I suppose this is an extreme way to get out of basting a turkey every half hour. Or watching that disturbing Sarah Palin video where she's aggressively chatting away while a turkey is being slaughtered behind her. Or listening to Hank Paulson explain why Americans need to pony up another...

Tomorrow my 18-year-old son Jesse will be one of the millions of young people to cast his first vote for president. As a political junkie and a parent I couldn't be more thrilled. This one of those milestones you look forward to when you wonder why you braved 30 hours...

It's been a few fun days watching the Palin-McCain campaign. Oops! I meant the McCain-Palin campaign.

Granted it hasn't been easy with these two mavericks to tell who's really in charge, what with Palin contradicting McCain on issues like throwing in the towel in Michigan and whether to dredge...

I'm not sure who should win this week's award for Biggest Sexist in Politics. John McCain or Bill Clinton.

For that matter, we might also want to consider Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, for the greeting he gave Sarah Palin when he first laid eyes on...

John McCain sure looked tired during his acceptance speech last night. And I don't just mean the bags under his eyes or the lackluster delivery or how he couldn't wait to get off the stage. Cindy was beaming (an aside here: did you see how happy she was the night...

What a speech. It was warm and persuasive and smart, and only a troll like Dick Morris could have failed to be moved when she talked about her commitment to the working folks of America. And yes, while Hillary gave a killer speech -- and thank god, maybe now those...

I didn't want to believe it.

The incident in late July at the Beverly Hilton. The sneaking into the hotel through a side door. The hiding in the bathroom at 2:30 in the morning while a team of reporters from The National Enquirer lurked outside. The Other Woman ensconced...

I was extremely confused by Bush's rosy economic speech. Here my local bank, IndyMac, is collapsing, with distraught customers waiting in line for hours last week to get their money. Gas at my neighborhood pump has surged to nearly $5 a gallon, the price of oil plunging aside. California's unemployment...

He hugged me when I walked in the back door and found him unexpectedly standing in my kitchen. Unlike so many of my 18-year-old son's friends, who've crossed that invisible line into manhood where it's not considered cool.

Because he and my son had drifted...

This essay is an excerpt from the recently published anthology, "The Maternal Is Political," by Shari MacDonald Strong.

In May of 1999 I flew from Budapest into Tirana, the desiccated capital of Albania. I had come to this city...

This morning I asked my 15-year-old daughter what she didn't like about Hillary Clinton.

"I mean at the beginning, before she started going negative and attacking Barack Obama," I said, trying to rewind history.

My daughter was sitting at the kitchen table, where thousands of impassioned conversations in...

Is this ever going to end?

Superdelegates who haven't yet declared for Obama or Hillary are waiting it out under the pretense of letting the remaining voters have their say. And then come June or perhaps July--when they feel like it, I guess, or when they're sure Hillary is toast...

Things sure are getting weird with Hillary. And I don't just mean the arresting spectacle of the 60-year-old presidential candidate in her suit and good jewelry knocking back Whiskey and yukking it up with some working-class fellows in an Indiana bar. Hey, I'd be driven to drink too...

Let's hear it for guns!

It's really getting dangerous in Los Angeles. The last two weeks we've seen so many random shootings I'm starting to lose track. I would say it's beginning to feel like Baghdad only that wouldn't be quite fair. The U.S. troop surge...

Read more Super Tuesday coverage on HuffPost

It is election day and I am, improbably, still on the fence. This is really not good. I know. As my Republican family would wearily tell you, it is also quite uncharacteristic. For most of my life I have had fierce opinions...

Before John Edwards said a single word in New Orleans about ending his bid for the presidency, before he set foot in an abandoned neighborhood in the lower Ninth Ward to talk about poverty, the same place he'd announced his candidacy 13 months before, the pundits were already...

Anyone who thinks John Edwards is a loser and should take his marbles and go back to North Carolina apparently was not at the Edwards' rally in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday.

Is this why the campaign played "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" during the pre-rally warm-up?

It seems...

I hate to spoil everyone's fun this week -- the relentless focus on Hillary's tears (were they a shameless ploy for sympathy or genuine?) and their role in her surprising New Hampshire victory. Or Bill's snarky comments likening Obama's uplifting vision to a "fairy tale." But isn't this a presidential...

It's too bad the White House isn't putting on a production of "A Christmas Carol" this season because Bush would have made the perfect Scrooge.

The issue barely made news, but last week Bush vetoed a bill that would have greatly expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or...

I'm having trouble with Hillary.

It's not so much that she got rattled by her opponents in the last Democratic debate, or that she allowed her staff to do her dirty work with the "piling on" video they quickly displayed on her website. Yes, women still encounter sexism across...