EL PASO -- Two gay men kissed at a Chico's Tacos restaurant, prompting guards to eject them and a police officer to endorse their ouster.

Civil-rights lawyers say the security staff was out of line. Police, though, contend that a business such as a restaurant can refuse service to anybody, any time.

My last column on Shakespeare in the Park bemoaned the loss of the art of courtship by words. Then I learned in a unexpected but welcome counterpoint that Erin McKean's new website, Wordnik, had debuted.

I met Erin at a design conference some years back. She is a dynamo of both word and person, and this site sounds just like what the word doctor may have ordered. Why only a few days ago, someone was calling me "girlfriend" and I wondered what has happened to that word....so many different meanings now contained therein. So I asked Erin to reconnect with me to talk about words and love and friendship.

Erin McKean: One of the things we like best about Wordnik is that folks can add tags to any word -- here are all the ones that have been tagged "love."

There are some great words on this list:

Mulierose
Cicisbeo
Amatorio

But it's probably better to talk about words that are about nuances of feeling: crushes and passions are different, right?

Culture Zohn: Yes. One has always been told that a crush is more of a temporary, perhaps physical thing whereas a passion is somehow more all-consuming. The French have an even better way of putting it, coup de foudre, which to me has always combined the two: an instantaneous, but fiery capture of the heart.

But Erin, what struck me in Twelfth Night was that words, spoken words, as opposed to songs, are losing ground when it comes to the art of love. What has happened since Shakespeare's time to inhibit people from thinking that an artful phrase can move the heart? Has email helped or hurt the turn of a fiery phrase?

EM:I did a whole book of these love idioms a while back (That's Amore ). It was really fun -- my favorite was Bulgarian, I can't remember the actual Bulgarian, but it was "the blind Sunday hit me" (i.e., I fell in love at first sight). I have no idea what Sunday has to do with it!

I think its [email] hurt it, because what if you write something and god forbid it gets forwarded? I know I've written stuff in email I wouldn't like to see on somebody's blog, and it wasn't even mushy (I've been married since before email)! ... there's this electronic trail, now, that you just don't get with paper and ink. A love letter is to be savored, a love email ... is to be forwarded to all your friends, and probably laughed at.

I think we should start a Valentine's Tweet on Valentine's Day next year, though. Best sentiment in 140 characters, minus the hashtag.

CZ: Absent actual love letters which don't seem to be in the cards, and not being a Twitterer myself as it leaves even less time for reflection, for savoring, what are our choices? I remembered that last year somebody was doing six-word sentences which, like haikus, at least caused a momentary lull in the barrage of noise. Words can be tools for seduction but they can also be weapons. It seems to me the internet has brought reading back, albeit in a different format. How do we encourage vocabulary as a contemporary art form?

EM: Oh I think that the internet is definitely encouraging linguistic creativity! Especially with new formations (weaksauce, awesomepants) and new tropes. It's not elegant, but it is creative!

Check out Wordnik daily. It's not painful like studying those endless lists for the SATs. You'd be surprised how much your words can move hearts and minds.

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This is why I posed for the NOH8 Campaign, a silent photographic protest.

As a publicist, it is second nature to opt out of photos. I have a wonderful collection of pictures of famous clients or amazing events with only my black clad arm or leg in frame.

However, when I first saw the NOH8 Campaign photos, they really spoke to me. These two young men, Adam Bouska and Jeff Parshley had started something powerful following the passage and subsequent affirmation by the California Supreme Court. The gay political establishment had focus-grouped a campaign without a message, except, its OK to not like the gays.

Their efforts obviously fell far short, but then, so did the gay community who was apathetic at best. Prop 22 was a distant memory and perhaps the Hope of the Obama campaign had a blinding halo effect. There was no ground game. There was no outreach to constituent communities. There was, simply, no face to discriminate against.

The NOH8 Campaign puts faces to the discrimination. It puts stories behind the slogans. Gay, straight, bi, trans-gendered, black, white, brown (and every other shade) friends and families have joined celebrities like Ashlee Simpsons and Pete Wentz, Fran Drescher, Meghan McCain, director Bryan Singer, Steve-O and many others in this silent protest.

Every picture truly tells a story.

