As supporters of Gay Marriage are have discovered, it's never easy to be on the Mormon Church's enemies list. The Church of Latter Day Saints backed the anti-Gay Marriage Proposition 8 in California with out-of-state funds, and gave the right a heartbreaking victory this past election cycle.

In 2008 we are faced with a question: What is the easier path for an African American male, becoming president of the United States or an NCAA Division I football coach? The answer reveals something sordid about college sports, as well as university presidents and the boosters who back them.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week: all Plaxico, all the time. There's nothing like an NFL player shooting a hole in his own leg in a packed nightclub to become our latest walking, talking weapon of mass distraction.

It's amazing how an eight-minute phone call can cloud a charmed life. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, like Martha Stewart before him, is officially in hot water with the SEC.

If there were a Mount Rushmore for political athletes, who would be carved into the great monument? For my money, it would include Muhammad Ali.

One year ago, using a brilliance you would have to go to the Alaska governor's mansion to equal, I predicted a Sacramento Kings/New York Knickerbockers championship. It took effort to produce such sparkling idiocy.

Your sports page may have recently induced an unpleasant sense of déjà vu. A pro football star, by all accounts, seemed caught in a spiral of depression.

Dallas Mavericks All-Star Josh Howard has been raked over the coals of public opinion this week for daring to say what more than a few athletes think. He was caught on someone's cell phone camera saying that he doesn't stand for the national anthem.

The death of Don Haskins would make news throughout the sports world, even if all he ever did was coach college basketball. The grizzled coyote hunter, known as "the Bear," enjoyed a Hall of Fame career, after all, winning 719 games at Texas El Paso.

The Sydney Morning Herald made its assessment of the Beijing Olympics under the headline "China misses games opportunity." It trotted out the usual criticisms with a new one thrown in – "too much organization" and "robbing the events of a lively audience" because some events had empty seats.

To run a full marathon experts suggest that the aspiring athlete requires at least six months of rigorous training, proper gear, a particular diet, regular check-ups, mental focus and preparation, and a variety of gadgets depending on one's budget.

The last thirty years haven't exactly been kind to the labor movement. It's been a story of slow death, with decades of falling union numbers, stagnant wages and disappearing pensions--all signs pointing toward total oblivion. It's been the era as former UAW President Doug Fraser put so aptly, "The one sided class war."

The curtain will come down on the Beijing Olympics on August 24. The Paralympics will then commence. When they conclude the world will be left to consider the full impact of the Games – the spectacle, the competition, the reputation of the host country in light of what has taken place during the weeks of awe-inspiring televised sporting performances.

Jonah Goldberg's regular column in the LA Times is usually an awkward grab bag of right wing talking points backed by knowledge of history that would shame a poodle, although a poodle would never be so pompous.

The Beijing Olympics represent a vision of the kind of future for which the Communist Party USA strives: a world where people from hundreds of countries come together peacefully to enjoy a common cause.

If baseball is sincere about seeing the game return to the cities and if they don't want home run derbies whiter than the Republican National Convention, they are going to need to do more than offer meager urban academy programs.

For many years, ever since the commencement of the modern Olympics in 1896, the US and European powers have controlled the Olympic Games. They have come to believe that they "own" them. The figures tell the story.

As we remember the 40th anniversary of that dark day of April 4th 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, it's worth recalling the reaction by Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star Roberto Clemente.

SpyGate is the sports scandal du jour. It centers on the New England Patriots surreptitious videotaping of the New York Jets last September and the subsequent destruction of the evidence by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Last weekend the NBA All-Star Game came to New Orleans. If you were one of the thousands to make the trip to the Big Easy and hang out on Bourbon Street, you no doubt saw one kind of NOLA.