The test came just two months after North Korea angered international powers over a successful ballistic missile launch that landed a weather satellite into orbit and sparked even more United Nations sanctions on the self-proclaimed “self-reliant” state.

The U.N. Security Council denounced the test and is planning future sanctions, but their actions will continue to be in vain unless all of the Security Council’s member states can uniformly sanction North Korea, isolating it from international aid until it ceases nuclear programs.

The problem is that, though most of the world’s powers are allied in efforts to ostracize the DPRK and its antics, China has continued an economic relationship with Pyongyang, despite the fact that it has voted in favor of implementing the last three sanctions. Any international trade with North Korea strengthens Kim Jong-un’s regime and his desperation for making a name for himself — not the impoverished North Korean population that has an abysmal GDP of $40 billion as of 2011, according to the CIA World Factbook.

North Korea has made it abundantly clear that sanctions, embargoes or any other international actions will not deter its plans of developing weapons of mass destruction.

Even after the missile launch in December, the DPRK boasted their actions were posed to create a nuclear warhead capable of traveling as far as the U.S.

When a government as oppressive and ill-advised as North Korea continually ignores international stability the way it has since the end of the Korean War, there needs to be serious and relentless pressure placed on it until it complies.

Ignoring the severity of the DPRK’s persistence toward nuclear weapons by only suggesting U.N. sanctions that it continues to ignore is shameful.

Though nobody wants the events of the Korean War to be repeated, the ineffectiveness of U.N. sanctions needs to be considered when thinking about future plans regarding North Korea.

If China is unwilling to participate in implementing the sanctions, perhaps it is worthy of consideration to implement sanctions upon bystander, but enabling, nations.

While there are many important issues that face this country, I was pleased that the president brought up manufacturing. He said that Washington must “guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is made in America.” With the Republicans reeling and looking to find support, Obama must strike a bipartisan agreement on the fiscal issues facing this country. Now is the time for Congress to finally make America a “magnet for jobs and manufacturing.”

Though there have been signs of erosion, the American manufacturing industry is still one of the largest in the world. A Jan. 2012 Congressional Research Service report found that America’s share of global manufacturing activity has decreased in recent years. China’s manufacturing sector is almost as large as in the United States, valued at $1.814 trillion and $1.756 trillion respectively. In Dec. 2012, the manufacturing sector made modest gains in manufacturing activity and factory hiring.

One of the common arguments related to manufacturing thrown around recently is that American companies are outsourcing jobs to other countries because their labor laws allow manufacturing operations to be more profitable. However, this is not as big of an issue as most Americans think it is. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics has found, the effect of outsourcing has been minimal. In the third quarter of 2012, when more than 100,000 workers were laid off, firms told BLS that less than 1 percent of these workers had their jobs moved to another country.

An article from The Atlantic reported that American companies are seeing the economic benefits of keeping jobs in America and have, in fact, started to “insource” jobs. China’s Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturing giant, is actually planning on increasing their operations in the United States. American companies are realizing the benefits of keeping jobs in the U.S., which will limit the effect that outsourcing will have on the economy.

On the other hand, what’s preventing companies from producing in the United States is the attractiveness of production in other countries. Part of the issue is that the value of the dollar made producing goods in the United States less attractive than other countries with cheaper labor and production costs and lower marginal tax rates. If America wants to become more competitive in this regard, the federal government must be willing to create a plan that provides subsidies and “lowers tax rates for businesses and manufactures that (will) create jobs right here in America.” This would help reduce the costs of production in the U.S., which would make companies more willing to attract new jobs without having to reduce workers’ salaries.

One point that President Obama has been stressing is that increasing our focus on alternative energy will make America a stronger manufacturing country. According the Department of Energy, in Aug. 2012 the wind sector was employing “75,000 American workers, including workers at manufacturing facilities up and down the supply chain, as well as engineers and construction workers who build and operate the wind farms.” People are now feeling the benefits of alternative energy manufacturing. On top of providing jobs, it will help Americans save money on energy consumption. This is the direction the manufacturing sector is going. If we fail to recognize the importance of alternative energy, America will fall behind.

Manufacturing is what has driven America over the past century. If we plan to give up on manufacturing, we are throwing the future of this country away. But words can only go so far. This plan will not completely revive the American car industry or the steel industry. While it’s not complete, President Obama’s plan will make American manufacturing industry more competitive that it is today so that we can be authors of the next great chapter in our American story.

Obama opened his speech reflecting on the last four years, saying the nation had come a long way economically.

“Together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger,” he said.

Then the economy took center-stage as Obama spoke of continuing job growth, recognizing that employment numbers are  coming back to America.

“Our economy is adding jobs — but too many people still can’t find full-time employment,” he said. “It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class.”

Proposing a partial solution the economic struggles of the middle class, Obama turned to the minimum wage, advocating for a large jump from the current $7.25 limit.

“I want to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour,” he said. As expected, Obama addressed the deficit, assuring Americans that progress is being made to reduce the national debt.

“Both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion — mostly through spending cuts, but also by raising tax rates on the wealthiest one percent of Americans,” he said. “But deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan.

We must continue growing an economy that creates good middle-class jobs.”

Obama then shifted his speech toward the environment, stressing that recent climatic events like Hurricane Sandy and nationwide water droughts were not freak incidents, but signs of climate change.

