The price of toppling Gadhafi will be steep. But Libyans will topple him, and in doing so, they will bring down with him the castles of fear our dictators thought they had fortified.

As an Egyptian, I was glad to see the film 'Black Panther' embrace my country with its inclusion of the Ancient Egyptian goddess Bast as the deity of Wakandans. But considering the anti-black racism against the Nubian indigenous community and visitors in my country, I knew Egypt would not return the love.

As a U.S. citizen, I cherish the First Amendment.

Morality crusades unite military regimes and religious zealots alike.

I do not subscribe to a feminism that demands perfection or super heroic nobility of women. But I do insist that putting women at the service of patriarchy is no victory for us.

I left my husband a year after 9/11. Not because he was an American and I an Egyptian, nothing to do with culture or religion, nothing to do with 9/11. We brought out the worst in each other. But before we separated, we visited N.Y.C. one more time together for a friend's engagement, and we went to pay our respects at the site of the attacks.

I do not celebrate the appointment of women to high positions in regimes where cruelty is a favored tool of governance by a patriarchy; if they accept, they are nothing short of foot soldiers of that patriarchy and the violence it has instituted.

What is satire if not a marriage of civil disobedience to a laugh track, a potent brew of derision and lack of respect that acts as a nettle sting on the thin skin of the humourless?

Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel.

The Federal Reserve system obviously doesn't work anymore - they keep lowering the federal discount rate, and all that happens is that the banks are making a fortune, and the old folks' CDs are getting chewed up.

Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.

I've always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.

The Internet goes doot-doot-doot - it goes sideways. There's nothing hierarchical about it. And the best thing about it is also the worst thing about it, which is there are no gatekeepers on the Internet. Consequently, there's a whole lot of bad information on the Internet. But I think that sorts itself out over time.

One of the things I said was that I had been in great hopes that I would become a better person as a result of confronting my own mortality, but it actually never happened. I didn't become a better person.

In Congress, there are some who are unashamed to aspire to eloquence, even to scholarship, but the only state legislator I ever knew who would not join in the mispronounceciation of a word for the sake of camaraderie with her fellows was former State Senator and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

I am one of those people who are out of touch with their emotions. I tend to treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives - a long-distance call once or twice or year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay.

Rush Limbaugh's pathetic abuse of logic, his absurd pomposity, his relentless self-promotion, his ridiculous ego - now those, friends, are appropriate targets for satire.

There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.

Those who imagine polygamy to be handy cover for promiscuity are apparently off the mark. If polygamists share one quality, it is that, polygamy aside, they are extraordinarily strait-laced.

Those who think of freedom in this country as one long, broad path leading ever onward and upward are dead damned wrong.

Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point. Poor people do not shut down factories... Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits.

I want to point out, there are a lot of politicians who enjoy the political end of politics, but they're not interested in governance. And then, there are some that are really interested in governance and are just terrible at politics.

I really do think we're going through a period of concentration of ownership of media, and we're starting to see the effects at the editorial level, and it's all bad. This increased pressure for profits every quarter, smaller news hole, less coverage of important stuff - the extent that it's become one giant infotainment industry.