Not since that cranky old lady asked "where's the beef?" has a fast food chain had an ad as funny as the Chick-fil-A cows begging people to "Eat Mor Chikin."
It is difficult being an American Muslim engaged in civic activities, let alone working in government or politics. We Muslims must always second-guess what we say, guard against people questioning our loyalty and make sure that nobody thinks we are trying to infiltrate the government to sabotage it from within and hand it over to the Muslim Brotherhood.
It's not easy being NBC, which is touting record ratings for its first three doses of prime-time Summer Olympics coverage while at the same time getting hammered in some quarters for its time-delayed approach.
Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A, proudly proclaimed his opposition to marriage equality and drew flak from politicians and citizens nationwide, who said Cathy's position made the chain unwelcome on their turf. Some of the condemnation crossed the line, offending the First Amendment. Some did not. Many don't understand where the line is, and now a population already sharply divided over same-sex marriage is collectively less informed about the First Amendment.
It was a different Mitt Romney who arrived in Jerusalem at the weekend. The man who landed on the campaign flight from London was unusually circumspect, even for a candidate not noted for unbridled displays of exuberance and emotion.
Like the annual outbreaks of flu, every year brings a new round of attacks on having and raising children. Some years, it takes the form of articles pointing out how expensive children are. You could buy a fully loaded Porsche for the $250,000 a child costs you these days, we are told.
The bodies of the victims are being buried. The court case will continue, without cameras. The horror in Aurora has faded from the front page in favor of Olympic coverage.
The tax debate is heating up. With the federal government racking up trillion-dollar deficits and President George W. Bush's tax cuts set to expire, Democrats and Republicans are trying to position themselves so that they can avoid being attacked as members of the party of tax hikes.
To all of you gun lovers, feel free to go buy your Glock, shotgun, hunting rifle, .22 pistol, .357 Magnum or any of the other guns at your disposal.
The future of science and technology sounds so promising. Unprecedented advances in computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, genetics, neuroscience and biotechnology hold the potential to radically transform our world for the better and create mass abundance for all.
On Wednesday, nine athletes were tested positive for "sophisticated doping" and banned from the 2012 Olympics. This shouldn't surprise anyone. For as long as there have been games, there have been stories of cheating.
The Olympics are upon us. Every four years people all over the world tune in to breathlessly watch sports to which they would not otherwise give a thought (hammer throw? Sculling?). They do this as a matter of national pride. The same waxing and waning of our attention applies to environmental sustainability.
How could anyone screw up a trip to Britain, America's closest ally and a feel-good place brimming these days with national pride and excitement over hosting the 30th Olympic Games?
When people across the world tune in to the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics on Friday, regular TV programming will be set aside for pageantry and pomp.
John Adams once said, "facts are stubborn things." These days, another Massachusetts politician has found that saying to ring especially true.
When my phone rang just a few seconds after the NCAA sanctions were handed down Monday, I knew it was someone from Penn State calling, likely outraged that our beloved university was being punished so harshly. I've received these calls all week.
Recent events have left Syria watchers near breathless: government loss of control of border crossings into Iraq and Turkey, rebels temporarily holding portions of Damascus, the unexplained movement of some of Syria's extensive arsenal of chemical weapons, and fighting spreading to the streets of the traditional Alawite stronghold of Aleppo.
When I first heard about the shooting rampage in a Colorado theater, I was shocked and horrified. It was like reliving the Virginia Tech shooting all over again.
When an elected official whose heart seems to be in the right place offers a courageous perspective on an important subject, I'm inclined to try to find some good in it.
When I heard the news that Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer I was shocked and saddened.
I am a long-time fan of reality television: first American Idol, then, So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, and Master Chef.
We learned a few things on Monday night, those of us watching Anderson Cooper on "AC360," about Alex Teves, one of the people who died in the gunfire at theater 9 in the Century 16 multiplex in Aurora, Colorado. We learned that in high school, "for no reason whatever," as his father put it, Alex always wore white T-shirts and blue jeans, and that one day some 400 to 500 kids from the school wore the same outfit, declaring an unofficial "Alex Teves Day."
Last week, I tried to cross St. James' Park in London and found my path blocked by a uniformed soldier. I asked him what he was doing there and he replied, somewhat incredulously, that he was guarding the Olympics. That I had forgotten the park was being closed off for the event, or that I didn't much care, speaks volumes about my attitude toward the Games. I found a different exit and when I finally arrived at the pub -- jolly angry about being five minutes late -- I told everyone about the incident in the park as if it was the greatest civil rights infringement since Abu Ghraib. Never stand between an Englishman and his pint of beer.
For visitors and newcomers, the mention of London conjures up images of the queen, gray skies, Big Ben and Parliament.