“We must do more to combat climate change,” Obama said. “We can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it’s too late”.

Obama said growth within the clean energy industry is crucial, not only to secure a healthy environment for future generations, but also to keep America globally competitive.

“Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America,” he said. “Solar energy gets cheaper by the year — so let’s drive costs down even further.  As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.”

In light of the numerous gun tragedies that have occurred across the country in recent months, Obama closed his State of the Union with a focus on gun control.

“I know this is not the first time this country has debated how to reduce gun violence,” he said. “But this time is different. Because in the two months since Newtown, more than 1,000 birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun.”

Reactions to the address were mixed across the aisle, with certain talking points energizing opposing parties.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, spoke on behalf of the Republican Party in an issued rebuttal to the address, taking issue with many of Obama’s proposed plans.

“In the short time I’ve been here in Washington, nothing has frustrated me more than false choices like the ones the President laid out tonight,” he said. “The choice isn’t just between big government or big business. What we need is an accountable, efficient and effective government that allows small and new businesses to create middle class jobs.”

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a statement in strong support of the president and of his plan to reform the education system and increase gun control.

“President Obama made clear tonight that he will continue fighting to create jobs, rebuild our economy and strengthen America’s middle class,” he said. “All of us should work together to reduce gun violence in our communities and invest in our future — in education, infrastructure and research.”

Obama made several comments asking for congressional cooperation, but Boston U. Professor Graham Wilson, head of the Political Science department, said future successful bipartisan cooperation was unlikely.

“Obama has learned that the notion that the Republicans want to compromise is fundamentally displaced,” he said. “He has learned that building bridges and cooperation is not going to happen.”

Despite the looming challenges in the months ahead, Obama closed the address with a call for unity among all Americans.

“We are citizens,” he said. “It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made.”

Obama said the economy has turned around since he took office and has begun creating jobs again. But, he said given the high unemployment rate and stagnant wages in the country, his work is not yet over.

“It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class,” Obama said.

Obama said his administration has worked to reduce college costs by expanding grants, loans and tax credits, and he added it is now colleges’ turn to do so as well.

Obama called for Congress to make “affordability and value” part of what the federal government looks for when it gives federal aid to colleges. Tomorrow, he said, his administration will put out a scorecard for colleges so students can evaluate which ones would give the “most bang for your educational buck.”

“Taxpayers can’t keep on subsidizing higher and higher and higher costs for higher education,” Obama said. “Colleges must do their part to keep costs down, and it’s our job to make sure that they do.”

While he said reducing the deficit is crucial, Obama said revenues must be part of this effort. He also called for combating climate change, comprehensive immigration reform and raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour.

Additionally, Obama talked about reducing gun violence in the country by requiring background checks and getting “weapons of war … off our streets.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., gave the Republican response to the speech, in which he said Obama’s mission was to grow government further.

“President Obama … believes [government] is the cause of our problems, that the economic downturn happened because our government didn’t tax enough, spend enough or control enough,” Rubio said.

Rubio, who said he recently finished paying off his student loans, also talked about the need for students to know what they are financially getting into when they start college.

He said the fix in higher education is not “just about spending more money,” but also about adapting to modern times.

College students are no longer just 18-year-olds; they are now also veterans, single parents and people who have lost their jobs, Rubio said. Because of this, he added, federal aid can no longer “discriminate” against non-traditional students.

“The 21st century workforce should not be forced to accept 20th century education solutions,” Rubio said.

According to Michael Wagner, a U. Wisconsin journalism professor, the State of the Union speech is not one in which presidents convince people of their ideas, but rather one in which they lay out their policy agenda.

If the presidents’ positions line up with public opinion, Wagner said the issues become more “salient” to the public.

“When the president mentions something in the State of the Union, the likelihood is that attention helps him be successful when the public’s already on his side,” Wagner said. “Making an issue salient when the people already agree with you can help convince the public to act.”

Since poll numbers suggest the public lines up with some of Obama’s positions on immigration and gun violence, Wagner said people might be more motivated to push for those positions.

U. Wisconsin College Republicans Chair Jeff Snow said the speech showed a “same old Obama” who does not understand how to create jobs.

“Unfortunately under Obama, more students are going back to their parents’ house and not finding jobs in their career fields,” Snow said.

Snow said Obama has also been unsuccessful in stopping tuition increases across the country and called it “doubtful” he would be successful in doing so this term.

Peter Anich, chair of the Young Progressives, a branch of Obama’s Organizing for Action, praised Obama’s proposals to bring down college costs.

“It was a well thought-out step to tie different funding to the affordability and cost effectiveness of universities,” Anich said. “I think it will provide incentives for universities to bring the costs down.”

Al-Awlaki’s death isn’t necessarily a truly senseless one — even if he is technically an American. What is senseless, however, is the refusal of the Obama administration to acknowledge the occurrence and sweep it under the rug.

Al-Qaida is an organization responsible for the death of thousands of Americans as well as our current involvement in the Middle East. Few would criticize the loss of one of its top agents. But what many could, and should criticize, is the silence from the president on the situation.

The Obama administration’s continued silence on the issue screams hypocrisy, considering he, as well as other democrats, slammed Mitt Romney all throughout the election for not opening up or being transparent enough in foreign policy.

