Somewhere, this holiday season, a face will light up because of a cookie. But not just any cookie—it will be the 10,000th cookie decorated and donated as part of the Drop In & Decorate effort.

Okay, that's an incendiary headline, isn't it? I'm not one to enter the circular firing squad on Republicans (okay, so yes, I am, but not fresh-out-of-the-box governors who are serving as a bellweather for the Democratic agenda's chances in 2010), but there are certain issues on which I feel, as a libertarian feminist, on which I have to seek clarification, the question of whether a certain candidate actively works against the interest of women being one of them.

A sign posted at the Aspen OB/GYN Women's Center in Provo, Utah has many women up in arms. What's so offensive? Read for yourself. The sign reads as follows:

What is stopping you from using your food blog—or, really, any blog you write—to save the world? What is your barrier to entry into that place where your blog goes beyond telling a story and actually serves as a platform for the causes about which you’re most passionate?That was the question asked by Lydia Walshin of A Perfect Pantry and Drop In & Decorate® cookies for donation at the end of How Food Blogs Can Save The World, our panel at BlogHerFood ’09, and a worthy question which which to grapple. The participants in the panel--who also included Pim Techamuanvivit, who has raised more than $250,000 through her Menu For Hope event on Chez Pim, and Valerie Harrison of More Than Burnt Toast, who will release a fundraising cookbook in November as part of the efforts of BloggerAid: Changing the Face of Famine--were in various stages of their efforts, and they wanted to share their expertise with conference attendees.

Last Saturday, conservative grassroots activists turned out in record numbers to march on Washington in protest against out-of-control spending and an ever-growing government bureaucracy.

The election seems like ages ago. Ah, how fondly I remember it: SNL sketches, terrible suits, embarassing debates, promises made that would never be kept. Especially when it comes to the latter, haunting memories of those long days and nights aren't something we want to relive again and again and again. But, there are some things that just won't die, and for the Obama administration, its those sneaky little campaign promises that seem to be coming back to haunt him.

Janet Fraser, a home birth advocate and founder of the site Joyous Birth, recently experienced a personal tragedy when her baby died at her home in Australia on March 27 during her free birth or unassisted childbirth (where a woman gives birth at home without the aid of a midwife or doctor).

I consider myself to be a pretty eco-conscious kinda gal. I mean, I do all the right eco-trippy things: I reduce, I re-use, I recycle, I blog about same. And I`m pretty willing to adopt whatever eco-friendly practice anybody tells me might help save the planet. Turn out my lights for an hour? No problem. Stop drinking bottled water? Done. Tell people to stop having babies? Err... what?

There are a lot of ways to change the world. Because, face it: bringing about any of kind of change is best effected incrementally. You don't just set off one morning to run a marathon; you put on running shoes, you do some stretching, you run around the block, you come home and then you keep repeating, running longer and faster with every new attempt. Likewise with changing the world: it's the little incremental steps that do the trick. If we set out to just all of a sudden force a transformation, we wouldn't be very successful. Also, we'd probably get really bad cramps.

Lilly Ledbetter. Coverage of pregnant women under SCHIP. And now, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues.

When my daughter was born four and a half years ago, I had no plan for how long I would breastfeed her, I just knew that I would start off breastfeeding and then go with the flow. It so happens that in our case going with the flow meant that one month shy of her fourth birthday she was still nursing (albeit only once a day), and as I would soon discover, we weren't the only ones on this path. I wrote my thoughts about this shortly before her fourth birthday in a post titled On Nursing a Preschooler.

The holiday season is in full force - a time that, at least in theory, should be filled with joy and happiness. But what if you find yourself having feelings that are far from those of joy and happiness? Feelings of hopelessness, agitation, guilt and even lifelessness?