Great evil often brings out the best in good men, men like Todd Beamer on Flight 93, Medal of Honor recipient Michael Murphy in Afghanistan and now the Aurora three -- the three young men, each in different parts of theater nine, who gave their lives to protect their girlfriends.
Taxmaggedon is coming. Unless President Obama and Congress act, Americans will be hit with what would be in total dollars the largest tax increase in history in little more than five months.
When Mitt Romney took the stage at the annual VFW convention Tuesday, he had a chance to finally offer serious ideas for strengthening U.S. foreign policy and how, if elected president, he would keep our nation secure.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office added another reason to drop the politics and get down to the hard work of health care reform. The nonpartisan organization released a report that finds the cost of repealing the reform will balloon government deficits by $109 billion between 2013 and 2022.
When the U.S. economy collapsed, millions of us lost our homes, our jobs, our retirement savings and our faith in the American dream. What we gained was a very clear view of the vast -- and growing -- divide between the rich and the rest of us.
The tragic news from Syria managed to become even more shocking Monday when the regime issued an unprecedented threat to use chemical and biological weapons. The warning, which came couched in deceptively reassuring language, makes it clearer than ever that the world cannot afford to act merely as an interested spectator as Syria unravels in a tangle of shrapnel and blood.
I feel guilty. My iPhone has been great to me. Loyal. Hard working. Holds a charge well. Sure, we had some dropped calls, but who hasn't?
Retrospectives of Sally Ride's life over the next few days are likely to include the words "ground-breaking," "trailblazer," "inspiration" and "mentor." And rightly so. She epitomized these words and so many more. To me, she was also a classmate, a crewmate, a collaborator and a friend.
Sitting in a meeting at NASA's Science Advisory Committee on Monday afternoon, I heard the news that Sally Ride had died. She was important to everyone in that room -- mostly space scientists and NASA officials. But for a handful of women like me, she was an irreplaceable leader.
In recent months, Americans have experienced numerous extreme weather-related events, including droughts, wildfires and heat waves.
For all of the rhetoric about Christianity being under attack in this country, oftentimes it feels no one does a better job of hurting Christianity than the people who call themselves Christians. Especially after a national tragedy.
Recently, a puzzling website appeared that seemed to be from the Shell Oil Company. Using Shell's logo and its website's design, the page contained information about Shell's oil drilling activities in the Arctic. It included a function where viewers could caption pictures said to be taken by Shell Oil in the north (a dangerous feature for Shell -- just imagine the captions people would generate under a picture of a baby Arctic fox on an oil company website).
A witness to the horrific shooting rampage in the Colorado movie theater called it "the longest minute" of his life. One can only imagine. But the second longest minute may be the waiting for someone -- the authorities, the pundits, the doctors -- to tell us "why" these killings happened. Police say James Holmes, a 24-year-old graduate student in a neurosciences program, called himself the Joker and rained merciless bullets on strangers watching a Batman movie. Why?
There's a predictable cycle of mourning and finger-pointing that follows a massacre like the shootings last week in Aurora, Colorado. First come the calls for unity and flags flown at half-staff. Then the national fissures appear: The gun lobby stiffens its spine as gun control advocates make their case. Psychologists parse the shooter's background, looking for signs of mental illness or family disarray. Politicians point fingers about "society run amok" and "cultures of despair."
The organizers of the 2012 London Olympics have repeatedly asserted the value of the Games in the shape of wider involvement in sport, a lasting legacy of sporting facilities, and increased tourism. But experience from previous Games suggest differently.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association's sanctions will devastate Penn State football for years to come. They will also harm the university as a whole, with consequences felt not only in the athletic and budget departments, but probably in the development and admissions offices, too.
China and India need to reach agreement on how they will manage water from one of the world's great rivers -- the Yarlung-Zangbo-Brahmaputra -- before it becomes another serious impediment to relations between the two Asian heavyweights.
There will be no new gun laws after the Aurora shooting for the basic reason that the American people do not want them.
In a recent column for The New York Times, David Brooks argued that the nation has now entered into a "capitalism debate." Brooks wrote that President Obama, who he said is feeling defensive about the failure of his policies to revitalize economic growth, has launched an all-out assault on capitalism by depicting Mitt Romney as the embodiment of corrupt and vicious economic practices.
The stunning assassinations of several key Syrian leaders and the outbreak of serious combat in Damascus last week momentarily held out the possibility that President Bashar al-Assad's regime will rapidly fall. Many hoped for a cascade of defections, a rise in popular demonstrations and a rebel surge to bring down the government.
The drought of 2012 will be one that farmers and ranchers remember for years to come. My husband, Kevin, and I are fifth-generation farmers. This is the first drought we have experienced since we were married and started farming together in 1995.
We tend to think of the 2008 financial crisis as the atom bomb that smashed the American economy, and from which we have yet to recover.
Scenes from the mass shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater are horrific, but are all too familiar in the United States.