Every head of state has secrets. That’s an obvious component of the job. Classified files, inherently, don’t get released to the public and, as private people, we are not privy to certain conversations. That’s fine. What isn’t fine is the secrecy running rampant in Obama’s administration at the present time.

More specifically, the administration refused to release a summary of arguments about why the executive branch is within its power to order a killing of an American citizen without any other form of approval. This summary was unclassified but eventually discovered and published by NBC News. As Americans, we are affected by the government’s haziness on arguments especially during war times.

Let’s avoid the argument that Obama could order any of our deaths on the fly, and we still have stake in the issue. Why does a president, or one specific branch, get to make such a decision without the approval of the other branches? Checks and balances are in place for a reason, and bypassing them opens up a can of worms disastrous for everyone — especially the American people.

The circumstances surrounding the summary is reminiscent of the Pentagon Papers save for one key detail. Unlike the Pentagon Papers, this summary was an unclassified file. No enormous breach of American security should be expected thanks to the release. What comes as a result of the leak is a better understanding of who our president truly is.

Obama has proven himself a successful candidate after being re-elected following an economic recession. We put our faith in him as our leader, but that can quickly change if his actions

continue to be so secretive and surreptitious.

The president blasted Romney for behaving in that specific manner, yet it seems Obama behaves similarly. Why should the American people put stock in a leader who not only follows a “do as I say, not as I do” policy on leadership, but is also unwilling to be transparent to the public he serves? Our last president, who we blindly trusted, sent us on a wild goose chase for weapons of mass destruction, gave us illegal wiretapping and indefinite detention. One would hope we learned from our mistakes.

Although Obama has proven that he can be trusted, these recent instances of secrecy and deception cannot. Transparency was one of the best points of Obama. Sadly, it seems things have begun to shift. The American people cannot allow that to happen. Accountability in our president is a must.

We cannot condone the acts of a head of state who puts his branch in absolute power. And we cannot condone the actions of a president who does not hold up to the expectations he sets for the opposition.

Carson, a neurosurgeon at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, took the stage Thursday morning with a speech that critiqued the tax system, Obamacare and political correctness — all while referencing Jesus. It was beautiful and it made me wish C-SPAN was a more watched channel.

While Carson’s speech began innocent enough, quoting verses from the Bible such as “‘With his mouth the Godless destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous escapes,’” the rest of the speech drifted far from anything Obama expected.

Carson first ripped apart the entire idea of political correctness (thank the Lord — wait am I allowed to say that, or will too many people be offended?). He condemned it as something that “muffles” American citizens. Needless to say, his speech certainly was not deterred by any such muzzle — though I’m sure Obama would have appreciated that.

On the subject of taxes, Carson made not only his case plain and simple but also plan plain and simple.

“When I pick up my Bible” he said, “I see the fairest individual in the universe, God, and He’s given us a system. It’s called tithe.”

For non-religious folk out there, tithing is the act of giving God 10 percent of your income through the means of the church. Wealthy Christians don’t give more than poor Christians. It’s always 10 percent.

Basically what Carson suggests is all Americans, no matter their income, give the same percentage of their income in taxes, just as all Christians give 10 percent to the church. Honestly, if it’s good enough for God, surely it should be good enough for the government.

Now I — nor Carson I’m sure — am not implying that everyone’s Christian or everyone in the government should do it this way because the Bible says so. That would be silly and infringe upon separation of church and state. The government should do it the way Carson describes because it just bloody makes more sense for all Americans to have to give the same percentage.

Carson then went on to mention Obamacare, despite being two seats away from Obama himself. I don’t pretend to understand all the mechanics of the healthcare policy he suggested, but the word “efficient” was used: a word that is disturbingly lacking from the vocabulary of our policymakers.

Carson suggested that a citizen should have a “health savings account to which money can be attributed pre-tax from the time you’re born until the time you die. When you die you can pass it on to your family members so that when you’re 85 years old and you’ve got six diseases, you’re not trying to spend up everything, you’re happy to pass it on and there’s nobody talking about death panels.”

After that statement, Obama switched his attention to the ground.

The idea of being able to pass on your healthcare to loved ones especially makes Carson’s plan stand out. Especially in a world in which little is legally allowed to pass on from parent to child — our own iTunes libraries don’t even actually belong to us (sorry future daughter, I guess my hardy collecting of Taylor Swift songs has been in vain). If I can give whatever amount of healthcare money I failed to use to my children, that will almost make up for them missing out on hours upon hours of Taylor Swift enjoyment.

Although it was obvious how uncomfortable Obama was throughout the speech, Carson still managed to be one of the few to stand up and speak out about the government’s inefficiency — an action other citizens would do well to follow.

Carson embodies everything that’s needed in a leader. Not only did he point out problems with the government, but he also offered common sense solutions, the latter of which many politicians seem to be lacking lately. Maybe we need a change from politicians in the White House. Maybe it’s time for just an average Joe, or even a neurosurgeon to lead our country in the right direction (no pun intended).

I’d like to hope that before the country’s next presidential election, our current president would learn from Carson. I’d like to hope Obama will take all the wonderful points from Carson’s speech and try to incorporate a few into his own plans, or even for Vice President Joe Biden to have taken something to heart.

Then again, I’m also hopeful that reporters will start being fair and balanced — so I shouldn’t hold my breath.

