From early favorites like 26-year-old Aaron Schock (R) in Illinois to hopefuls like 29-year-old Bill McCamley (D) in New Mexico, the odds on their candidacies differ. But their numbers are as high as ever before, and many are running in some of the most competitive districts in the country.
Scott Kleeb, a 32-year-old Democrat who ran a spirited campaign in a dark-red Nebraska House district in 2006, is weighing a Senate bid this year. He argues that the Sept. 11 attacks helped galvanize a generation of young people to believe in public service again, and those young people are now running for federal office.
If you’re not watching Adult Swim’s late-night cartoon Frisky Dingo (12 am on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings), you’re missing out.
Why watch news about an ever more protracted primary race, when you can get into the ‘real’ race for the White House: Killface (D) vs. Cruise Zander (R).
Killface, a maniacal monster once bent on world destruction, offers the Democratic ticket a unique bounce: He saved the world from global warming. Sure, he was trying to blow the planet up—only inadvertently shoving it a smidge away from the sun—but it’s results that matter, right?
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia had its season three premiere last night on FX Network.
I’ve always be a fan of this hilariously cold-heated cult favorite, being hooked after its 2005 premiere. If Seinfeld was the show about nothing, Sunny that says it’s about nothing while punching you in the face.
But does Sunny signal growing apathety among us 20-somethings?
Is America’s public education system heading towards crisis?
Stephen Jordan, writing for Inside Higher Ed, tackles this question—offering a dire assessment of America’s secondary and higher educational apparatus.
Jordan finds urban high schools and state-colleges are failing their students. The three-pronged assault of dwindling funding, raising tuition, and growing accountability standards have harshly afflicted urban areas: where students cannot keep pace with raising fees.
But has this led to a new color line in America’s education system?
Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (D-NV) is trying to kill Yucca Mountain Johnny.
While less known than Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, or even the Planeteer Ma-Ti, Johnny had a profound mission: teaching America about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.
‘‘Regardless of how you feel about Yucca Mountain,” Rep. Berkley penned in a letter to colleagues, “we should all agree that the Department of Energy's use of a Joe Camel look-alike to influence children is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money.''
Last year the same motion failed. But in a fortuitous turn, it seems few legislators wanted to revisit this bruising political battle: her motion passed by a voice vote, without any debate.
Does Yucca Mountain Johnny look like Joe Camel, or does nuclear energy have the same addictive power as nicotine?
Represenative Christopher Shays (R-CT) suggested Wednesday night that Iraq Study Group be reconstituted and sent back to Iraq.
Speaking at an forum organized by Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) on the House floor, Shays reccomended the Iraq Study Group prepare a report to dovetail with General Petraeus Congressional testimony slated for this September.
Government-backed vacation time for American workers? Courtney E. Martin, writing for The American Prospect, makes the case for Big Brother taking a cue from Big 'Bluto' Blutarsky.
Martin suggests a ‘vacation irrationality’ among American workplaces: driven by the constant need for success, they actually push their workers to be less productive by starving their R&R time.
Is this a cause to rally behind? And how can it be crafted to help all types of workers—from day laborers to cubicle warriors?
Read selections of Martin’s piece below, or read the full article here.
Should the government ensure fairness in news radio and television?
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) are about to unveil legislation that, among other things, would restore the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine.
The Trap paints an America hijacked by corporatist and short-sighted economic policies that now prohibit its youth from landing the meaningful occupations they crave.
Even a post-industrial American dream still needs matériel to survive.
So aspiring world-changers, are we all screwed? Is this anything new? And what can be done?
MOQA Co-President Nick Ballen '09, in an interview last Tuesday, described the graffiti as directed at specific individuals, mentioning names along with words and images.
"The campus, in general, is pretty accepting - but there are underlying things that don't come up," said Ballen, on whether the incident was related to a larger sentiment across campus. "Sometimes that is harder for an organization to deal with. These incidents are 'isolated' but 'not' because there are smaller versions [of the graffiti] everywhere. This sort of incident reminds us to pay attention to such things around campus, because when we ignore the little things, something big like this happens."
The school has responded: with two open meetings—April 3 and tomorrow—and Middlebury’s Queer Alliance has been determined to bring up a necessary—if uncomfortable—dialogue at Middlebury.