I strongly believe being mayor is the public post in which you have the greatest opportunity to change peoples' lives for the better.
It is by no accident that the AIDS Memorial Quilt -- which now measures more than 50 miles laid side by side and weighs 54 tons -- is gracing the National Mall in Washington this weekend as the global HIV and AIDS community gathers nearby for the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012).
For all the cheers, roars and ovations in all the Olympic stadiums and arenas over all the years, perhaps the most significant Olympic sound heard in the last quarter-century was a yawn.
The latest string of fatal shark attacks in Western Australia is creating a climate of fear that could haphazardly undo a very important environmental law that protects great white sharks.
Five a.m., Friday, July 20. I stumbled downstairs to make coffee, turned on the radio for the news. Suddenly, the peaceful morning was shattered by reports of a shooting in nearby Aurora, where a lone gunman went on a rampage in a movie theater. Twelve people were killed and many more injured. All who were present, or responded to the scene, or had loved ones there, have experienced a traumatic event. Even those who hear about the event and identify with the victims may feel traumatized.
There were no long lines waiting to see "The Dark Knight Rises" at the urban multiplex closest to where I live in Washington, D.C. A mild surprise, since this wasn't, after all, just any movie's opening Friday. This was, as we kept being told, a Major Summer Event, the biggest, darkest and most eagerly anticipated of the many Hollywood blockbusters being wheeled out to the movie-going public. It was also a workday. And I was willing to believe that there were too many people who didn't or couldn't play hooky, no matter how much frothing hype had been aroused on Batman's -- sorry, The Batman's -- behalf.
Last night's shooting rampage at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was a nightmare. Authorities have already arrested a suspect. Four weapons were recovered in the shooting scene, including a shotgun and two handguns. Twelve people have been killed, with many more injured. According to law enforcement officials, the weapons were purchased legally by the suspect in the last six months.
In the aftermath of the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, various pundits and experts will ask whether anyone can feel safe enough to enjoy a concert or movie. It's not an unreasonable question.
Yahoo announced this week that it nabbed top Google exec Marissa Mayer as their new CEO. But it's not her qualifications for the job that were all the buzz. Instead, it was her announcement that she was pregnant and will continue to work as CEO.
There are few criminal events as stunning and frightening as a mass shooting. The suddenness, randomness and unpredictability of episodes like Friday's early morning massacre at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater cause us all to wonder whether any place is safe.
The incredible discovery of the Higgs boson will open up new ways of probing the part of the universe that is invisible to our everyday senses: beyond ordinary matter, into the extraordinary world of dark matter.
In the past week, there has been a spate of news stories about the level of Mitt Romney's involvement in Bain Capital in the years when he ran the organizing committee for the Salt Lake City Olympics. What is this controversy all about?
The United States is on the verge of an energy renaissance. We need to recognize and seize the opportunity.
This week, Jennifer Tyrrell and her family went to the headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America in Irving, Texas, to deliver a petition of 300,000 signatures asking the organization to end its ban on gay Scouts and gay Scout leaders.
A month ago, when Mitt Romney addressed the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials during its annual conference in Orlando, Florida, many thought he was on a path to adopting a more nuanced tone on immigration and coming up with an aggressive strategy to woo Latino voters to his side.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know people are concerned about the deficit. Or at least they say they are. You'd also have to be willfully ignoring everything around you not to know that health care spending is a significant cause, if not the cause, of our long-term fiscal problems.
Syria becomes a greater emergency with each passing day. This week Defense Minister Daoud Rajiha and other members of President Bashar al-Assad's inner circle were murdered; opposition groups claimed responsibility.
Over the past couple of days, I've listened with mounting frustration as people debate whether Penn State University should remove from its campus the 900-pound bronze statue of Joe Paterno, its once-legendary football coach. It's as if, to the folks who demand action, taking away a metal JoePa would serve as another blow to the real JoePa; one last spear in the heart of the fallen hero who apparently looked elsewhere as Jerry Sandusky, his longtime assistant coach and friend, molested one child after another.
It's hard to imagine the president of the International Olympic Committee on the "naughty step," forced to stay there until he had repented for his behavior. But that's more or less what has happened. Jacques Rogge had to "clarify" (in other words, backtrack on) his newsworthy comment that there was a "question mark" over the suitability of McDonald's and Coca-Cola as Olympic sponsors. Apparently he had actually first flagged his concerns four years ago, but the lure of sponsors' cash far outweighed any considerations about growing obesity levels ... and apparently still does.
As a gay black man who came of age just before the 1969 Stonewall riots, I've seen far too many examples of the inequalities that exist in America. But I'm also highly encouraged by recent developments: same-sex marriage support from President Barack Obama and the NAACP, and a wave of federal court rulings -- from the Defense of Marriage Act being deemed unconstitutional to the rejection of California's Proposition 8 -- that have opened a promising new chapter in the gay rights movement.