Just ask the United States Congress how much they know about that. I’ve learned a lot from them about disagreement and not working with others. U.S. history teaches us this country was built on compromise, a system of give-and-take and, above all, an underlying mutual respect for the person sitting next to you. The idea was that if our representatives worked together, the country would work better.

But you know what’s a great example of our country’s compromising values? The $1.3 billion that lawmakers cost the U.S. government while they were holding the debt ceiling hostage in 2011. The threat of a potential debt downgrade nearly blasted another hole in our already-precarious economic system. The $1.3 billion was the minimum loss estimate. But what’s ironic is they did it all over again on the fiscal cliff.

A message to Congress: The next time there’s another chance to have an incredibly vacuous argument about whether or not to move the country forward, please remember how much money it costs to bicker.

But Congress certainly wasn’t the only one teaching class in recent years. My man Mitt Romney sure gave his fair share of classroom lectures. I learned from Romney that changing your opinions to please people is a good way to try to get ahead in the world. I learned that if you work towards avoiding peoples’ concerns, rich folks will give you lots of money to keep doing it. But most importantly, I learned that caring 47 percent about anything gets you nowhere — sorry Mitt.

I mock what I watched this November, but it’s not with pleasure that I do so. I love this country and I find it disheartening that the 2012 presidential election reminded me more of a censored Jerry Springer episode than a contest between great men of great intent and aspiration. President Obama lost the first debate not because Romney had any content to his argument, but because Obama underestimated Romney’s capacity for obfuscation and his determination to reposition himself — yet again — to suit the mood of the general electorate.

It’s sad that we live in a time in which people are so uninformed and uninterested in working towards a common good and that politics is now a form of entertainment — or blood sport — instead of the respected form of civil service that produced great men and women in our history. How can it be that we claim to be the descendants of the “Greatest Generation,” a group of people whose great strength lay in their understanding that, at times, individual sacrifice and compromise are necessary in order for everyone to be better off?

Two months ago, a gunman in Connecticut mowed down 27 people: 20 small children, six teachers and his mother. This happened three days after a gunman shot up a mall in Oregon and in the same year as fatal mass shootings in Minneapolis, Tulsa, a Sikh temple, the midnight showing of a movie, a coffee bar in Seattle and a Halloween party on a college campus. Twenty-seven, two, six, three, six, 12, six, two. That’s a body count of 64. It’s time to ask again: How do we work together?

It’s time that our political system answer that question and learn to live within the times — not expect the times to live with them.

Our age is being reshaped by mass communication and mass communication is where change will begin. I loved that after every presidential debate, Facebook turned into a political forum for ideas and opinions on the candidates’ performances. That shows me there is hope, that people are interested. All of you who put up statuses that told me to keep my politics to myself can get lost. We need discussion.

That’s how we will begin to make a difference.

Next time you read about something you think ought to be recognized and changed, I want to hear about it. My friend at Northwestern University wants to hear about it. The Herald wants to hear about it. Chances are, people you never would expect to care want to hear about it.

In the end, it’s simple. Whether or not we solve the issues of our time will be the ultimate reflection of whether or not we can learn to work together — you, me, our congressmen, our professors, the deans, our new president — we is all of us.

Hundreds of students and community members lined the Yard in hopes of securing a spot in Memorial Church to hear the man introduced as “in truth, the elected president by America.”

Eric S. Chivian, director of the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, turned the stage over to Gore, whose talk was entitled “Healthy Planet, Healthy People.” The talk was sponsored by CHGE as part of the recently launched Paul R. Epstein Memorial Lecture Series.

During his talk, Gore lauded Harvard’s progress in becoming a more sustainable institution.

“One of my previous visits here with President Faust was to witness the launching of the Harvard Office of Sustainability,” said Gore. “And now some time has passed and we see extremely impressive results, not least of which is the incredible activism and engagement by students who have contributed to the progress the University has been able to make.”

Gore stated that consequences of global warming are compelling and devastating, but said that he believes in humanity’s ability to effect positive change.

“The dangers we face are almost unimaginably dire,” Gore said. “My hope is based on the history of our experience as a species.”

Gore said that the warming climate has destructive effects on human health. He noted examples of climate change that have influenced insect behavior and, therefore, the spread of diseases such as West Nile virus.

According to Gore, recent health dangers were anticipated by Epstein, a leader in the field of climate change at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Everything that I’ve read to you about these recent findings was anticipated by Paul Epstein,” said Gore. “He wrote seminal papers 12 years ago. He saw the pattern very carefully and he was right. We all have a great debt to him.”

Gore voiced his disappointment in the current political system and the lack of discourse related to climate change in the recent presidential election.

However, he expressed hope in President Barack Obama’s ability to combat the rising temperature trends.

“I am optimistic today also because in his inspiring inaugural address, President Obama made the climate crisis the very first challenge he discussed and spent more words on it than any other. I was thrilled by that.”

The idea of the night was change. Gore continually stressed the urgency of the current situation, appealing to the audience with analogies.

“We’re using the atmosphere as an open sewer and it’s functionally insane,” Gore quipped.

A capital gains tax is a special tax paid on, unsurprisingly, gains from capital investment. The problem, however, stems from the fact that under the current tax code, people who make their money through the management of capital, instead of through its investment, are also taxed at the flat capital gains tax rate of 15%, rather than through the progressive income tax. While this may seem like semantic quibbling more suited for an accountant’s office than the Oval, this policy leads to significant losses in government revenue.