Sage Bierster, in an opinion piece for the Middlebury Campus, calls for us all to stop unintentionally fostering discrimination by using certain, still commonly used words:
Recruiters are granting thousands of what they call "moral waivers". A "moral waiver" it turns out means they'll take someone who has committed a crime or even someone who has been in prison. Last year, a total of 8,129 "moral waivers" were given to men who volunteered for the Army.
Are these the people we want representing us? As American soldiers, they're going to give the people they meet around the world the impression that they are what all Americans are like and if they have been taken from the bottom of the barrel, they are not what we're all like.
...
In 1942 we were at war with Germany and it wasn't long before drafted college students and high school graduates dominated our military. It changed the United States Army for the better and in two years made it the best fighting force there has ever been. The Army and Navy were no longer made up of losers.
Now comes the part of this I never thought I'd hear myself say: Whenever we, as a nation, decide to fight a war – in Iraq or anywhere else – it should be fought by average Americans who are drafted.
"According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back." (AP)
Three of the foreign-policy analysts I respect most—Charles Krauthammer, Fareed Zakaria, and Lawrence Kaplan—argue that we should be consolidating our forces in Anbar province, not trying to retake Baghdad.
While giving time to air these commentators' grievances with the Bush escalation, he demands fidelity to Bush—and uses the German invasion of France in 1940 as proof:
…I am reminded of the reasoning of General Franz Halder, chief of the German general staff, about Case Yellow, the plan for the invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940. He put the odds of its working at ten-to-one against but concluded that all the other alternatives were worse. Of course Case Yellow did work. And the odds of success in Baghdad are much better than ten-to-one against.
The enemy (both Sunni and Shiite) has chosen to fight in Baghdad. We have no choice but meet the challenge, or else concede defeat. Let’s at least wait to see what happens before moving on to Plan B.
What odds do you give Bush’s escalation plan? Should comparisons to Nazi Germany guide America's policies in Iraq?
Saving Iraq wasn’t enough for former Iraq Study Group co-chairs Secretary of State James Baker III or Senator Lee Hamilton. So now they are off to resuscitate our nation’s Constitution.
Say what?
Today the University of Virginia has launched a Commission to investigate that very question.
While the subject may appear overly academic, it’s exactly quite germane to the current crisis in Iraq. Why did Congress not play a more forceful role in interrogating the Bush administration’s plans for war? Why does the Congress no longer “declare war” but merely “authorize” the President to exercise war powers.
In a Republic should not there be serious deliberations before war—with a state or non-state entity?
Warren Christopher and James Baker III are examining just that, or—as the Miller Center puts it—they hope to “examine how the Constitution allocates the powers of beginning, conducting, and ending war.”
And of course who’s coming along for the ride but Lee Hamilton.
More from the Miller Center:
When armed conflict is looming, debates about separation of powers and the uncertainty they often generate can impair relations among the branches of government, cast doubt on the legitimacy of government action, and prevent focused attention on policy. Armed conflicts with non-state actors and other non-traditional “wars,” as well as the courts’ involvement in war powers questions, make the Commission’s work relevant.
The Commission intends to produce a report making recommendations to assist Presidents, Congresses, Courts, and other policymakers in addressing war powers issues. When they are issued, the Commission’s recommendations will be entirely prospective in nature and not applicable to the present presidential Administration or present Congress.
One of the strangest features of the contemporary political landscape is the convergence everywhere of the Left with Muslim jihadis and extremists. Those who once protested against the installation of cruise missiles in Western Europe, say, now demonstrate against the war on terror. Those who praised the Soviet Union as peace-loving are now busy signing petitions and publishing articles to the effect that Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear weapons (if it comes to that) are a third-world success and nothing to worry about. Anti-Americanism has made bedfellows of people whose world views and values are ostensibly incompatible.
David Horowitz was early in pointing out what he called this “unholy alliance.” Now an English writer, Nick Cohen, has tackled this subject in a book with the title, What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way…
But what did Cohen find? Instead of reacting to Saddam and Osama bin Laden as the fascists they were, the Left devised justifications for them. Here was 1930’s appeasement all over again, compounded by hatred of self and of democracy. Millions marched in the capitals of Europe under banners proclaiming that war in Iraq was not to be fought in their name. They were thus denying to Iraqis the freedom they themselves enjoyed. Worse, they did not even recognize what they were doing, inventing conspiracy theories about grabbing other people’s oil or the long arm of Zionism. For publicly objecting to all this, Cohen has become, it is not too much to say, an unperson. He writes, “I learned it was one thing being called ‘Cohen’ if you went along with liberal orthodoxy, quite another when you pointed out liberal betrayals.”