I posed for Dilson and Jason. Dilson, legally married in California to his amazing husband Walter, who among the 1100 + right and privileges denied to him by DOMA is not entitled to the same protections and privileges of any other immigrant. His 10-day old son, Jason, could lose his father any day, with no warning and no recourse.

I posed for Alfred, just out of college, who made me appreciate The Wizard of Oz, having found his strength, his heart and his voice in coming out in the last year. He not only did it himself, he is quick to speak up to anyone who would ever seek to treat him as anything less than a full citizen.

I posed for Rob, who came out in the past years, though later in his 30's, doesn't want anything to limit his options or potential. Rather than make up for lost time, Rob lives just as he always has, proving that being identified as gay does not change who he is.

I posed because Americans are the heirs to a philosophical fortune and I don't wish to squander it like the idiot off spring of the great robber barons. I posed because around the world people are dying just for the right to be in love.

I posed because my rights, our rights, are important. I never thought I would have the option of fighting for those rights. I Posed for Lt Dan Choi and the 13,000 members of the Armed Forces dismissed under the shameful Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. I posed for the hundreds of young people who call the Trevor Project each year when they have nowhere else to turn.

Mostly, I posed for David. I have to prove to him that when I get misty-eyed describing the founding principles of this nation, the truths that we hold self-evident; when I have faith in the rule of law, at the staggering progress made and inspired here and abroad by these imperfect men who knew the pyramid remained un-finished; when I see Plessy v Ferguson become Brown v Board of Education or see the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments become the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, I know that those principles are earned and remain my work long after Election Day.

What these young men have created is the kind of grassroots action that can change a mind, that can change a vote, that can change the world.

To view the campaign, celebrity photos and to find our how you can participate, log on to www.noh8campaign.com.

The 911 call from the night of the murder-suicide deaths of former NFL Titans player Steve McNair and his girlfriend, Sahel Kazemi has been released.

Listen to the call:

"United Breaks Guitars" , the sudden viral hit produced by distraught United Airways passenger Dave Carroll and his band, broke 1M views a mere 4 days after he posted it on YouTube.

According to his blog , Carroll decided to write the song after his guitar was broken in United's care and 9 months of back-and-forth resulted in no settlement. As he sings in his catchy song, "I've heard all your excuses and I've chased your wild gooses, and this attitude of yours I say must go."

To get an idea of how fast this happened, let's look at the incredibly short timeline:

• Monday - Carroll posts his video to YouTube
• Tuesday - United says in a public Twitter response "we've contacted him directly to make it right"
• Wednesday - CNN's Wolf Blitzer discusses it on air
• Friday - 1M+ YouTube views with 7,000 comments, 1M+ results in Google for search string "united breaks guitars", and 19,000 blog mentions - not to mention the millions of viewers that watched it on CNN, other networks, and traditional media.

Carroll's goal was to get one million views in one year but he did more than just that. Remarkably, in these brief 4 days he changed United's Google results page - something marketers take great pains to protect. In web marketing it's often said "you are what Google says you are", and right now 4 of the top 8 Google results for "United Airlines" point to this video. Eight of the first 10 results for a Google video search of United Airlines are damaging to the brand.

Carroll and his band are likely flying high after all this publicity but United Airlines has some serious recovery work to do.

PARIS- It's been almost three weeks since French President Nicolas Sarkozy said burqas imprison women and would not be tolerated in France. In a speech at the Palace of Versailles, Mr. Sarkozy said that the head-to-toe Islamic garment for women, the burqa, "is not a sign of religion", but rather "a sign of subservience."

The burqa is the most concealing of all Islamic veils as it covers the entire face and body, leaving only a mesh screen to see through. It should not be confused with the niqab which is a face veil that sometimes leaves the eyes clear and is sometimes worn with a separate eye veil.

French legislators in Paris had recently begun to look into the spread of Muslim women wearing these full-body robes and veils, such as burqas and niqabs, with a debate ensuing ranging from an immediate ban to a gradual one. Sarkozy's statement served to escalate the debate into a burqa polemic with politicians and analysts all over Europe weighing in for and against it, effectively eclipsing a multitude of other issues of more immediate concern in France, such as the economic crisis, rampant unemployment and a bloated system of social services. Human Rights Watch, and several Muslim groups and clerics have criticized the ban and asked Sarkozy to reconsider his statements citing that the proposal "stigmatized" Islam.

