The National Day of Silence will be held this year on Wednesday, April 21, and at Ohio State, the day will conclude with students presenting stories, poems, essays, and other work about being LGBT, in what is being called the "Night of Noise."  The event will feature a reading by Kevin Kumashiro, the director of the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education in El Cerrito, California, and the editor of Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian-Pacific-American Activists.

The Day of Silence began in 1996 at the University of Virginia to call attention to the school-based discrimination and harassment experienced by LGBT youth, which serves to silence their voices.  LGBT students and their allies take a vow of silence for the day, while handing out information to others to explain their action.  In 2003, more than 2,000 middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities across the country participated, making it the largest student-led LGBT event ever held in the United States. At Ohio State, more than 50 students took part in the event last year, and more are expected to do so this year.  "Students from a wide array of

Lee Gough won’t be paying her federal income taxes this year.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the artist and part-time temp worker won’t be setting money aside for April 15th – just that the federal government won’t be getting any of it. The 37-year old Brooklynite has decided to make 2004 the year that she takes a stand, a move she’s been working towards for some time now. “I’ve asked the temp agency to increase the number of allowances on my W-4 form, and when I had unemployment I told them not to take any taxes out,” she says. “I’ve also stopped paying the federal excise tax on my phone bill, and when tax time comes along, I’ll take the $13 I’ve collected and redirect it to a more worthy cause.”

Richard Clarke was right. So was Paul O'Neill. During the six months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks the Bush administration paid little attention to the threat from al-Qaeda and instead set the stage for a war with Iraq.  

Two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, national security wasn't even a top priority for the Bush administration. Security-job security, health security and national security-was last on a list of major issues Bush planned to deal with in the fall of 2001, according to a transcript http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010831-3.html of a speech Bush gave on Aug. 31, 2001 to celebrate the launch of the White House's new website.

  National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, who is scheduled to testify Thursday before the commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks, says Clarke, President Bush's counterterrorism specialist, is a liar after Clarke told the commission two weeks ago that the Bush administration failed to deal with al-Qaeda seriously before 9/11.