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Time is running out. On July 1, student loan interest rates for nearly eight million students will double.
Without a new plan, the average subsidized Stafford loan borrower will pay $2,800 more by the time they repay their loans. The most needy students will pay a crushing $5,000 more on their student loan than they otherwise

Happy Wednesday everyone, here’s my Top 5 for March 28, 2012 from Len Berman at www.ThatsSports.com.
1. Quick Hits
Magic Johnson is part of a group buying the Dodgers for a record $2 billion.
Yankees reliever Joba Chamberlain says he expects to be back this season from an ankle injury he suffered in a trampoline accident.
Jets owner Woody Johnson says “Mark Sanchez is our starting quarterback, period!” There you have it.
The Giants opening night opponent on Wednesday, September 5 will be the Dallas Cowboys.
U-Conn and Notre Dame advance to the NCAA Women’s Final Four meaning all four #1 seeds made it through.
2. Showtime
It’s nice to see Magic Johnson bring his megawatt smile to the Los Angeles

I’m not sure what to make of the big surprise on General Hospital this week — but then again, I haven’t known what to make of GH in a very long time (years, actually). Robin Scorpio is alive — and looking very tanned and rested, I might add, even if she is being held hostage in something resembling a hospital room.
Seeing Robin in that bed at the end of Monday’s episode was the first time GH has really “wowed” me since that unforgettable moment in May 1980 when Edward Quartermaine sprang back to life after faking a heart attack and shocked his daughter Tracy (and millions of viewers, as well) after she had refused to give him his medication because he wouldn’t change his will. Ah, sweet memories …
The Robin reveal was all the more impressive because it hadn’t been leaked. I didn’t think it was possible to keep anything from anyone in this era of zero privacy and even less

There’s a lot of buzz about the just-revealed internal memos from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) that make plain their divisive racial strategies to oppose marriage equality. The key strategy NOM has employed is wedge politics, that is, seeking to drive a wedge between African Americans and Latinos on one side and those in the LGBT movement on the other.
Here is just some of what the NOM memos say about African Americans (emphases are mine):
NOM’s strategy for Latinos looks like this:
You can read all the documents here, thanks to HRC.
To say that NOM’s strategy is racist is stating the obvious. Sometimes it’s worth stating the obvious, but I want to make a slightly less obvious point, and that is that the revelations about NOM’s racial politics highlight the LGBT movement’s need for a racial justice agenda.
The truth is that African Americans and Latinos are just as likely to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender as white people. Moreover, Zack Ford makes the excellent point that “NOM’s tactics seek to erase an entire population of people who live at the intersections of these experiences, limiting their ability to fulfill their complete identities.”
That’s exactly

I’m standing at an office party, minding my own business as I chat with a colleague when I see you.
You sit poised on a platter, nuzzling up next to some delicious looking brie, your beautifully tanned color and glistening texture immediately piquing my curiosity to a point where the room freezes and our gazes meet.
My God, do you look good tonight. My heart begins to pound as I discretely put my hand on you: perfect and effortless, seductively solid, flaunting your alien scent that allures me so thoroughly. I am dizzy. I watch you flirt with everyone else, but I know it’s me you’re looking for.
I look around the room, trying to seem

President Obama is in the midst of a speaking tour on energy, prodded in large measure by spiking gas prices and dropping approval ratings as many assume the President can do more, but isn’t for some reason. The President is trying to convince folks that while he can’t really do anything about short-term gas prices — which is true — he’s got a good handle on the long term. This includes policies to increase fuel economy, thereby saving folks money at the pump, and pursuing an “all-of-the-above,” “American-made” energy production strategy. An important part of this “all-of-the-above” approach is alternative or clean energy sources like wind, solar and biomass.
Funny thing is, increasing fuel economy and clean energy is great for climate change, but the President doesn’t mention

Like many other religiously and socially driven discussions in the United States, I find the recent debates over contraception to be completely inundated with irony. After all, those decrying the recent HHS mandate, to be addressed shortly, fail to understand the irony of the Church’s opposition to contraception via the stance that it inhibits the primary purpose of sexual intercourse — procreation — while simultaneously marrying countless couples in which one or both parties are infertile. Now, while the realm of religious social policy in the U.S. is ironic on its face and that irony certainly is not central to arguments against such legislation, it can be beneficial to consider the entire context of socially conservative