France is home to Western Europe's largest Muslim population of about 6 million.
In 2004 the country passed a controversial law purportedly introduced to support the Republic's principles of Laïcité, with which France insures separation of church and state. This argument was considered a disingenuous one whose real purpose was to forbid female Muslim students from wearing headscarves, designated to be a "conspicuous" display of religious affiliation, while other symbols, such as the wearing of crosses and stars of David were seen as "discrete" and therefore exempted from the ruling's enforcement. As a result, Muslim students were overwhelmingly impacted.

By framing the wearing of burqas and other body veils under the guise of showing concern for women's rights, Sarkozy has also found a roundabout way of targeting Muslims and putting them in the human rights' defendant's seat, engendering another religious debate. The number of French Muslim women who wear the burqa or the niqab is minuscule, and one would have to go out of his way to visit les banlieues (Paris's poor suburbs) to spot one or two. So why is Sarkozy proposing the ban and stirring all these emotions?

Many critics to Sarkozy's proposal claim that he deliberately initiated a burqa polemic to distract from his low approval rating of 32 percent down from 60 percent for the six months following his election. The burqa is Sarkozy's nationalistic prop, and its emotional appeal temporally outweighs his unfulfilled promises on such issues as guaranteeing workers five weeks of paid leave annually and the 35-hour workweek which Sarkozy had to get rid of once the economy started to sink. All the while maintaining a flashy lifestyle, which have earned him the title, "le Président Bling-Bling."

"It is my choice alone," said Aamina (her name was changed per her request), "when did I ask Sarkozy to liberate me?" she added.

Aamina, a soft spoken Afghan widow, immigrated to France in 2005 to join her brother who works as a janitor in the Métro after her husband was killed in an attack by the Taliban. She said that she had not expected that her burqa would become the subject of controversy in France.

"Ou est la Liberté, Égalité, et Fraternité?"
"Sarkozy has turned me into a freak of nature...that I'm not" she sobbed.

Many Muslim women have been complaining that these new laws have been driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments. In June 2008, the Council of State - the country's highest administrative court - refused to grant French citizenship to a Moroccan woman wearing a burqa, because it went against "the values of a democratic society and the principle of equality of the sexes."

Meanwhile, Huda Benkaran, a French Algerian social worker who has been involved in helping Muslim women to integrate in France thinks that outlawing the burqa is a "stupid proposal" made by a "an imbecile."

"What does Sarkozy think? Outlawing burqas is going to make these women walk outside in a sundress. They just won't leave home as often. He is sentencing them to prison!" Benkaran says in anger.

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A lot of people rely on user review sites for product or service selection, like Consumer Reports, Yelp, Amazon, or Best Buy.

Sure, we're aware of advertising for specific products or services, and that might get attention, but I bet most people just filter out most ads. Maybe they leave a brand impression.

What hapens when looking up reviews becomes easy, say on a phone, and becomes the normal way of doing things? We could see a dramatic tipping point in this direction, in the near term.

I'm guessing brand advertising will remain important, but that might represent a small portion of the
current advertising market.

What'll this do to business models for journalism and entertainment?

For me, happy to pay for trustworthy sources of news, with fact-checking and a clear separation between reporting and finance.

Disclaimer: I'm on the board of Consumer Reports.

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Ensign: "I did not pay for sex with that woman"

WASHINGTON - Due to the recession, politicians who only a year ago were able to afford prostitutes and mistresses may actually have to engage in sexual acts that do not go beyond the boundaries of law or marital vows.

Economists cite Senator John Ensign (R-NV), a 51-year-old with gray hair, who was forced to borrow $96,000 from his parents to pay off his mistress, dipping not only into his parents' retirement fund, but also into any hopes of affording another mistress.

"$96,000 is a lot for some trim," said one economist. "Even good trim."

He added that most Republican parents want their children to be able to afford things they could never have, like mistresses, and seeing them unable to do so was a source of heartbreak.

Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) made headlines earlier this year when it was revealed that he kept a mistress in Argentina. But the cost of airfare, apartments and aftershave may now be too high for most governors, not to mention international implications.

"If politicians are forced to have sex at home," said one expert, "it could cause a ripple effect on the mistress-producing nations of the world."

Even that most venerable of political institutions - prostitution - may be hurt by the economy. Experts say that former governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), if he were still in office, would most likely be unable to afford the $80,000 he spent on escort services.

