Here we are again, in the midst of Hollywood's awards season. While watching the Golden Globe awards on January 17, I began to wonder what qualities make a film a "winner."

In a story largely ignored by the American media, a long-standing and corrupt foreign leader was overthrown by the people of his country.

While military-initiated coups are nothing new for Africa, the recent protests in Tunisia are a definite sign of the times, with Facebook, WikiLeaks and YouTube all playing pivotal roles in a country dominated by young people.

There is a certain type of wild animal that has an extremely widespread and peculiar mating dance.  

This dance is performed mostly by the young adults of the species once they hit puberty, but some continue this dance well past their prime. It basically consists of the female and male, (though sometimes male and male, female and female, etc.) pantomiming sexual acts; while many of their peers observe and perform the ritual themselves.

House Bill 2281, which took effect December 31, bans schools in Arizona from offering courses that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people" or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." According to Tom Horne, state superintendent of public instruction and author of HB 2281, the bill was written to target the Mexican American studies programs in the Tucson school system.

I've always enjoyed MLK night, a night of live entertainment, thought-provoking skits, and watching friends perform their work. Yet, as the poems, songs and skits set in, I couldn't help but think, this is not what Martin Luther King Jr. would have wanted.

Nicholas D. Kirstoff put it best in a recent New York Times piece: "If a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, and one who speaks four languages is quadrilingual, what is someone called who speaks no foreign languages at all?"

Answer: an American.

SCU does an excellent job preaching the Gospel message about our obligation to care for the poor.  This legitimate message of compassion needs to be heard.  But not once during my time at SCU did I hear SCU explicitly promote the core Catholic belief in the right to life of the unborn. 

For the first time in decades, a bookstore will not lie on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. Borders, the big-box bookstore chain, recently decided to close its doors in the most popular shopping district in the Windy City.

That's right, one of the biggest cities in America lacks a bookstore on its most famous retail street.

After looking further into Borders' situation, it is apparent that the company is facing dire times