Sometimes, in conflict, important skirmishes arise purely spontaneously while at other times clashes are impeccably planned. Please be advised that the next important battle in the culture wars is scheduled to take place in Tampa. No, not at the Republican convention! The next major battle is coming to Tampa months before the Republicans are arriving. It will take place in late April at the United Methodist Church’s Quadrennial General

A new report released by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) presents a strong case that manufacturing has declined more during the last decade than it did during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It’s gratifying to finally see a well-respected non-partisan “think tank” release a report based on empirical data that corroborates what those of working in the manufacturing industry have experienced, about which I have been speaking and writing since 2003.
One of the main points of the report is that during the Great Depression, we lost 30.9% of manufacturing jobs, but in the decade of 2000-2010, we lost 33.1% of manufacturing jobs. It becomes more serious when you realize that in the Great Depression, manufacturing accounted for 43% of jobs lost and 34% of all jobs at the time, but now manufacturing only represents about 11% of all jobs, but nearly one-third of the job loss. This percentage loss represents 5.7 million manufacturing

One of the best parts of my job is actually talking to kids about money. Of course, I conduct my own research with my personal lab rats: my three kids! But it’s always a treat to speak at schools, where I can connect with children I don’t know and who haven’t been inundated with my money mania. So I was thrilled to speak recently to the middle schoolers at The Children’s Storefront, an independent, tuition-free school for pre-schoolers through 8th graders in Harlem, New York City.
Upon entering the school — a converted brownstone with bright blue painted gates — you immediately sense that it’s an extraordinary place. Academically rigorous and creative, the school takes as one of its guiding principles the importance of inspiring kids to believe that if they work hard, they can go to college and be anything they want to

What a lunch. Jeff Skoll, first president of eBay and founder of The Skoll Foundation, and I sat down this week with the six newest Skoll Awardees for Social Entrepreneurship, here in Oxford, England. We’re in town hosting the Skoll World Forum — some call it the Davos of doing good — our yearly gathering of social entrepreneurs, funders and partners from around the world. Greeting the group, and eying his plate, Jeff said: “You social entrepreneurs are used to overcoming obstacles — how about this lasagna?” We all dug in.
Pasta is not the highpoint of the

Here’s some news of workers sleeping on the job that’s downright scary. A news investigation produced this story and footage of air traffic controllers at Westchester County Airport sleeping during their shifts. The video, provided to the news outlet by an employee in the air traffic control tower at Westchester Airport, also shows controllers reading and using laptops and cell phones while on duty. The FAA bans its controllers from use of cell phones, personal reading material and electric devices while on

As you’re reading this, people next to you on the bus or the subway platform are playing Angry Birds. The game, launched by a tiny Finnish company only two years ago, has transfixed the world with its angry — but cute — birds launching pigs. Its new game is based in space. But Peter Vesterbacka, Angry Birds’ creative director, aims even higher: he wants to get the whole world exercising, with Angry Birds of course.
Vesterbacka, wearing his usual Angry Birds hoodie, met with Metro at the Finnish Embassy in London.
Extremely busy people spend hours playing Angry

The world runs on science and math, but let’s face it, to get this across effectively to young students we sometimes have to get a little, well… messy.
No one knows this better than math and science author Sean Connolly who’s gained a reputation with kids and teachers alike for breathing life into such potentially stuffy scientific tenets as Boyle’s Law and Bernoulli’s Principle through hands-on demonstrations and experiments that involve everything from potato guns and cola geysers to film-canister rockets and floating ping-pong balls. The result? Rapt attention and plenty of oohs and ahhs from students, in addition to an experience that illustrates first-hand in unforgettable ways to them how science and math relate to the real world.
If we are to excite and inspire kids in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) — including motivating the next generation of innovators — we have to learn to begin exploring new and creative interactive approaches such as