"That's too much for today's Democrat," said an expert. "Spitzer would have to settle for sex with his wife while fantasizing that she was an expensive 22-year-old from New Jersey."

Some politicians hope that a second stimulus package will include provisions for extramarital sex, but admit that such hopes are dim. "We need another $787 billion just to fuck around," said one. "We'll probably have to borrow it from Ensign's parents."

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The sheer audacity of the criminals who ruined Iceland's economy is impressive, in a perverse manner. The nerve with which they methodically bankrupted their country, while enriching themselves à la Madoff, can only issue from hearts so devoid of morality as to sincerely believe their own lies.

However, the political, business, and banking executives could not have attained the scale of corruption they achieved without the assistance of their lawyers. As Mario Puzo once observed, "A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns."

The lawyers advising the powers-that-be in Iceland surrendered their professional roles and instead served as shameless enablers. They told the villains what they wanted to hear, grabbed their share of the profits, and are now aggressively attacking those seeking to set things aright.

One of the more blatant schemes to defraud the shareholders in Iceland's investment banks involved bank loans to bank officers to buy bank stock with the stock itself serving as collateral for the loan. This had the effect of improving the banks' balance sheets, thereby keeping the regulators at bay, while inducing innocent outsiders to shell out real money for stock.

According to recent news reports, the former (he resigned last week in the light of "the misleading debate about his part" in the bank's decision about the loans) chief counsel at Kaupthing Bank, Helgi Sigurðsson, provided the board of directors with a legal memorandum that concluded that the insiders' personal responsibility for the loans could be written off if things fell apart, though I assume they would reap any financial rewards occurring if the bank's stock continued to rise. I imagine that the memo was as thorough and convincing as John Yoo's torture memo.

Sigurðsson out-Yooed Yoo, however. He himself took out a loan of about ISK 450 million (around $7 million at the time). And guess what? The bank forgave the loan once it became evidence that the bank was about to become insolvent.

Brilliant cartoonist Halldór Baldursson's take on Iceland's situation. The crooks escape in front of the nation's bloated "guard dogs" (I added the English translation). www.mbl.is/halldor

Now, Iceland's rules of professional responsibility are not nearly as complete as America's, and don't have any provisions for a lot of the situations that lawyers encounter in today's complicated world. However, even our rules provide that "A lawyer shall not permit extraneous interests, irrespective of whether these be his own or those of others, to influence his advice" (Art. 3).

The obvious course of action would have been, at a minimum, for Sigurðsson to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, and to insist that the bank's board of directors engage disinterested outside counsel. There would have been no guarantee as to outside counsel's opinion, however, so it was safer for Sigurðsson to have his staff prepare a justification for the board's action.

Iceland's rules also provide that "A lawyer shall perform his work independently and protect the autonomy of the legal profession" (Art. 3) and "shall always provide his Client with an impartial opinion of his affairs" (Art. 10). This obviously requires corporate counsel to make his decisions on the basis of his own legal research, and to resign if faced with the choice of doing as he's told and doing what's right (Art. 12).

The bank's other officers may have gone ahead with their scheme with the lawyer's go-ahead, just as Dick Cheney may have gone ahead with his "enhanced interrogation techniques," but at least they would have been given fair warning and maybe, just maybe, would have proceeded with a little less arrogance.

The mind-set in Iceland's business community before the banks' collapse was, as Bob Dylan once put it, "anything's legal, as long as you don't get caught." It should have been the lawyers' role to "promote justice and prevent injustice," (Art. 1) but Sigurðsson failed miserably, though I daresay he received his 40 pieces of silver.

Since the collapse, the lawyers who greased the skids for the crooks have not adopted the stance that, as officers of the court, it is their duty, "in his professional as well as other activities, to protect the honour of the legal profession" (Art. 2). Instead, they've viciously attacked all who try to seek some kind of reckoning from them or their clients.

Attorney Sigurður G. Guðjónsson has taken it upon himself to publicly attack every move and statement made by Norwegian-French magistrate Eva Joly, who was appointed as advisor to Ólafur Þór Hauksson, the special prosecutor investing any financial crimes that may have taken place. Unsurprisingly, Guðjónsson's alleged client list includes Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, one of the leading business leaders during the run-up to Iceland's collapse, and Sigurjón Þ. Árnason, the former CEO of Landsbanki, who oversaw the IceSave fiasco. Guðjónsson recently orchestrated a complicated loan scheme for Árnason, enabling the latter to take a low-interest "loan" from a private pension fund in order to avoid paying some ISK 14 million in income tax..

