Rosie O'Donnell, radical hero? In the years since leaving her Emmy Award-winning talk show, Rosie O'Donnell has become the "most visible lesbian in the country" and single-handedly opened up daytime television to candid dissent, writes Kera Bolonik in the Nation. But until she stops cracking Chinamen jokes and cleaving to 9/11 conspiracy theories, says Bolonik, she won't be the public critic the left needs.

"Fetal personhood" and abortion rights: An Arizona woman has "mounted a grassroots campaign ... to get the government to give parents who deliver stillborn fetuses the option of receiving a 'certificate for stillborn birth'" -- but abortion rights advocates fear those efforts "could aid anti-choice groups as they attempt to chip away at or eliminate abortion rights," reports Allison Stevens in the American Prospect.

The $16,000 summer vacation: On the Huffington Post, writer Stephanie Losee, who is paying $1,390 a week in childcare so that she can work while her three children are on summer vacation, makes a case for revising the academic calendar.

The "smoke and mirror science" of gender testing: USA Today reports that a new crop of mail-order blood and urine tests, including one called "Tell Me Pink or Blue," promise expectant mothers answers about the gender of their children just eight weeks into pregnancy.