How do readers respond to these claims? Did the ‘Left’ rationalize Osama bin Laden's heinous actions?
And how important is this thesis when compared America’s questionable success in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the failure to keep nuclear weapons away from North Korea?
Known as the youth opportunity card, it was introduced as one of a raft of measures designed to help wayward kids back on the straight and narrow, as part of the government's Respect Action Plan and Every Child Matters programmes.
It was supposed to give them access to sports and recreational services with electronic pocket money that would be given or taken away according to how well behaved they were. Disadvantaged children were to have their cards topped up with a government subsidy.
Apparently the requisite computer system’s cost outweighed the benefits of this aborted policy.
Girl Scouts have an economic, medical and moral imperative to dump junk food as their $700 million fundraising source….Girl Scout Cookies are high-calorie, high-sugar, high in saturated fat and nearly devoid of nutrition. Using young girls as a front to push millions of cookies onto an already bloated population further exacerbates an alarming [obesity] crisis, no matter how cute the uniforms are.
Could it be true that little girls are selling sin door-to-door in exchange for merit badges?
...
But of course, more cookies do make the world a better place—as anyone who has ever had a crunchy, coconut-y, chocolate-dipped Samoa can attest. People buy Girl Scout cookies because they are good cookies for a good cause. Most people buy (and eat) them in moderation, so a boycott isn't changing health outcomes for the vast majority of cookie customers. And as Roth rightly points out, the Girl Scouts rely on the cookies for $700 million in revenue every year, revenue that they are unlikely to be able to replace with other sources—even in the five-year transition time graciously allotted to them by Roth.
While I believe Mangu-Ward exaggerates the left-leaning attack on the Girl Scouts, her general point bares some thought: what role should the government or concerned citizens play in modifying the dietary decisions of the population.
Today's Guardian reports on a landmark resolution in Washington, D.C., endorsing an atmospheric limit for carbon dioxide a carbon dioxide cap and trade system.
Not much—it’s non-binding. But it did prove, if you didn’t already know, politicians of all stripes are publicly stating the need to address global climate change.
Notice Nancy Pelosi's long-winded response to Lehrer's question of gauging the impact of a Congressional resolution critical of the Bush's administration Iraq policy:
REP. NANCY PELOSI: This nonbinding -- the motion of disapproval of the president's escalation of the war in Iraq is going to set the stage for a whole new debate on Iraq. We'll take care of this, this week...
JIM LEHRER: A debate among whom?
REP. NANCY PELOSI: In the Congress of the United States, and hopefully the president of the United States will hear what the American people said. They have lost faith in the president in his course of action in Iraq. In the election, they called for a new direction in Iraq.
Democrats are saying to the president: This is not the way to go. It has failed over, and over, and over, and over again. Now, let us make this statement, which is very powerful, which is very powerful, and set the stage for how we take up legislation, whether it's the funding or the policy legislation that relates to Iraq.
Pelosi earned herself a "C" tonight, failing to succinctly address what this resolution does--express the frustration the American public feels towards Bush's Iraq policy--and use it as a springboard for a Democratic approach to effective foreign policy.
Former Middlebury President John M. McCardell, Jr. is heading up a national campaign to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18.
As reported in The Campus, McCardell has teamed up with students to form the not-for-profit organization Choose Responsibility. The group has spent most of the last year doing research on the effect of the current alcohol age restriction on highway safety.
While not affiliated with Middlebury College, McCardell and his group are speaking to an obvious concern of the students attending Middlebury College and young people in general.
Groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) lobbied hard for the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which forced states to lower their legal drink age to 18 lest they be denied federal transportation funds. The goal? Lower highway fatalities in the United States.
Choose Responsibility, whose recent "white paper" finds the higher drinking age has only a modest impact on highway safety when compared to the safety features of airbags and seatbelts, has the following goal:
Choose Responsibility advocates that states launch alcohol education programs to teach young adults about responsible purchase, possession and consumption. Upon successful completion of a course, a participant could receive a license to consume and purchase alcohol at the age of 18. The license would be legal in the state in which the 18-year-old is a resident, and in the state in which he or she attends college, if they attend out of state. (from The Campus)
Will this be the new cause célèbreof progressive students nation-wide? And how should other activists judge this new campaign?
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