The lack of clear ethical rules and the frontier justice mentality in Iceland continues to cause confusion and raise questions about the legal profession's ability to regulate itself in Iceland. Iceland's largest law firm--LOGOS--was appointed official administrator for Jón Ásgeir's company, Baugur, despite having previously represented it. LOGOS was also raided by the police last month in connection with allegations of "share manipulation" linked to Kaupthing Bank. Its offices were also raided by police looking into possibly fraudulent sales and re-sales of the now-bankrupt Sterling Airlines by the Icelandic investment firm, FL Group.

What is especially worrisome is that attorney discipline in Iceland is handled in part by the Icelandic Bar Association. Since the lawyers who had the greatest financial success in Iceland in recent years were the ones most closely tied to the parties responsible for taking the country down, what are the chances that the IBA is going to show the independent judgment necessary to evaluate their compliance with the rules?

The collapse of Iceland's economy had many causes, not all of which were the result of actions taken by Iceland's elite. However, the fingerprints of Iceland's lawyers are all over the most blatant fraud. Their role in enabling the business and banking executives to carry out questionable deals, to obfuscate transactions, to conceal assets, and to attack anyone who questioned their decisions was essential to the formation of the mind-set that rules and regulations were merely obstacles to be overcome, not roadmaps to maintaining a sustainable society.

Just as the physicians of famous people from Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson poisoned their patients by providing an endless supply of illicit drugs, so the lawyers poisoned Iceland's business and regulatory atmosphere by justifying their clients' unjustifiable deeds. Just as some of the drugs may have been needed for the stars' genuine medical conditions, much of the advice may have been accurate. What was so destructive in both cases, though, was the failure of the responsible professionals to look at the overall situation with an impartial eye, to recognize the great harm being inflicted, and to rectify the ongoing evil before it led to disaster.

Restoring faith in the legal profession should be one of the top priorities of the government. As Former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King once observed, "Far more has been accomplished for the welfare and progress of mankind by preventing bad actions than by doing good ones."

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WASHINGTON -- Several Wall Street firms seeking to buy back warrants held by the government as part of the $700 billion financial bailout are complaining that the Treasury Department is demanding too high a price, according to people familiar with the matter.

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WASHINGTON -- Several years of progress in reducing the number of chronically homeless people ended last year, a study released Thursday by the Department of Housing and Urban Development shows.

DETROIT — After a night spent signing mounds of paperwork authorizing the transfer of cash, real estate, technology and other property, GM attorneys are expected to officially usher the new General Motors out of bankruptcy protection on Friday and onto a path toward a hopefully profitable future.

Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, the troubled company is expected to emerge cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans. Spurred on by the Obama administration's support, the process took just 40 days, even slightly quicker than crosstown rival Chrysler Group LLC's 42-day timeframe.

On Thursday, a bankruptcy court order allowing GM to sell most of its assets to a new company went into effect. The new GM, 61 percent owned by the U.S. government, will face a brutally competitive global automotive market in the middle of the worst sales slump in a quarter-century.

At a 9 a.m. press conference Friday, CEO Fritz Henderson will announce that GM will cut another 4,000 white-collar jobs, including 450 top executives. The company still employs 88,000 people in the U.S. and 235,000 worldwide.

Henderson also is expected to describe how GM will streamline its bureaucratic management structure to become profitable again. GM has said it will be able to make money even if the U.S. auto market stays at a depressed level of 10 million to 10.5 million vehicles sold.

Yet despite massive cost reductions, experts say GM must produce vehicles that people want to buy, and change its image to one on the cutting edge of efficiency and quality.

"It is the smaller, leaner, tougher, better cost-focused GM," said George Magliano, an automotive analyst with the consulting firm IHS Global Insight. "But they still have to deal with the problems that they faced longer-term."

Rep. Gary Peters, whose Michigan district is home to three GM factories, said the company's emergence signals a new era for the domestic auto industry and the thousands of people it employs.

