Six people dead. Fourteen wounded. And somehow, a former governor from Alaska is to blame for an attempted assassination in Arizona. Riiiiiight. Make no mistake, Sarah Palin is no saint. Her political perspectives are uninformed, paranoid and, at times, straight-up xenophobic. In Palin World, there is liberal, elitist, “lamestream media” America and then there is “Real America,” dominated by people who presumably agree with her positions. Do you believe that undocumented immigrants deserve a chance to earn their American citizenship? more

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer is the new film by Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) that documents the high-priced prostitution scandal that forced former New York Governor from office in early 2008. But when you go see it (and you should) be warned: within the first 15 minutes of this movie’s start, you'll be gripped by a raging urge to walk out of the theater, grab some gasoline and matches, head to Wall Street and light the whole damn place on fire. A dozen minutes after that, you’ll also want to do the same thing to the nearest state capital. more

Sometimes I wonder if Democrats realize the parallels between the travails of our party and reality TV. In January 2001, we watched in disbelief as George W. Bush was sworn into office, all the time praying that at any moment Ashton Kutcher would jump outta nowhere and yell that we’d just been punk’d. more

As my age inexorably (yet gracefully) marches into that phase when my general good mood and productivity demands a full eight hours of sleep, I’ve come to rely more and more on a New York staple of the social scene: the after-work, politically-themed, cocktails-included happy-hour. So it was to my great benefit when my editor approached me to cover the Big Gay Variety Show, an April 13 fundraiser with proceeds are all earmarked to support the New York Civil Liberties Union (a state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union) and its fight for marriage fairness and LGBT rights. more

The word negro— which ungraciously left the American linguistic stage sometime in the 1970s—has recently rejoined the mainstream discourse. And it looks like it’s not poised for an exit anytime soon.The blogosphere has embraced the word, with the criticallyacclaimed site Pam’s House Blend announcing Negro to be “back in vogue.” In an emailed response, Stew, part of the team who created the Tony-Award winning musical Passing Strange and frontman of the band The Negro Problem, declared his “love” for the way Negro “looks and sounds.” Even the United States Census has gotten in on the act, since it includes the word as part of the racial category black folk can choose to be legally labeled in 2010. more

In 1998, as part of National Job Shadow Day, a closeted high school gay boy by the name of Jamaal was chosen to hold a phone conversation with one of his biggest heroes, Colin Powell. Humbled at the chance to speak with him, Jamaal listened to the four-star General as he spoke of how service to others was in direct line with other great American values such as equality and justice—they were in practice interconnected. This was, after all the very experience of Powell’s life and career. That discussion helped spur the teen to not only complete over 1000 hours of community service during his senior year of high school but also to spend most of his college and adult career promoting educational opportunity and social justice. more

LADIES, PUT ON your mothers’ pearls: Yetta Kurland is comin’ a-courting…for your votes, that is. A dapper lesbian, known to wear custom dress shirts and blazers, Kurland has been going door-to-door and bar-to-bar throughout the West Side of New York City looking to woo as much Sapphic support as needed to defeat Speaker of the New York City Council Christine Quinn in the September 15 Democratic primary. more

You need help. No, seriously…you are in desperate need of an intervention. Ever since November 2nd, you have become addicted to all things Barack Obama. You’re so hooked you’ve even given his wife a fashion award just for dressing better than Barbara and Laura Bush (not a hard task by any stretch of the imagination), thinking that Michelle’s approval will bring you closer to his heart and once that’s done, he’ll give you what you’ve been needing: passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA); the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); and the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). more

It shouldn’t take a genius to point out that getting a new publicity photo is not a good reason to conduct a low altitude flight of Air Force One—complete with a F-16 fighter jet in hot pursuit—over the skyscrapers and monuments of New York City. But there you have it, on April 27; officials at the White House proving that sense ain’t always so common after all. And while most New Yorkers experienced a collective feeling of ‘here we go again, more in-flight drama in the skies above Manhattan,’ my particular déjà vu skewed more toward the realization that I had seen this kind of bureaucratic bullshit before. more

Just when you thought it was safe to be gay, along comes Carrie Prejean, the runner-up in the Miss USA contest, who may have totally destroyed all hope of ever achieving full equality for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community when she so astutely stated, “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman.” more