When a young white girl goes missing in America, it immediately becomes a national story. Nancy Grace dedicates her show to every aspect of every missing girl, regardless how long a case drags out. These girls, their parents and everyone associated with them gets a magazine cover, or two, or three.
However, when a young black person is killed or goes missing in America, very few people outside their family hear about it. If not for his parents, their attorney, the current political season and the upswing of social media, this might too have been the case with Trayvon Martin.
I am not going to comment on the facts of this

It seems radically unfair that the extremes of weather in our physical world are being paralleled by tornados of emotion whipping across our political landscape. We watch in fearful awe as these destructive energies are unleashed upon us.
I contend that while the cause of extreme weather might be debatable, the source of our political storms is entirely understandable: We are still attached to a destructive form of psychology from centuries past. When we lived in competitive tribes we used its violent emotional energy to overcome other

Our culture does a very good job of pounding the living “creativity” out of us. Many of the forms of practicing our “creator” expressions such as art or music have been cut in schools. If you did have the opportunity to be in an art class, the D- on your paper collage project likely tattooed “complete creative failure” in your mind forever. In addition, we live in an overstimulated society with electronics buzzing us to the point where our own inspiration malfunctions when it is

Dear Mexican: Stop using Spanish in your column. I like reading your column, but when every other word is in Spanish, I don’t know what the hell is going on. It makes you sound like that nerdy kid who uses big words to try and sound impressive.Don’t be lazy, and just write a good column.
Lazy Gabacho
Dear Gabacho: Primeramente, I AM that nerdy kid–except when I use grande words, I sound like a nerd and not impressive. Secondly, don’t be

By Viva Samuel Ramirez
Have you ever felt like you were watching history unfold before your eyes? Like the words you were hearing and the people you were meeting were constructing historically significant events for generations to follow? That was the feeling I had in Tucson on March 17 when Tony Diaz and a busload of Librotraficantes rolled into the parking lot of the John Valenzuela Community Center unloading $20,000 worth of contraband books. Looking nervously over their shoulder the whole time–a metaphor for the threat of knowledge–the librotraficantes transferred boxes from one another and dramatically ran them into the building before they could be caught. The organizers were part of Nuestra Palabra, a Houston-based group made up of writers dedicated to showcasing Latinos’ contributions to literature. The Librotraficante caravan traveled across the southwest to smuggle banned “wet books” back into Tucson, Arizona, stopping along the way to pick up riders and raise awareness about TUSD’s attack on Ethnic

There are 12,000 lobbyists in Washington. They represent anything and everything from big tobacco to Styrofoam. And they have Congress’ ear every day of the year. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have that kind of political

The centerpiece of the new federal health care law, and its most controversial part — the individual insurance mandate — looked to be doomed after the first hour of the Supreme Court’s hearing on it Tuesday. But it seemed to rally in the second hour, and, while not exactly assured of being upheld, had conspicuous signs of new life.
When the Court’s most conservative Justices started the hearing with a barrage of very hard questions for the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., those in the courtroom started focusing on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, to see whether he would join in.
And, in fact, Kennedy seemed as skeptical as Chief Justice John

America is a land of liberty and opportunity, and has admirably served as “a city upon a hill” in the words of Puritan John Winthrop, who led the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the New World. The U.S. continues to attract freedom-seekers from around the world.
Yet America’s greatness has come at a cost. Indeed, the nation founded on the principle of individual liberty enshrined slavery in its founding

HUFFPOST PHOTO EXCLUSIVE
For Regina Spektor fans, here’s a different kind of exclusive. We’ve got two stills from her single and upcoming video “All The Rowboats” that will be premiering worldwide through YouTube on March 29, 2012. It was directed by Adria Petty (yes, Tom Petty’s daughter), Devin Sarno, and Peter Sluszka.
Also, here are streamers of the aforementioned “All The Rowboats” and yet another Regina Spektor single, “Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas),” from Regina Spektor’s album What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, coming May 29, 2012.
A Conversation With Macy Gray
Mike Ragogna: Hello to Macy Gray.
Macy Gray: Hi!
MR: Macy, first of all, how have you been, everything’s great?
MG: Yeah, everything is really good.
MR: Great. This time out, you decided to do an album of covers called, well,

The nursing role is rapidly evolving as nurses are tasked with an even wider range of health care responsibilities. Caring for the sick has certainly gotten more complicated. Hospitals are understaffed. Budgets are