The problem arises from the difficulty in defining the income of capital managers. Hedge fund and private equity managers, including venture capitalists, are compensated based partly on a management fee (usually between two percent and three percent of fund size) as well as a performance-based fee (usually around 20 percent of the gains from investment.) The argument in favor of the existing policy goes as follows: since fund managers are paid based at least partly on the performance of their funds, their earnings represent capital gains and should be taxed as such. The logic behind the capital gains tax being lower than all but two of the marginal income tax rates (historically 15 percent, though raised to 20 percent in the January 2013 fiscal cliff compromise) is that the money invested was initially taxed as someone’s income, and it would be unfair to tax that income twice at the same rate. While this argument holds water for wage-earning Americans who choose to invest the fruits of their labor, it does not for those fund managers whose primary income is from capital gains. While fund managers’ income may be performance-based (and in that no different from salesmen who work on commission), it is no more capital gains than any other form of income. Working to maximize others’ capital gains is not capital gains itself.

In the context of our current political budget mania, it is strange that such an obvious loophole should exist, let alone go largely unacknowledged. A quick look at the campaign contributions made to various members of congressional leadership, however, quickly makes the reason plain. Key leaders in Congress on both sides of the aisle are major recipients of hedge fund money. Both House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) count Paulson & Co, one of the most successful funds in the United States, among their top five largest donors. Paulson & Co is also the single largest donor to Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Securities and investment firms number among the top donors by industry for every single member of the 112^th Congress’ leadership.

While it probably comes as no surprise that politicians have a vested financial stake in policies that favor the titans of finance, this breach of fiscal logic has gone unaddressed for far too long. Even in the most recent presidential election, so dominated by debates over the relative tax policies of the two candidates, neither seriously mentioned reforming the government’s definition of capital gains.

This shortcoming in Congress’ examination of the capital gains prevents lawmakers from utilizing a significant tool for deficit reduction. Even if only the 25 most successful hedge fund managers were taxed according to the system of progressive income tax, the government could raise millions of dollars of lost tax revenue from the so-called “one percent.” As the congressional battle over budget austerity rages on, the time has come for Americans to push leading politicians to address this tax oversight, even if in doing so they must bite the hand that feeds them.

At the outset of his first term, an overcautious Obama squandered considerable political capital on tepid stimulus and healthcare bills due to a baffling inability to command the bully pulpit.  Mired in the minefields of increasingly radicalized Republican obstinacy, the administration’s myriad concessions and omissions rightly disheartened the president’s supporters.

To the glee of many of his supporters, the president delivered a full-throated defense of the social safety net, declaring that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security “do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”

Jabbing at climate change deniers, Obama asserted, “some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”

The first president to ever use the word gay in an inaugural address, Obama most poignantly underscored the motif of equal rights for all people by grouping Seneca Falls and Selma with Stonewall, succinctly linking the women’s rights, civil rights, and gay rights movements.

The recent inaugural address revealed a bolder, more bellicose president who, no longer fearful of re-election, eschewed the traditional highfalutin, hollow rhetoric of inaugural addresses for an unapologetic liberal agenda. It was an eloquent rethinking of the American Dream through the progressive collective action embodied in the address’s refrain: “We the people.”

And the speech contained many points that Republicans ought to rally behind rather than impulsively dismiss as an unnatural return to liberalism, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did. Obama channeled the quintessentially American ideal of self-reliance in articulating skepticism towards government as panacea, a call for tax code reform, and a warning to reduce the size of the deficit.

Seeing that the House of Representatives remains under intransigent Republican control, it’s unlikely that the president’s emboldened rhetoric can affect actual change on the policy front. But Obama has begun his second term in the right tone: one that is a marked departure from the seemingly weak-willed tone of the first term’s negotiator.

But while the administration is in the throes of renovation, I cannot help but feel uneasy about the president’s identity (and not in the nonsensical birtherist way). After four years of pessimism with the way the president has authorized the National Defense Authorization Act and drone strikes and expanded the police state, I must ask—who is Barack Obama?

He’s certainly not the liberal messiah that the 2008 campaign hailed him as. There’s a striking cognitive dissonance between candidate Obama and his actions as president. This is evident when one looks at his administration’s continuation and bolstering of controversial Bush-era practices like warrantless wiretapping, kill lists that sanction the extrajudicial killings of American citizens abroad, increased reliance on drone strikes in Pakistan employing questionable tactics like double taps (follow-up strikes that target first responders) and signature strikes (unidentified victims fitting a certain description are counted as combatants). All liberals should be vehemently opposed to these policies, perpetrated by a one-time constitutional law professor, which so flagrantly infringe the Bill of Rights. The chorus of opposition to President Bush has sadly fallen silent.

One might try to prove him faithful to his campaign pledges by pointing to his first term “achievements.” But many of these were watered down to the point of irrelevance by a dysfunctional Congress, including the healthcare law, the rescue of the financial and auto sectors, and the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Perhaps the question of Obama’s political identity is best answered by the man himself: “The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican,” the president said in an interview. It’s certainly true when one recalls that Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, Ronald Reagan increased the debt ceiling 18 times, and the individual mandate central to the Affordable Care Act was an idea promoted by the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank.

