The 2011 Kennedy Center Honors

This post has been updated.

This Tuesday, see D.C. at its most glamorous.

The Kennedy Center Honors, an annual celebration of America?s most accomplished performers, is one of the highest achievements in the arts. This year?s Kennedy Center Honorees ? actress Meryl Streep, singer Neil Diamond, actress and singer Barbara Cook, musician Yo-Yo Ma, and musician Sonny Rollins (pictured below) ? will be lauded by celebrity peers, and will join a distinguished group of cherished performers such as Itzhak Perlman, Cary Grant and Ella Fitzgerald, among others who have been given the honors.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=9b9ef35886023fa95443c3c64906d6c8

religion politics world

Seriously, Iowa? Ron Paul?

Rep. Ron Paul is in a dead heat with Mitt Romney for first place in the Iowa caucuses. If he does pull out a win on Tuesday, Iowa Republicans will have chosen as their commander in chief a man who says it was wrong to kill Osama bin Laden.

In a recent interview with a Des Moines radio station, Paul not only came out against killing bin Laden but gave a remarkable reason for his opposition: The operation that took out the man responsible for the massacre of nearly 3,000 people in our midst, he said, showed no ?respect for the rule of law, international law.? International law? Back in 2002, Paul wrote in a column that ?America must either remain a constitutional republic or submit to international law, because it cannot do both.? I guess it is goodbye constitutional republic since Paul now claims that international law constrains us from killing the man behind the most brazen attack on our country since Pearl Harbor ? the man who, as we learned from documents recovered from his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan,was actively plotting another attack to exceed the magnitude of 9/11. Since when do libertarians acknowledge the power of supranational law to prevent a sovereign United States from defending itself against foreign aggressors?

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=54b4c4b128e60fd11c2bab4b2d319ec7

religion politics world

?The Snowy Day,? first picture book with black child as hero, marks 50 years

Children in snow suits are a common sight during winter. But in 1962, Peter from ?The Snowy Day? was something most children in the United States had never seen before: an African American character who was the hero of his own book.

?None of the manuscripts I?d been illustrating featured any black kids ? except for token blacks in the background,? wrote author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats, who died in 1983. ?My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along.?

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=eb9ca9658916d5016a2abe62434b57d4

opinions lifestyle entertainment

New Year?s resolutions: Parenting edition

I love resolutions. They?re like pennies thrown into a wishing well. Every year, I imagine self-actualization can be had for a few tossed off goals.

(The fact that this is an annual exercise, and thus never fulfilled, does not diminish my enthusiasm.)

So, as usual, this year I have a long list. Three of them are a direct result of writing On Parenting: one comes out of an issue covered in a post; another from a general reaction to writing the blog; the third because readers have let me know, repeatedly, that this is a habit I must discard.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=d88529a10dbe9c5c70849d5fff380b98

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?Speechwright: An Insider?s Take on Political Rhetoric,? by William F. Gavin

?I have serious doubts about eloquence,? confesses William Gavin at the start of his memoir of a life spent writing speeches. This is, in its way, a startling admission. Speechwriters, as a rule, put great stock in eloquence. They have a weakness for it. They will strive and strain to achieve it at the slightest provocation, such as a blank piece of paper.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=abf399602863538913335ecc01ffac70

news new religion

Syria bloodshed defies Arab monitor mission

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian security forces killed eight more protesters and an Arab League organization urged Arab monitors to leave Syria, saying unrelenting bloodshed made a mockery of their mission. President Bashar al-Assad's forces, keen to prevent huge protest rallies under the monitors' eyes, have killed at least 286 people since December 23, the day before the mission's leader arrived in Syria, according to activists who tally casualties. Some of Sunday's eight deaths occurred when security forces fired on protesters in the Damascus suburb of Daria, they said. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-opposition-signs-plan-post-assad-future-000227419.html

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Music review: Guided by Voices? ?Let?s Go Eat the Factory?

Before getting back together to play a festival in 2010, Guided by Voices had been broken up for six years, having ended life as politely and uneventfully as it had begun.

The band?s first post-reunion disc boasts 21 tracks in 42 minutes (not a record, even for GBV). Some of the songs are great. Others aren?t even songs, they?re outlines of songs or snippets of conversation buried under psychedelic noises.

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