Immigration is the most controversial but least understood issue in America.

I've arrived at that conclusion after nearly two years of traveling across the country as an openly gay undocumented immigrant -- or, as I often describe myself to people I meet, "an American without papers." Born in...

Three facts, all interconnected, will prove indisputable on Super Bowl XLVII, aka Beyoncé's largest concert.

Beyoncé will break the Internet. No pop star -- not even tweet-happy, "little-monster"mommy Lady Gaga -- attracts the kind of attention, love and hate, that Queen Bey does online. This is a performer, after all,...

Today's Fourth of July holiday, our country's birthday, marks a new beginning for undocumented Americans like me.

Last month, TIME magazine featured an unprecedented photograph of 36 undocumented young people, myself included, on the cover of its U.S. and international editions. "We are Americans," the headline declared. "Just...

In our increasingly open, more connected, borderless digital era -- the Facebook era -- Mark Zuckerberg follows as much as he leads.

There's no doubt that the Facebook founder and CEO, who turns 28 today, defines a generation. But this is not a one-way street....

Amid the flood of coverage on President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is a historical fact that warrants close attention: the country's first minority president, a son and student of the civil rights movement, openly addressing the need for full rights for another minority group fighting its own civil rights...

Inspired by one professor's infectious enthusiasm for Emily Dickinson, Obsessed is a HuffPost Culture series exploring the idiosyncratic, all-consuming passions of public figures and unknowns alike. Through a mix of blogs and interviews, these pieces will highlight the elusiveness of whatever it is you just can't live without...

America, as only America can, constantly renews itself.

That was chief in my mind as the crowded ferry left Battery Park, the southern tip of Manhattan, and headed toward the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I live in New York City. My dear friends Karen and Matt, visiting from...

Mine was merely one story, in which I chronicled my life as an undocumented immigrant for the New York Times Magazine. I'm just one person. From the very beginning, as I told The Guardian, "if I'm going to come out with this, I'm going to do...

This piece comes to us courtesy of Education Nation’s The Learning Curve blog. Jose Antonio Vargas, Define American founder and former journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Huffington Post and the Washington Post, writes.

[Ed. Note: On Wednesday, the California Senate passed AB131, one half of the...

"You've been trying to write yourself into America," my dear friend Teresa Moore said after she read an early draft of the essay I ended up submitting to the New York Times Magazine.

I first met Teresa in 1999, when I was a high school...

A few months and seemingly a lifetime ago -- before the Oscar bait "The Social Network" hit theaters, before Time declared the Facebook cofounder and CEO "Person of the Year," before the Middle East and the Arab world were turned upside-down in a matter...

Being a news junkie takes on a whole new meaning -- and a lot more time -- in the age of Twitter.

I first read about the Tucson shootings from Twitter, as tweet after tweet streamed on my iPhone. At one point, after retweeting some messages, speculation was so high...

Online, using social media, we can become each others' witnesses.

Take Eric Sheptock, a former crack addict and now homeless advocate who is the subject of a remarkable story in today's Washington Post, written by Nathan Rott. It's one of the most insightful and...

Like all influential and complex entrepreneurs, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is many things to many people. But he is, first and foremost, our young century's first Millennial CEO.

That's a fact that's been glaringly omitted -- not to mention profoundly misunderstood -- in everything that's been written and...

If everything goes according to Chris Hughes' plan, Nov. 30, 2010 will be remembered as a critical and celebrated moment for the multi-billion dollar nonprofit and charitable industry.

Earlier this morning, Hughes launched his latest project, Jumo.com, which the Facebook co-founder describes as a "social network for the...

Everything that's wrong about The Social Network is summed up by its title.

The movie, opening nationwide today, is not interested in the concept of social networking or the actual usage of Facebook. Aaron Sorkin, the film's writer, told me in my profile of Mark Zuckerberg for the...

There will be very little that's real about "The Real Housewives of D.C."

That, of course, is stating the obvious, especially after Thursday night's premiere. Folks who live in Orange County, New York, Atlanta and New Jersey -- the heretofore settings of the franchise's shows -- will quickly point...

Exactly how has technology changed the journalist's role?

The question has nagged me since the latest Future of News and Civic Media conference in Cambridge, hosted by MIT and the Knight Foundation. The three-day confab drew a curious hodgepodge of technologists, academics, foundation and non-profit folks, with a...

*UPDATED*

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- The future of news. The future of civic education. The future of citizens as engaged, educated participants. Lofty topics all of them, essential to maintaining democracy.

And technology -- technology being as mainstream and accessible as it's ever been -- plays a central role in how...

FRI, JUNE 4, 4:11 P.M.

Forget the Internet. For the post-email, AIM-oriented, text messaging-driven generation of the American electorate, the future of politics -- how voters interact with politicians, elected officials and their government -- is right in their pockets. Scott Goodstein, the Obama campaign's texting...