Millions in America watched the Academy Awards in record numbers but one of the biggest wins of the night had to have been the 45-year-old actress Sandra Bullock who won Best Actress for her winning colorblind portrayal of a real-life story.

Sarah Palin will not only help to re-launch Jay Leno’s second stint as The Tonight Show host but will serve as an example for other conservatives and those leaders in the Tea Party Patriot movement that late night can be a welcome home for its supporters and viewers.

While not every airplane flight can have a federal air marshal on it, it may be possible that every flight could come equipped to disable potential air bombers like 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit-bound Christmas Day bomber who has been indicted on six criminal counts including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder of 289 people.  According to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA(AFA-CWA), alert flight attendants were able to thwart Abdulmutallab’s terrorist intentions.

Most supporters of abortion rights will provide a litany of reasons, rationales and explanations for the termination of a life.   Yet in the midst of the maelstrom of the Reagan era a decision was made by a mother and a father that would go against the grain of accepted public practice and pro-abortion advocacy.

This is election year in Ann Arbor, the state of Michigan, and in many places all across America.  One of the most crucial issues of the decade will be how to preserve life.  Two years ago then-Governor Sarah Palin came out of Alaska and hit the national stage for the first time.  Many liberal politically correct pundits called her an “untested” candidate, but she has turned out to be one of the most dynamic populist national political leaders that the supporters of Life have had in quite a long time.

Sarah Palin, the numerous Tea party patriots, and last summer’s warnings of potential unrepentant death panels taking hold of life-and-death medical decisions stirred up a nation and brought focus to one of the most important issues of our past decade.  That is who determines our quality of life?  What about at the last stage of our life or even at its beginning? Should it be the government, hospital staff, or anyone else beside ourselves?

As 2010 approaches and materializes, a new decade begins. This once-every-ten-years benchmark presents a great opportunity to not only launch a new direction for the coming year but also for the whole new decade as well.

The direction we would like our lives to take and the pathway we are preparing are going to be largely determined by the composition of the matter we journey over as well as the faith we will need to live by over the next 120 months.

The holiday season can be filled with warm happy families and smiling couples. Yet even during the holiday season domestic violence does not take a break. According to the National Institute of Justice “financial strain and unemployment” can impact rates and severity of intimate partner violence. In addition, escalation of alcohol consumption can create the perfect tsunami for increased stress and unrestrained domestic abuse.

Fifty-five years ago young children all across America walked into their respective schoolrooms and with pride bursting in their young chests they recited the Pledge of Allegiance.   There was a new and deeper meaning reflected in the addition to this pledge – the words “under God" were inserted to read, in full, “one nation under God.”

When we sit down at the Thanksgiving table this week I am quite certain there at least a few feelings that swoop up and tug at our conscience. However we intend to celebrate this ceremonial coming together of family and friends, there is the distinct possibility that something may be missing from the table. It could be the representation of the gift of thanks from our last Thanksgiving.

Life decisions are often made when we feel that we are at a crossroads where the decision to turn to the left or to the right seems as clear for us to make as it is to breathe. Yet what about those times when the decision is not quite as clear where the variables that we are weighing are as cloudy and murky as a morning fog?

Twenty-five years ago I stood there on the first floor of a large apartment building on the west side of Detroit with its lobby filled with peeling and crumpling walls and a literal shooting gallery of addicts in various stages of wakefulness. As a community tenant organizer, I had received a call for help. The man who opened the door just after peering through the drapes nervously shepherded me hurriedly into the building.

The approaching Golden Years had turned to rust while companies downsized in a rush to survive and families downsized from wants, fancy holiday plans, and expected bonuses to necessities like keeping the family alive on dwindling credit cards and shrinking checks or borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. America’s Dream was turning to dust and it seemed that for many there was not only loss of hope but also loss of God’s intervention.

For many years I have thought about the celebration of Halloween as one of our nation’s almost obligatory pastimes. It was something that most of us grew up with. There was typically the one- or two-week build up to the climatic event -- Halloween. In typical fashion there were costumes and paper sacks, and small orange kettles to collect the evening’s delights. When we were young, our parents probably thought that it was innocent fun where one day a year we would be able to scour the neighborhood in search of the best candy or the housethat gave out most delicious caramel apples, and in school there may have been a contest for the best Halloween costume.

If you are reading this, then this morning when your eyes opened you received the first blessing as well as the first miracle of the day.   You have probably completed this simple act every day for the past 30, 50, or maybe 67 years or so, but nonetheless, it is still a gift that is not given freely or should be squandered as if it were an entitlement.   Is there some deep psychological or religious analysis involved in this inquiry?  Not so much.  Simply put, there are at least one or two family members who we once cherished who are no longer with us.

 Sometimes we watch it with pain in our hearts and wish the discomfort of seeing if it would somehow slip into some other world.  At other times we walk up upon it unexpectedly as if it were something we truly did not want to encounter and soon the minor inconvenience will dissipate.  Its common name is Domestic Violence.  Its all too common result is death.