TIME could not have published its excoriation of my generation at a better time. Right now, teens across the country are theoretically fulfilling their archetypal roles as detailed by Joel Stein's disparaging piece about the "Me, Me, Me Generation," as they exit movie theaters texting about their perceptions...

The juxtaposition could not be any more poetic -- less than a week after some of my neighbors received their furlough notices, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was going into his twelfth hour filibustering the Senate confirmation of John Brennan as director of the CIA....

Dear Mr. President,

Millions of students were beaming as they watched you pledge to protect the highest law of the land last week. I joyfully counted myself among them. For all of us, your words comprised something more than a promise -- they constituted a success.

This election was certainly...

Israel and Palestine -- even the nomenclature of the parties involved in the conflict that has ailed the Middle East is controversial. Some people still cannot even agree on what to call the stretch of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River!

After all of the news coverage, academic...

Last summer, Amendment 2 passed with flying colors in Missouri, effectively reneging on the constitutional promise of maintaining the separation of religion and public school in that state. To this extent, it is important that Floridians remind the nation next week that the parameters set by scores of...

There are few photographs that have commanded my full attention. Among them are those that recall some of our nation's most trying moments, while others recount some of the international community's most atrocious crimes. Among all of them, there is a pervasive force that constitutes a desire to examine the...

Dear Missourians,

A recent poll published by the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported that an overwhelming majority of you will vote in favor of the passage of Amendment 2, a ballot initiative that will appear on the primary ballots on Tuesday, August 7.

To be exact,...

Pathetic, disgusting, deplorable, heinous -- all words I used in my head when I learned that the Westboro Baptist Church is at it again. I've written about them before, as they protested outside the funeral of a soldier, claiming that he had died because America had supported homosexuals....

I am absolutely, unequivocally and categorically scared to enter the college admissions process. And chances are that if you are a rising high school senior, you are too.

In the increasingly competitive milieu that is college admissions, no college is a "safe school." Acceptance letters from dream schools couldn't be...

Passion and music are powerful entities, and together they often have the power to change the world. Concerts as recent as "Hope for Haiti" and as old as George Harrison's "The Concert for Bangladesh" illustrate the extent to which music can help to better the world....

The resilience of the people of Houla, Syria is absolutely and unequivocally inspirational. While the Syrian Foreign Ministry continues to deny that the deaths that have bloodied the streets of Houla within the last 14 months were caused by the Syrian government, the world watches on, ignoring the...

A good friend of mine recently sent me a video detailing the project of a college student and his experiences on New York's subway system. He would ask fellow riders questions that require a bit of deep thought. What was most intriguing about their reactions was their shock when first...

The term "abolitionism" brings to mind historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott. A Google image search retrieves images from the 1830s, illustrating a bygone era.

Slavery is not a subject Americans often talk about anymore. While noble efforts such as the...

Last night when I was lying in bed -- proud of the fact that I had managed to do so at a relatively early time -- I was partaking in my ritual pre-bedtime Facebook perusal when I came across a bombardment of statuses and links all sharing this...

"The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate."

When Newsweek published this sentence from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World" on February 6, the publication stooped to a new low. The article that Ms. Ali wrote was...

The following post first appeared as an article in The A-Blast, Annandale High School's award-winning student newspaper.

The Virginia Code is a document of violations. Among them is a violation of students' religious freedom. At public schools across Virginia, students walk by this violation every...

His answers in debates always receive thunderous rounds of applause, he is the most popular candidate among the GOP youth, and he is a fervent libertarian. He's not Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, or Rick Santorum. He is Ron Paul.

Why the big hullabaloo over Rep. Paul? According to

It seems as if the Florida legislature has crossed a dangerous line. When Sen. Gary Siplin (D-Orlando) proposed S.B. 98, not only did he propose to impede on the religious expression of Florida public school students, but also upon the separation between church and state that...

It might seem strange to read, but to a certain extent, it is evident that SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the PROTECT IP Act) has saved my generation from being portrayed as the paradigm of political disinterest.

Articles have been written...