I worry about possible Democratic complacency as the Republican Party demagogues itself into obsolescence. Citizens should not embrace the false dichotomy of Democrat and Republican—the imprimatur of a self-identifying liberal president should not allow his controversial actions to go unchecked and unchallenged. The president and the establishment Democratic Party have drifted so far to the right that too many political debates are between center-right and far-right positions, leaving the center vulnerable.

As Yeats cautioned, when “the center cannot hold, things fall apart.”

The deaths of these men — and thousands of other al-Qaida affiliates — should be commended for doing so without putting more American troops in harm’s way.

However, the practice of drone strikes becomes controversial when the target is an American citizen.

On Sept. 30, 2011 American-born Anwar al-Awlaki was traveling with Pakistani-born American citizen Samir Kahn in Yemen when they were both killed by a missile fired from an American drone aircraft. Both men were high-ranking al-Qaida leaders and there was significant evidence they were planning to launch attacks against Americans.

The question is whether it is lawful and ethical to kill American citizens abroad, ignoring their constitutional rights to due process — even if they are affiliated with al-Qaida. A bigger question lingers as to how much power the executive branch has to overstep the judicial system in claiming that a suspect should be a part of this special rule — a rule that until recently was confidential in its definition and description.

America has been using drone technology for surveillance purposes since the 1960s, but has only been using them for air strikes for less than 13 years. Due to the immature nature of the technology, there are few military guidelines that precede over this kind of warfare.

The only documentation available from the Justice Department regarding drone strikes is a 16-page paper uncovered by MSNBC’s Michael Isikoff that only briefly describes the justification of such attacks.

Though the paper is not an official memorandum, it works as a legal representation of the classified documents that were reportedly distributed to the president and the executive branch agencies from the Justice Department’s legal council.

The justifications of drone strikes, the way they have been presented in the paper, leaves the legality of overruling an American citizen’s rights up to interpretation by the executive branch alone. Because the executive branch has the obligation to ensure national security, it can act on any threat without the oversight of other branches of the government.

America’s war on terror will never be free of controversy and hardship. The men killed by drone strikes were men who were determined to cause as much pain to Americans as they could, many men fighting these forces died in the process.

Unmanned drones allow the military to engage terrorists without the necessity having troops on the ground.

However ambiguous the current framework is, the president and the Executive Branch have the obligation to protect us from any threat both foreign and domestic. We should trust they will continue to work in the best interest of national security in fighting al-Qaida through any means necessary.

The Congressional deal that averted our going off the “fiscal cliff” at the beginning of the year did not, unfortunately, solve the problems of pending spending cuts and revenue shortfalls. The language of the bill merely forestalled the date by which Congress must act to prevent government spending cuts that economic analysts and the White House say “would have a devastating impact on important defense and nondefense programs.” Now the spending cuts begin soon, on Friday, March 1.

This situation requires action.

The possibilities are as numerous as the number of perspectives on governmental actions. My own preference is action that passes a budget for a whole fiscal year instead of continuing resolutions that postpone thought and decision, lower spending to arrest the development of a huge class of Americans who depend in some way on the government, and increases payments toward reducing the national debt.

But anything is preferable to nothing.

Procrastination is one of the great ills of society. Ask any student, and he or she probably will tell you that parents and teachers have admonished him since a young age against doing tomorrow what could be done today.

There are a few legitimate reasons for procrastination. The innumerable tasks before us require some prioritization; it would be improper of us to consider and resolve a small annoyance before dealing with a problem that threatens our way of life. By nearly all accounts, failing to stop the sequestration of federal spending presents the latter kind of task. It is the lesser, not the greater, problems that should be procrastinate or put off, and we should do so for the sake of addressing the larger ones.

There is a word for failing to address until the latest possible moments such a “fiscal cliff” as we face: lazy. The members of Congress, if they failed to do something to put our fiscal house in order, would be, in the words of a wise, sage man, “a bunch of bums.”

Inaction in this situation would be the opposite of productivity, industry, ambition and health. It contaminates public life with the feeling that the members of Congress can enact laws (as the Constitution says) “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” as it suits them, not the people for whom those laws are to be made. American citizens should not find themselves almost universally saying the same words sung by a character from the musical “Les Miserables”: “Where are the leaders of the land? / Where are the swells who run this show?”

In the absence of an established church, especially without one that uses a rigid hierarchy, such as Roman Catholicism or Anglicanism; in the absence of a nobility that holds certain legal privileges and exists in a feudal relationship with inferiors and superiors; in the absence of any social role-models apart from those that a person willfully adopts; the leaders of the United States are its politicians, especially the president and members of Congress. The only kind of social distinction that we all must recognize is the holding of public office. Every other kind of esteem or high regard that a person can receive from others is the choice of the giver. But everyone — even the people who did not vote for a victorious candidate — must admit that office holders are in some way special.

So why do they think they can get away with doing nothing? Even the most partisan of congressional districts (Republican and Democrat alike) elected their representatives to office so that they could do work. And yet, although members of Congress obviously postpone their confrontations with the biggest challenges the United States faces, we continue to pay their salaries and benefits.

In a complete reversal of a speech made by Winston Churchill — that “Never in the field of conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” — never have so few owed so much to so many.

As we gaze upon a tradition of heinous adherence to party rather than truly public service, all that we can do is hope that they rise to the occasion made for them by taking the oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

So what is the U.S. to do? Ideally, absolutely nothing.