Was Marco Rubio just the flavor of the month, and now the month is over? Was Condoleezza Rice's name floated to stir momentary excitement, and now the moment has passed?
A New York Times front-page article Monday detailed a new phenomenon in news coverage of the presidential campaign: candidates insisting on "quote approval," telling reporters what they can and cannot use in some stories. And, stunningly, reporters agreeing to it.
This week's announcement that Yahoo is hiring away Google executive Marissa Mayer as its latest CEO has been met by both Wall Street and the tech industry with yawns or worse.
The news that Yahoo knowingly chose a pregnant woman as its new CEO has rightly been heralded by working women and their allies as another hole in the glass ceiling. Marissa Mayer, until now a top executive at Google, reports that when she told Yahoo's board of directors that she and her husband are expecting their first child in October, no one expressed any second thoughts about hiring her. The lack of reaction "showed their evolved thinking," she said.
In recent days, with the tiniest poke of a toe in the political waters -- a few comments to news organizations about the recent Supreme Court ruling on President Barack Obama's health care law -- former Rep. Anthony Weiner has set off a frenzy of speculation that he may be planning to run for mayor of New York in 2013.
If you agree that a presidential nominee comes to the selection of his running mate the same way a football coach develops strategy for the last few minutes of an important game, then Rob Portman and Tim Pawlenty are the political equivalents of running your fullback off-tackle.
By announcing that he will release no further tax returns beyond his 2010 and 2011 returns, Mitt Romney appears to have exempted himself from the proud bipartisan tradition of presidential nominees displaying genuine financial candor with the electorate.
Last week United States senators expressed dismay and outrage to learn that the uniforms for American Olympians were produced in China. But this is not new. For years unrestrained globalization has seen textile and clothing multinationals race to the bottom in the search for cheaper and cheaper production.
Recently an op-ed by Douglas Rushkoff took up the issue of the creation of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), a coalition charged with implementing the Copyright Alert System, a graduated response framework to copyright infringement. As the executive director of the Center, I would like to respond to several concerns that article raised about how the program will work and its goals
The Olympic Games have always featured an awkward mix of high ideals and crass, even brutal, political calculation. The Games have provided countless moments of inspiration, not only about personal achievement but, more importantly, about breaking down the barriers that push apart countries and individuals.
Mitt Romney is rumored to be announcing a choice soon for his vice presidential running mate, and conventional thinking suggests his pick is going to be "safe," someone who brings a high measure of conservative street cred, and preferably from a swing state.
The 1992 Barcelona Olympics mark the first games in which Team USA included NBA athletes. It was called the "Dream Team."
Since the Democrats chose to host their convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a state that has not been hospitable to unions, organized labor is going to have a rally to focus attention on its key issues in Philadelphia on August 11.
Although domestic issues may continue to dominate the presidential campaign, eventually the candidates will be called upon to give a comprehensive view of U.S. national security interests and defend those views in a presidential debate.
Where "global knowledge" was once essential for leaders, IBM's 2010 Global CEO Study cited "creativity" as the most important leadership quality for the future. This is one of many signals that the business world is evolving out of the "Information Age," where left-brain technical skills, knowledge and expertise were king.
By any measure, the Mitt Romney for president campaign has had a painfully bad week. What went wrong?
"I just get sick and tired, quite frankly, of all this talk. Everything that has to do with the federal branch of government ... is bad, and states are good. I remind you that ... the reason the federal government got into 90% of the business it got into is that the state[s] ... did not do the job."
When the comedian Daniel Tosh reportedly singled out a woman in his audience and suggested, according to a blog post that recounted the incident, it would be "funny" if she "got raped by, like, five guys, right now," the online reaction was swift, heated and often split down gender lines. Many men wanted to explain free speech or heckling etiquette. Many women (and virtually all feminists) said these topics were distractions, at best, from the sheer offensiveness of Tosh's attack.
Daniel Tosh, host of the Comedy Central show "Tosh.O," recently came under attack on the Internet. People on the Internet with way too much time on their hands love attacking someone all at once.
Most Americans think of the Arctic as an icy, distant place; beautiful, remote and teeming with wildlife, but unrelated to their daily lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There may be a number of good reasons to vote against Mitt Romney, but based upon what we know so far, his honesty about his tenure at Bain Capital does not seem to be one of them.
Patriotism, it has been said, is the last refuge of scoundrels. Indeed, with 86% of the American public disapproving of Congress' performance, refuge-seeking politicians have wrapped themselves in the flag to denounce the fact that the U.S. Olympic team's uniforms were manufactured in China.
After years and years of over-the-top stories attesting to the character, honor, integrity and moral fiber of the late Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno, we now know, after reading the 267-page Penn State internal report on child predator Jerry Sandusky, that Paterno was nothing more than a narcissistic, arrogant coward.
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