with the January 2010 earthquake. The deaths of children seem the hardest to bear.
Toni, a clinical social worker from Baton Rouge, tells me about a woman in her group — a school

HyperVocal contributor Liz Glover sat down with the rapper/actor/director Ice Cube during his recent trip to D.C. to promote his new movie, 21 Jump Street. They also discussed Obama’s singing career and the presidential campaign. Ice thinks Obama needs to work on his stage presence — “He looked like he was ready to give it up too

Since day one in office, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler has had a number of problems as well a problem with numbers, as in figures.
First, you recall, it was his salary figure. Too low.
Then he said there was the “pretty high incidence” of fraud (implying a BIG number) in Denver’s 2009 elections, based on the fact that 200 inactive-voter ballots were returned. The real number was zero. No cases of fraud were found.
Later, he told the Pueblo Chieftain, regarding returned election ballots, that “some are fraud.” This sounded like a MID-SIZED number, but “some” turned out to be none, based on any real-life evidence released to

We went back to federal court in Wisconsin today to add charges that the state’s voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act. We’re making that charge on behalf of impacted voters like Eddie Lee Holloway Jr. Before moving to Milwaukee, Eddie was a cook in Decatur, Ill. — his best dish is lasagna, he says

It’s only hair. That’s what I told myself when I saw the picture of my 12 year old with dyed red hair. Not highlights or strips, but an all over wash. My ex let her dye her

I arrived late for the initial session. Omar offered the seat next to him and helped me to find my place in the handouts. During the break we exchanged a few details about ourselves. There was gentleness as he described his reason for