Beauty before talent. That is such an ugly phrase. I think everyone knows that it works that way in Middle School, but it should not work that way at Wimbledon.Yet it does.Beauty of a player is among the things taken into consideration when deciding on the court selection at Wimbledon and it has been confirmed by All England Club spokesperson Johnny Perkins.

Just when we thought the Fourth of July weekend was going to be dominated by continuing coverage of Michael Jackson's death, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin stepped in to give us something else to talk about -- her sudden and unexpected announcement that she will resign before the end of the month.

I've followed the Waxman - Markey legislation, infamously known as cap-and-trade, for some time now, being that I've a factory-employed step-father, farmers in my family, a small business-owning husband, and, like all of us, I pay energy bills, the prices of which seem to increase annually.

Within an hour of its editorial staff posting its side of the story on an influence-peddling mini-scandal, the Washington Post has added an update saying its publisher, Katharine Weymouth, has canceled plans for "off-the record salons." Earlier this morning The Post responded to a story from Politico on a flier circulated Wednesday by the newspaper's business arm

"I long to hear that you have declared an Independency - and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors...If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ---Abigail Adams

“We want to celebrate this black man,” Mr. Foxx said of Michael Jackson. “He belongs to us and we shared him with everybody else.” - Jamie Foxx, (from the New York Times)

Today is Canada's 142nd birthday. W00t! From coast to coast and from the 49th parallel to the Arctic circle Canadians are celebrating today. Fireworks, barbeques and the resurrection of 80s bands (seriously, Loverboy is playing here) are on the menu at communities all across this country of ours. It is one of the few days of the year, along with World Junior Hockey finals, that we let our Canadianness shine and revel in it. Here's how Canadians are celebrating this year.

Each day the media cloud over Michael Jackson's death mushrooms broader and wider with rumor, speculation, and tidbits of fact. Yesterday morning the big story was that Katherine Jackson, Michael Jackson's mother, has been awarded guardianship of all three of his children, Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr. aka Prince; Paris Michael Katherine; and Prince Michael Jackson II aka "Blanket."

If there’s one thing that Katie Orenstein is passionate about, it’s helping women’s voices penetrate the largely male-dominated (by 85%) Op-Eds (for those not familiar with journalism lingo, that’s an opinion piece historically published in newspapers opposite the editorial page, but which has now translated to online forums, as well). Katie is founder of The OpEd Project, a day-long seminar created to help women find their voices and engage in these public debates. She is bringing a portion of her seminar to BlogHer ’09, leading two sessions in our Leadership track: “Owning Your Expertise” and “Writing Your Op-Ed.”

Remember how remarkable it seemed several months ago when a plane sat down in the Hudson River and the first news and photos of the crash came from Twitter? Then the fly ash spill in TVA's Kingston plant was covered first on Twitter. That was about the time that articles about how the old media just didn't get digital media started appearing.

BET gave out their annual music awards last night.  I'm going to be straight up right now and say I didn't watch it.  That's right, I'm the BlogHer TV Contributing Editor and I didn't watch that TV show. In fact the only way my cable box ever lands on the dreaded BET channel is if my finger slips on the remote.  Then I make sure to get the heck out of there before my eyeballs fry and my blood boils.

I spent most of today in a car driving through the mountains, and even I was unable to escape the news of Bernie Madoff's 150-year sentence for running the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of this country. Twitter was abuzz with the news, it was all over the radio and the 'net, and basically everyone seemed to have something to say about it.