Gloria Steinem turns 81 today and much has changed since her early days in the movement. As she points out, before the the second wave, people assumed differences between men and women were innate and unchangeable and, therefore, that gender roles were biological as opposed to learned. We now know that inequality isn't "natural," which is "a huge change," she says. There is more: reproductive rights (still under attack in many places), laws against sexual harassment, equal pay legislation (which clearly has still not fully resolved income inequality), the Civil Rights Act in the U.S., marital rape laws, and the idea that the personal is political.

Hope for a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year has fallen by the wayside, but the Obama administration is rallying for one last hurrah before mid-term elections in November. Late last week, the White House unofficially announced plans to sue the state of Arizona over the now notorious Senate Bill 1070, a state law passed this year to crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

SB 1070 allows Arizona police to check the immigration status of a person if there is a "reasonable suspicion" that they are undocumented, and forces immigrants to carry government papers proving their identify at all times.