It's being called a "landmark decision." A federal judge ruled November 18 in favor of New Orleans residents and one business, the plaintiffs, and against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a Hurricane Katrina flooding lawsuit. U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr, decided that the Corps failed to maintain the levees that breached during Katrina, flooding St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The case involved six plaintiffs, two of which are in the same household, and the court awarded $720,000 in compensation to the remaining four.

It's your last chance to vote for your favorite 2009 CNN Hero!A "Blue Ribbon Panel" selected the 2009 Top Ten CNN Heroes out of 9,000 nominations, and now you can choose the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year from their Top Ten. Voting ends Thursday, November 19 at 6 AM ET.

I have new faith in pop culture as a vector of enlightenment now that the TV show Glee has given us Wheels, a thoroughly contemporary After School Special about people with disabilities.

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.

When I  received this assignment, I thought it would be easy to take a clear position on the issue of whether I believed the Stupak Amendment to the House health care bill was worthwhile or even necessary. As I thought further, it became less clear to me, as someone who believes in the foundations of small government and individual liberty upon which this country was built, and given the reality of the time in which we live, it became more difficult for me to make a definitive statement.

First they called her "that girl". Then, "madam". Eventually, they referred to her as "sir."

I didn't want to write about the Holocaust again. It hurts too much. Surely with so many other things happening in the world, I could just let mention of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht pass by unspoken, couldn't I? Just once? Then I read this, reported in the Sacramento Bee about events this week:

November 20, 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). According to UNICEF, "The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights."

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.

Right now, I'm watching Democrats hemorrhage Independents in key races, most notably in Virginia. Now, normally, I'd be making conciliatory gestures, convincing myself that I have to focus on 2010, and that the races that mattered haven't happened yet. In fact, they are so far down the road, that its impossible to tell whether tonight will have any impact on them, or whether we've spent every last shred of capital we have nabbing a few races. I'll leave the election analysis to someone else, though. I'm concerned with implications.

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, "lays out an agenda for the world's women and three major abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence including honor killings and mass rape; maternal mortality, which needlessly claims one woman a minute."

Last year during national Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and I mean exactly one year ago on October 28, 2008, I wrote about one of the most disturbing cases with a connection to domestic violence the nation had seen in a while. A tale of horror unfolded, the murders of the mother, brother and young nephew of acclaimed actress and singer Jennifer Hudson. The alleged perpetrator, her sister's estranged husband William Balfour, was later arrested.