If countries were celebrities, North Korea would be 2010 Charlie Sheen — dysfunctional, delusional and really interesting to follow. North Korea’s repressive communist government and its complete control of information more often finds itself the butt of jokes than in serious conversations, and rightly so.

The country is not sustainable. North Korea relies heavily on foreign food aid from several countries, including China, its closest ally, and for no good reason, the U.S.

Past negotiations for food and other forms of aid from the U.S. have worked as an extortion racket. North Korea promises to stop developing nuclear weapons and the U.S. gives aid as an incentive. Then, North Korea resumes developing nuclear weapons and the process starts over again. Extortion is usually the powerful extorting money from the weak, but thanks to leadership in Washington, North Korea is somehow extorting us.

The U.S. must realize North Korea is absolutely nonthreatening. If the U.S. could go toe to toe with the Soviet Union, a country with thousands of nuclear weapons, we shouldn’t be scared of a country that possesses maybe two.

There isn’t a reason to provide North Korea with aid, no reason what so ever. Giving aid to third world countries only helps legitimize oppressive governments. More often than not, dictators use food aid to control their people rather than to feed them.

However, North Korea is by no means wrong to develop nuclear weapons. In fact, given the ever-present involvement of the U.S. with countries without nuclear weapons, I’d say it’s a smart move. For the most part, countries with nuclear capabilities tend to be left free of unwanted U.S. military involvement. After seeing what happened to Iraq, it is only natural countries like Iran are looking to develop nuclear weapons.

The U.S. needs to respect North Korea’s sovereignty. It is a country’s right to develop weapons it feels are required to maintain sovereignty against foreign threats. At the same time, we need to stop sending aid, which only serves to legitimize Kim Jong-un’s tyrannical regime.

In other words, foreign policy is a lot better and cheaper when you just do nothing.

The proposal suggested a separate, individual private insurance policy that could provide contraceptive coverage at no cost for the employees of faith-based organizations.

“These proposed rules aim to provide women with contraceptive coverage without cost sharing and to protect eligible organizations from having to contract, arrange, pay or refer for contraceptive coverage to which they object on religious grounds,” the proposal stated.

The proposal is an amendment to rules regarding minimum insurance packages set forth by the Department of Health and Human Services as part of its regulatory authority under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

If the proposal takes effect, objecting organizations could provide employees with a plan that does not offer contraceptive coverage. The health insurer providing the plan would then enroll those employees in a separate, stand-alone policy that only covers contraceptives at no extra cost.

The University, however, is self-insured. The policy proposed by the White House on Friday presented several possible approaches for self-insured organizations. In all approaches, self-insured plans could work with the company that administers their health benefits to avoid coverage contraceptives.

A third-party administrator would “automatically arrange separate individual health insurance policies for contraceptive coverage from an issuer providing such policies,” the proposal stated.

A previous proposal had suggested a similar solution for self-insured plans, but under that proposal, the third-party administrator would have had no way to pay for the contraceptive coverage other than the revenue it receives from self-insured plans. That proposal was criticized by many as nothing more than an accounting gimmick.

The current proposal would lower fees in other parts of the ACA to provide third-party administrators with savings they could use to pay for the contraceptive coverage.

The third-party administrator would receive a credit «in an amount that would offset a reasonable charge by the third party administrator for performing this service.

University Spokesman Dennis Brown declined comment on the proposal until Notre Dame administrators have fully analyzed its contents.

Last May, the University filed one of more than 40 religious liberty lawsuits from faith-based organizations to contest the constitutionality of the contraception mandate. The lawsuit states the mandate would go against Church teachings and therefore violates the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other federal laws.

A federal judge dismissed Notre Dame’s lawsuit last month, when U.S. District Court Judge Robert Miller Jr. ruled Jan. 2 that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the University’s claim is not yet “ripe,” meaning it is not ready to be litigated — in this case, because the rule regarding contraceptive coverage had not been finalized.

Out of all the complicated forms a student can expect to fill out, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, surely ranks among the most arduous of paper journeys upon which a student will have to embark. With the recent arrival in our AccessPlus personal messages, we have been reminded that the deadline to file a FAFSA looms dead ahead.

Within the next few weeks, we will all have to sit down with our parents (if dependent) or our lonely selves (if independent) and spend perhaps hours poring over financial documents. Although you may very well have suppressed the memory of such an event, try to recall its crux: that magic number called an Estimated Family Contribution (EFC). The linchpin of the FAFSA experience, colleges use the EFC “to calculate the amount of federal student aid you are eligible to receive.”

Although it allegedly measures “your family’s financial strength,” the EFC seems like an arbitrary number. If you have the courage to use a worksheet provided by the federal government to see how your EFC is calculated, prepare to be baffled with what looks like more arbitrary numbers and a set of forms even less comprehensible than an insurance policy, a credit card policy, a mortgage, or basically any bill that has gone through Congress in living memory.

The website of President Barack Obama’s White House states that Obama has “set a new goal for the country: that by 2020, America would once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” That site offers four general ideas to improve access to higher education: Help middle class families afford college, keep costs down, strengthen community colleges, and improve transparency and accountability.

Simplifying the paperwork associated with getting financial aid would probably help. The current forms are daunting to say the least, which, as we have learned from Democrats criticizing the idea that an ID to vote, limits access on its own.

