The Huffington Post is a liberal or leftist American news website, content aggregator, and blog—founded as an alternative to existing conservative online media outlets such as the Drudge Report—by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, the late Andrew Breitbart, and Jonah Peretti, featuring various leftist columnists and various news sources. The site offers news, blogs, and original content, and covers politics, business, entertainment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy, healthy living, women's interest, and local news.

The Huffington Post was launched on May 9, 2005, as a liberal/left commentary outlet and alternative to conservative news aggregators such as the Drudge Report. On February 7, 2011, AOL acquired the mass marketHuffington Post for US$315 million, making Arianna Huffington editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. In 2012, The Huffington Post was the first commercially run, United States digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer Prize.

The Huffington Post was founded by Arianna Huffington in May 2005, and launched a few days later on May 9. The Huffington Post has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site each month. Prior to The Huffington Post, Huffington hosted a website called Ariannaonline.com. Her first foray into the Internet was a website called Resignation.com, which called for the resignation of President Bill Clinton and was a rallying place for conservatives opposing Clinton.

Russell Edward Brand (born 4 June 1975) is an English comedian, actor, columnist, singer, author and radio/television presenter.

Brand achieved mainstream fame in the UK in 2004 for his role as host of Big Brother spin-off, Big Brother's Big Mouth. His first major film role was in the 2007 film St Trinian's. He became known to American audiences when he got a major role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall which led to a starring role in 2010's Get Him to the Greek. He has also been a voice actor for animated films such as 2010's Despicable Me and the 2011 film Hop. He starred in the 2011 remake of the 1981 Dudley Moore film Arthur.

Brand is noted for his eccentricity and his controversies in the British media, including his dismissal from MTV for dressing up as Osama bin Laden and controversies while presenting at various award ceremonies, as well as his former substance abuse. The 2008 prank telephone calls he made to Andrew Sachs while co-hosting The Russell Brand Show with Jonathan Ross led to his resignation from the BBC and major policy changes in that organisation. His prior drug use, alcoholism and promiscuity influenced his comedic material and public image. He married American pop singer Katy Perry in October 2010, and filed for divorce from her in December 2011; the divorce was finalised in 2012.

Mehdi Hasan is a British journalist who has worked in television current affairs and the national press.

After graduating from Christ Church, Oxford in 2000, with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), he began his working life answering the phones on the ITN newsdesk, before working as a researcher and then producer on LWT's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, with a brief period in between on BBC1's The Politics Show. He then became deputy executive producer on Sky's breakfast show Sunrise before moving to Channel 4 in June 2007 as their editor of news and current affairs.

He has appeared four times on the BBC Question Time: on 13 May 2010, 23 September 2010, 10 February 2011 and 8 December 2011. He also makes frequent appearances on the Sunday morning programme The Big Questions.

He has been appointed as a new presenter on Al Jazeera's English News Channel and will be presenting the new series of "The Cafe" starting in July 2012.

He was appointed senior editor (politics) at the New Statesman in the late spring of 2009, but left the post in May 2012 to take up a post as political director at The Huffington Post website. Political Correspondent Rafael Behr replaced him at the Statesman, although Hasan will continue to write a weekly column.

Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.