This post is adapted from a speech originally given at a Yale Political Union debate on the topic "Resolved: Religious Organizations Should Abide by Non-Discrimination Law." Other speeches from the debate can be found here.

As we begin, I would like to remind the body that we are...

The reviews are unanimous, in this penultimate installment of the Potter film franchise, Harry Potter has grown up.

It's not simply a matter of the astonishing growth spurts that he and his friends have experienced since the release of the last...

I never thought I'd miss Bill Kristol. And his successor, Ross Douthat, isn't giving me the chance.

When Palin's cheerleader-in-chief left the op-ed pages of The New York Times, I hoped that the new conservative columnist might make my Monday mornings a little less full of indignation, but now I'm...

Twit:
(1) twerp: someone who is regarded as contemptible
(2) tease: harass with persistent criticism or carping; aggravation by deriding or mocking or criticizing

I'm guessing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is currently mostly concerned with the second definition. Since the preliminary results for the Iranian election were announced, a...

Today, on the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, I see article after article explaining exactly how China plans to suppress any description of the massacre that followed the student demonstrations in June of 1989. Growing up as the child of two...

The public square just got a whole lot less open.

On May 29th, Wikipedia, "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" banned all IP addresses affiliated with the Church of Scientology from editing any part of the online encyclopedia. The decision came after four months of debate among Wikipedia's top administrators. This...

Since this morning, when I heard about Obama's move to derail an court's investigation of extraordinary rendition under the Bush administration, I've been moving through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. I've gone through through denial and anger, and I've just started working my way over to bargaining.

The Department of...

With five days to go until the Inauguration, I realized I had been reduced to hoping that my President and my government were incompetent. The alternative was far worse.

The New York Times was reporting that Muntader al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at outgoing President...

Arianna Huffington recently appeared at a Yale Political Union debate centered around whether blogs are good for democracy. Several Yale students gave speeches at the debate, and we have highlighted some of them on the Huffington Post. Read all of the published speeches by clicking here.

First, I'd like...

I've grown up with Harry Potter. The final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on my eighteenth birthday. As I've matured, the message of the series has become clear to me: the most important power is the courage to do what is right. We don't have...

When my principal introduced me at a Board of Education meeting, highlighting the Presidential Scholar award (141 high school seniors are chosen each year to be recognized by the president for academic excellence), he told the audience that, after my English teacher and I were done, "Washington would never be...