When capital punishment makes the news, it rarely is because something happens to prove its utility or necessity. In fact, the death penalty hits the headlines only when the argument for it is undercut -- a telling trend that should lead the United States to join the rest of the civilized world in banning executions.

Today's news that a Texas execution carried out in 1989 most likely sent an innocent man to death fits with this trend.

From The Huffington Post:

Carlos De Luna was executed in 1989 for stabbing to death a gas station clerk in Corpus Christi six years earlier. It was a ghastly crime. The trial attracted local attention, but not from concern that a guiltless man would be punished while the killer went free.

De Luna, an eighth ...

Finally. After several years of trying to straddle the issue, endorsing equality but only within a separate status for gays and lesbians, President Obama has finally gotten on the right side of history.

In a sit-down interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, Obama completed what has been a markedly long and oft-mocked evolution on the matter.
"I've always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally," Obama told Roberts, in an interview that will air in full on ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday.
"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members ...

It is quiet this morning. The dogs are asleep -- Rosie in her crate with the door open, Sophie in the hallway by the kitchen. I have a gate blocking off the office where I'm working and where the crates are located.

It seems odd to me to keep the two of them separated. They are sisters, puppies from the same litter, and they've spent nearly their entire lives together. But, for now, we have little choice.

What we've learned in the three-plus years that we've had Rosie and Sophie is that owning two females, especially two from the same litter, is a bad idea. It presents a constant struggle as they both strive for dominance and attention. There have been fights -- some pretty nasty -- and while we have kept it under control as best we ...

An IMF study reported on by The Huffington Post today should give all of us pause. Americans are buried in debt and, because of it, may be just one step away from financial catastrohe.

Today, Americans owe some $704 billion in credit card debt, and more than that in both auto loans and student borrowing.

Many Americans may not even realize the extent to which debt underpins their lifestyle. A number of analysts argue that many Americans who consider themselves middle class are in fact leading a precarious, over-leveraged existence, with few savings and little financial cushion in case of emergency.

Think about it. Most of us are just one health emergency -- cancer, a heart attack, some disabling injury, a ...

 A Georgia man hurled a brick through a window because going to jail was better than remaining hungry and on the streets. According to The Huffington Post:

Faced with more nights on the street, Brown said he thought lofting the brick through the building would give him at least a few hours in a place where "someone's going to offer me a sandwich and drink."

Robert Marbut, a national homelessness consultant, said it's rare for homeless offenders to spend more than a night in two in custody, let alone almost a year. He said there needs to be more alternative sentences to teach homeless offenders about life skills, hygiene and nutrition.

"That shows you how wacky things have gotten when we don't have as a society an intermediate ...