"With bankruptcy in the rearview mirror, U.S. auto companies will even more aggressively pursue new technologies, become more globally competitive," he said. "Decades from now, our nation will be glad we did not let a global credit crisis put an end to the American automobile."

"I'm very much looking forward to a point where we're operating in clear air, and the name of the company not being associated with bankruptcy and loans and these things," said Mark LaNeve, GM's North American marketing chief.

GM ranked as the top global automaker in terms of sales for 77 years before Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. snatched its crown in 2008. The company sold nearly 8.4 million cars and trucks around the world in 2008, falling short of Toyota's nearly 9 million.

Once the largest corporation in America, GM held the top spot in the Fortune 500 ranking for 20 years before being pushed out of the top spot in 1973 by Exxon Mobil Corp. It reclaimed No. 1 status in 1985 and held it for another 15 years.

Experts say GM's future success will depend largely on its ability to persuade consumers that it's a different company, one that builds cars that will equal or outlast Japanese models. To illustrate the change, GM is considering a new name.

Turning a profit will not be easy. GM lost more than $80 billion in the last four years and survives only because it expects to receive $50 billion in U.S. government loans. Without the loans, its executives have said the company would have been sold off in pieces.

The Obama administration has said it does not plan to interfere with day-to-day operations, though it ousted ex-CEO Rick Wagoner and has been involved in picking the new company's board.

Most of GM's model lineup is expected to stay unchanged for now. But the company on Friday will probably show off its newer, more efficient models, as well as plans for a U.S.-made subcompact and rechargeable electric vehicles.

Also on Friday, Henderson is expected to announce that Bob Lutz, GM's product guru, will remain as a special adviser. Lutz, 77, announced in February that he would retire at year's end.

In addition to the U.S. government's controlling interest, the United Auto Workers union gets a 17.5 percent stake of the company through its retiree health care trust, and the Canadian government will control 11.7 percent. The remaining shares went to bondholders of the old company.

The parts of GM not moving to the new company will become part of "old GM," a collection of assets and liabilities that will be sold to pay creditors.

Almost immediately, GM will try to show how it's a different company, perhaps by changing its familiar square logo from blue to green, to reflect its environmental focus.

"I think that as a corporate identity the color change could well be a smart move," said Tony Spaeth, president of Tony Spaeth/Identity, a Rye, N.Y., firm that helps companies craft identities. "It lends a little bit more reality and sincerity of intention to 'We want to change the way we do things.'"

Today's consumers are sophisticated and will seek out environmental information to help make shopping choices, said Allen Adamson, managing director at branding firm Landor Associates.

"They have to do this just to stay in the game and to win on that dimension. To win on green, this is a very big challenge," he said.

Toyota, for instance, is known for its breakthrough hybrid gas-electric technology, and GM could accomplish the same thing with its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car due in showrooms by late 2010.

___

Fredrix reported from Milwaukee. Associated Press writers Bree Fowler in New York and Stephen Manning and Ken Thomas in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK (CNN) -- The New York Philharmonic has been invited to perform in Havana, Cuba, according to a document obtained by CNN.

The second time I met Claudia Cadelo we were holding up--each of us by one corner--a piece of sheet with the name "Gorki". It was at the concert at the Anti-Imperialist Bandstand, where we chanted for the liberation of the singer from the band Porno Para Ricardo. Our shouts were heard briefly and then cut short thanks to the beatings they gave us and the enormous loudspeakers broadcasting the imperturbable voice of Pablo Milanes. A short time later, that girl by my side would open an honest and uninhibited blog, Octavo Cerco-The Eighth Circle-that now has many followers inside and outside of Cuba.

What I like most about Claudia is that she admits to being afraid, confesses that she jumps when she hears noises and that she fears the long arm of State Security. Who doesn't? In a country where so many have called themselves heroes, to declare in advance that you are frightened is something too sincere to be accepted. There is a mistaken idea that courage takes epaulets, years of incarceration, or scars; not the languid face of a calm woman who displays not rancor but questions. This fragile blogger, from her fear, disproves these stereotypes every day.

July 8th we celebrated Claudia's 26th birthday at our home. With the Blogger Journey, discussions, a documentary and even a little rum. I drank to this girl who writes her opinions, these truths that many mature and stout males only dare to whisper into the ears of their wives.

Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.

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The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.

House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.