Any discusion of the "n" word in mixed company, mingling ethnic groups, gets uncomfortable, maybe even dirty. It'll shake some folks up, maybe burn a few, but if we're lucky, like supernaturally blessed lucky, we might learn something to heal our disease. So, I've set aside the post I'd intended to write about Starbucks closing. Instead I'm picking up a topic that I've told other bloggers privately I won't discuss again until possibly next year, use of the "n" word.

"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."- Harry TrumanCalvin Coolidge went above and beyond the call, reportedly owned a pygmy hippo and a wallaby, but I'm ashamed to say that I don't know enough about his presidency to know if that says anything about his track record. (That may say enough, actually - with those kinds of animals on your mind, what time do you have left to run the country?)

Ory Okolloh blogs at KenyaPundit, and also is a co-founder of political sites Ushahidi and Mzalendo. I heard her speak this morning at Global Voices Citizen Media summit on her blogging experiences. Throughout the Kenyan elections and the political violence there, she updated her blog very actively, sometimes every hour. Her blog became the center of controversy.

Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fatah spoke just now at Global Voices Summit about bloggers who resist government censorship. YouTube and mobile blogging and cameraphones are extremely important. But also, connecting bloggers and photobloggers to the wider struggle for democracy in Egypt. The stakes are very high for the government, and you can't fight in isolation to publish what you like without consequence to your body, to your freedom.

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."--Dorothea Lange, American photographer, (1895-1965)A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, but some photographs can be worth just one heavy handful of potent words - words pregnant with meaning, set in bold with exclamation points and a severe emotional font, like Toxica.

"I think there are many different ways in which you define leadership. As a feminist, and as a feminine feminist, I truly believe that we don't do a very good job in the United States of believing that you can lead by serving, and I think the United States needs to think deeply about being in service of the rest of the world."

One of the leaders in the movement to reform copyright laws to catch up with the cultural and technological changes in our society has turned his attention to reforming American politics, and he's using these same new cultural and technological phenomena to help him achieve it. Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University* law professor and founder of the Creative Commons, and Joe Trippi, who made something of a name for himself working the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, have launched Change Congress:

Consult any expert about dinner party ettiquette and you're likely to hear that there are three things you never talk about when you're eating: sex, money, and politics. However if you're dishing up the food on a blog, a little politics mixed in can spice it up nicely, and lately I've been seeing food bloggers talking about presidential politics everywhere I look.

Super Tuesday has finally arrived.  It's the day 22 states have presidential primaries and the votes cast will go a long way toward determining the eventual nominee of each party.  In honor of Super Tuesday I've put together a list online video clips you just might want to take a peek at.  Either to help you make your decision or to help you justify to your friends and family why you've decided the way you have. Some are serious, some are wacky and some are just mindless entertainment. And in the spirit of how the media and the politicians love to lump all voters into pre-programmed voting blocks I've decided to do the same.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Stop the Spying campaign asks for people all over the U.S. to send photos and videos of their opposition to the telecom immunity bill. Here's mine: