Is volunteer work worth less than paid work? My answer is no. Volunteers roll up their sleeves every day to make New York a stronger and better place to live.

If you want something done when the going gets tough, ask a volunteer. Earlier this month, I traveled to the south shore of Long Island to talk with some of the volunteers who put self-interest aside as Hurricane Sandy devastated communities and destroyed homes.

The government-protected shorebirds of Rockaway have begun their annual nesting, just as they would if Hurricane Sandy had never swept through there six months ago.

Some of the birds have nested on an 11-block stretch of beach that the urban park rangers close off each spring as a breeding sanctuary. Others have settled in a debris-strewn patch of sand outside the preserve and just across the street from a huge housing development that was begun when such a storm as Sandy had not seemed possible.

Last week President Obama stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his predecessor to help celebrate the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and the legacy of President Bush’s eight years in office. A central part of that legacy—much criticized by candidate Obama—was the creation of Guantánamo, an offshore prison in violation of our most basic constitutional and human rights principles. Now in his fifth year in office, Obama has only perpetuated Guantánamo as a symbol of human rights denied by abandoning his promise to close the prison. Today its continued existence is literally a matter of life and death.

For nearly three months, a majority of the 166 men imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay have been on hunger strike. Men have lost over 30 and 40 pounds. Some are skeletal and too weak to move. At least 17 men are being “saved” by being strapped into chairs and force fed through a tube inserted through their noses, down their throats and into their stomachs. In the words of Tariq Ba Odah, one of the Center for Constitutional Rights’ clients, “I am tortured in the restraining chair when they fill my belly with Ensure. All my limbs are restrained and my clothes soaked from vomiting the formula mixed with water and laxatives.”

Back in March, the Transportation Security Administration announced it would rescind its longstanding prohibition against the carriage of small knives in airplane cabins. Beginning in mid-April, passengers would be allowed to carry implements with blades of up to 2.36 inches* onto planes.

Well, it's mid-April, and it's not happening. The announcement triggered strong backlash from flight attendant groups, pilot groups, and airlines, and in response the TSA has postponed the changes until further notice.

To call Gary Maynard embattled doesn’t do full justice to the word.

The secretary of Maryland’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services watched this week as the agency he has run for the last six years turned into a national laughingstock after federal officials indicted 13 women who, as guards at the Baltimore City Detention Center, acted like little more than underlings for members of a dangerous prison gang, the Black Guerrilla Family. Four of the correctional officers became reportedly pregnant by the leader of the gang, and two of them had his name tattooed onto their bodies—one on her neck, the other on her wrist.

When I landed in Los Angeles this past Sunday evening, the terminal had the look and feel you'd expect during a snowstorm: long, sullen faces, unusually heavy crowds, agents rushing around in an obvious state of fluster. The departure screens were striped with red: CANCELED, CANCELED, CANCELED. But outside it was in the high 60s and balmy.

Welcome to the wequester. Mandatory budget cuts are kicking in. The FAA has been forced to furlough hundreds of controllers—up to 10 percent of its tower and en route radar facility staff—and the nation's airline passengers are feeling it.

As the sun set Wednesday on the birthplace of the king of rock and roll, federal agents in hazmat suits wrapped up their daylong scouring of a tae kwon do studio on the edge of town, a watchful throng of reporters standing vigil, waiting to see what the hell could possibly happen next.

It’s been quite a week here in Tupelo, what with the arrest last week of a 45-year-old Elvis impersonator on suspicion of sending letters laced with ricin to President Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), and a local judge, Sadie Holland. Then came the stunning announcement Tuesday that Paul Kevin Curtis was free to head back to Heartbreak Hotel and shake his exonerated pelvis all over Mississippi again. Then news broke that another man—a 41-year-old blues singer, karate master, insurance salesman, Mensa member, accused child molester, and one-time GOP candidate for the Mississippi House of Representatives named J. Everett Dutschke—had become the focus of the investigation. Then stories spread that this Curtis fella and this Dutschke fella had it out for each other and were trading nasty emails about body parts allegedly found at a hospital and fraudulent Mensa memberships and snarky comments left on each other’s YouTube pages about all that. Then rumors swirled Wednesday that Dutschke had skipped town, and the cops had a BOLO (be on the lookout) for his van. Then Dutschke showed up at the studio—in the van!—and the men in the white suits searched that, too, as the karate master, who has not been named a suspect or charged with any terrorism-related crime, shifted his public-relations strategy from talking to any reporter within earshot to pacing beneath the green awning of a tattoo parlor across the street. Then Curtis, the Elvis impersonator, hopped on a plane to New York City with his lawyers in tow, set to celebrate his independence Thursday morning on Good Morning America, among other places.