Gary Hart

United States Senator (Ret.)

Newtown is a very dark cloud growing over the bright promise and hope of America. It cannot be merely accepted as a fact of modern life. It must be addressed and dealt with in the best ways the human mind and heart may devise. We are not permitted to forget and move on.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush

Senior Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

In response to critics who label him a Marxist, Pope Francis is taking a page from the famous Seinfeld scene: No, my critique of capitalism is not because I'm a Marxist (not that there's anything wrong with that) -- it's because I'm a Christian.

Randi Weingarten

President, American Federation of Teachers

What if, instead of using international rankings to bash our students, schools and teachers, we learned from top-performing countries and applied their lessons for the benefit of all children?

Andrew Zimbalist

Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College

Although Rodriguez may think that MLB's aggressiveness to procure evidence was motivated by a personal vendetta, the public should recognize it for what it is -- an energetic effort by MLB to eliminate the use of performance enhancing drugs from the national pastime.

Gordon Brown

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education

We all now know of Mandela's strength of will and belief: his defiance facing possible execution, his resilience even faced with a 27-year prison sentence often in solitary detention. But I wanted also to tell the story of Graça, the heroine who guided Mandela through his last years.

Dr. Peggy Drexler

Author, research psychologist and gender scholar

The great thing about celebrity narcissism is that we hold the clicker. When we've had enough, we can simply move on to another distraction. In our lives, the closer the narcissist is, the hard it is to escape the vortex.

Jessica Ann Mitchell

Writer for OurLegaci.com and founder of Black Bloggers Connect

This defense obviously doesn't work for black and poor youth. Yet, news outlets are spiraling about 16-year-old Ethan Couch who caused the deaths of four people by drunk driving. His defense was that he suffered from "Affluenza" -- a disorder that only the affluent have.

Bernice A. King

Chief Executive Officer, The King Center

My family's appreciation of Mr. Mandela dates back nearly a half century, long before millions knew who he was, when my father, Martin Luther King, Jr. was in London preparing for his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Peace to occur three days later in Oslo, Norway.

Libby Leffler

Partnerships at Facebook

The power of one connection can lead to a movement. Nonprofits work to connect individuals with the causes, organizations, and people that are important to them and can now use Facebook to aid in that effort.

Tony Newman

Director of Media Relations, Drug Policy Alliance

2013 will go down in history as the beginning of the end of our disastrous war on drugs. Here are some of the top stories that made 2013 a watershed year in the fight to end America's longest failed war.

Freaktography

Photographer, Urban Explorer

What I've come to admire about the abandoned house is what I call the pieces of life left behind, the mystery of what caused this home or business, once full of life to become dark and vacant. From bullets, to love letters, bibles, records, creepy dolls and trophies of one's accomplishments -- there is always something to be found (and left behind when you leave) inside an abandoned house.

Leo W. Gerard

International President, United Steelworkers

As the GOP abruptly ends unemployment benefits, Republicans intend to slash food aid as well. They want to cut $4 billion a year from the food stamp program that many jobless families depend on for meals. This will occur as struggling food pantries report bare shelves.

Noah Michelson

Editor, HuffPost Gay Voices

It's time that we made a promise to ourselves that we won't look the other way any longer. It's time that we started challenging each other and ourselves to be accountable to what we believe and what we espouse.

Ann Jones

Author, 'They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars -- The Untold Story'

The JROTC program, still spreading in high schools across the country, costs U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. It has cost some unknown number of taxpayers their children.

Adam Winkler

Professor of Law, UCLA

Is it time to rethink the longstanding ban on plural marriage? While the ability to choose one's sexual partners is an important element of constitutionally protected privacy, polygamy has long been associated with unique harms

Thomas E. Perez

U.S. Secretary of Labor

The Labor Department's Hall of Honor recognizes men and women -- like Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller and the Workers of the Memphis Sanitation Strike -- who have made invaluable contributions to the welfare of American workers.

Susannah Lewis

Freelance writer, blogger, aspiring best-selling author, wife, mom

I was one whiff of B.O. away from some serious lid-flippage when suddenly a strong notion came upon me. I tried to quiet the voice in my head, but it continued to compel me to do something that I had no desire to do. "Give her the toys."

Wendell Potter

Author, consultant; columnist at Center for Public Integrity and healthinsurance.org

Both the AAN and Chamber have spent millions on ads calling for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. While Aetna stands to gain financially from the law, it and other insurers have been critical of the potentially profit-threatening consumer protections and regulations in it.

Menachem Rosensaft

Professor of law and son of Holocaust survivors

More than 68 years after Allied troops liberated the German death and concentration camps in which millions of European Jews had been ruthlessly murdered, many of those who miraculously survived live precariously in dire circumstances.

John Farr

Editor, bestmoviesbyfarr.com

Today every classic movie fan mourns the death of Peter O'Toole at 81. The spirit of mischievous exuberance he brought to his life -- and all his roles -- somehow made me believe he could never die, even when you could see the smoking and drinking had taken its toll on his once startling good looks.

Sen. Tom Harkin

Democratic Senator from Iowa

To read some of the headlines over the past few weeks, it is clear that the chattering class in Washington is once again trying to scare the American public about the future of Social Security.

Alon Tal

Visiting professor, Stanford Center for Conservation Biology

If desalination can provide additional water, then cooperating to deliver it more efficiently and equitably across the region makes perfect sense. But it is important that any enthusiasm be tempered by hydrological realism. The relentless increase in population undermines any meaningful progress.

Seth Abramson

Series Co-Editor, Best American Experimental Writing

The Desolation of Smaug is filled with significantly more visual hyperbole than its predecessor, indeed some moments so preposterous in their construction and so outrageous in their deviation from Tolkien's text that they resoundingly deserve a listicle of the sort provided here.

David Halperin

Attorney, advocate, writer at RepublicReport.org

Despite President Obama's obvious awareness of the egregious, widespread nature of the problem, his own team may be on the verge of failing to effectively implement a key measure needed to hold for-profit colleges accountable for such abuses.

Jenny Davis

Assistant Professor of Sociology, James Madison University

People can say whatever they want -- that race doesn't matter, that they don't see color -- but when it comes to selecting a partner, and the selection criteria are formalized through profiles and response decisions, we, as individuals and a society, can no longer hide from ourselves.

Seth Shostak

Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

Extraterrestrial life may be showing up in some obvious places. No, this is not about hairless aliens that have come to Earth in saucer-shaped craft, but less sophisticated life just next door.

Thad Starner

Wearable computing pioneer

John, despite swimming in these waters since he was three years old, had spotted the largest shark he had ever seen.

Ellen Langer

Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

Our team of researchers retrofitted a New Hampshire inn to re-create a living environment from 20 years before (replicating the music, magazines, clothing, and other aspects of that time), so that participants could step back into the mindset of their younger selves.

Ingrid R. Taller

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Bitchtopia.com

I don't want to dress like every other fat girl. For the same reasons, I don't want to dress like every skinny or mid-sized girl. I don't want to dress like anybody. I want to cultivate my own style, and for that, I need options.