And if you do manage to pass the great barrier form, you may find that your parents make “too much” money and that your EFC is too high to make you eligible for grants. In that regard, the FAFSA — and, therefore, the federal government — presume a familial relationship in which parents substantially contribute to their children’s college education. With high debts of their own in a slow economy, however, that presumption threatens the creation of a cyclical problem.

Expecting the current college age cohort’s parents to pay for much of their costs of attendance at college, when those parents cannot, means that students are only eligible for more loans. In a few decades, then, today’s college students will be parents who are unable to pay for their children’s education because they still have loans of their own.

At the end of the day, students must overturn every possible rock for potential scholarships. If the federal government is going to do anything to make college more affordable and accessible, perhaps the FAFSA should be simplified, the EFC made less arbitrary, and a nationwide index of scholarships put together. Uncle Sam taxes everyone, provides health insurance to millions of Americans, and takes a census every 10 years. Making a list of all the college scholarships offered in the United States can’t be that hard.

Hagel, a former republican U.S. senator from Nebraska, is a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran and a recipient of two Purple Hearts.

Hagel has mostly stayed conservative over his career in politics on issues ranging from abortion to school prayer and school vouchers. Be that as it may, his track record on foreign policy and defense is somewhat liberal.

Hagel called on his military experience on the Senate Foreign Relations committee in the late 1990s to support a treaty against land mines and accused the Bush administration of a “cavalier approach” to the rest of the world in the months leading up to the Iraq War.

The current Georgetown University professor has long been considered an isolationist in regard to foreign policy. In 2002, he wrote that the U.S. should be inspiring allies to work on “making a better world” as opposed to ruling by a sense of “divine mission,” particularly when accusing a country of having weapons of mass destruction without clear evidence — something Hagel was clearly skeptical of.

The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last Thursday brought together a shameful narrow spectrum of ideas, and here’s why: With the plethora of unique opinions Hagel has held on various issues, the most overwhelming topic of discussion wasn’t his support of chemical weapons in 1997, nor was it his opposition to 2007 surge in Iraq. No, it was Israel.

Conservatives, such as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Republican Sen. John McCain, stamped Hagel as the biggest threat to Israel’s national security in ages, claiming he was soft on terrorism and a modest supporter of the Israel state. Democrats bombarded Hagel with questions, using the hearing as a time to exhibit their full-fledged support of Israel.

Hagel claimed that, above all, he was a U.S. Senator, not an Israeli senator. This, of course, is referring to the Hagel’s controversial opinion that the influential “Jewish lobby” intimidates lawmakers into supporting Israel’s foreign policy, even if it’s detrimental to U.S. interests.

Israeli lobbying has been a large part of American politics since the beginning of the 20th century. After all, Zionist lobbying in the U.S. aided in the creation of the State of Israel in 1947-48.

Our Middle East ally has received the most U.S. foreign assistance — mostly in the form of military aid — of any other country in the world: roughly $115 billion. This comprises only a small percentage of the U.S. budget every year, but when everything is on the chopping block — or supposed to be — it’s hard to look away from such a substantial cash flow.

Lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Christians United for Israel funnel millions of dollars into American campaigns each year. Organizations such as AIPAC and CUFI spend countless hours traveling to Congressional offices of both parties just before appropriations take place, keeping checks on those who are beginning to waver their support.

The consequence of lost support is a flood of donations to a candidate’s opponent in the next election. At a time when donations and special interest have clouded honorable campaign tactics, this has simply added fuel to the fire.

These claims simply define the background of Hagel’s argument and they don’t necessarily represent my opinions. However, Hagel does represent a new era of American defense — one that is beginning to represent our generation, one that is a bit more isolationist-friendly and one that begins to question our previous ties to other countries.

Because what’s the point of staying true to traditional conformity when it’s not questioned once in a while?

If Israel needs $2-3 billion of our tax money every year to comfortably defend our nation’s best interest, then so be it. Our mutual allegiance is an integral and strategically unique piece in the puzzle of world affairs.

If not, it may be beneficial to bring some back to those suffering within our own borders.

Hagel testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which consists of 14 Democrats and 12 Republicans. Although Hagel is a Republican, some of his most vocal critics since Obama nominated him Jan. 7 have been fellow party members. Some Democrats on the committee also voiced concern with Hagel’s nomination at the hearing.

The first criticisms of Hagel came in the opening statements from committee chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

While Levin noted Hagel’s service in the Vietnam War, he also criticized the former senator’s willingness to engage in talks with Iran as well his stance on U.S. relations with Israel.

Inhofe expressed dissent towards the nomination, saying that he and Hagel are “too philosophically opposed.”

“Sen. Hagel’s record is deeply troubling and out of the mainstream,” Inhofe said.

Hagel had support, however, from former Chairmen of the Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and John Warner (R-Va.), who introduced him prior to his own remarks.

“War for Chuck Hagel is not an abstraction,” Nunn said. “I’m confident that if he is confirmed, he will ask the tough questions.”

If confirmed, Hagel would be the first enlisted person and first Vietnam War veteran to be secretary of defense.

In his opening statement, Hagel said that as secretary of defense he would focus on counterterrorism and training Afghan forces in addition to enforcing his policy of prevention —as opposed to containment — of Iranian nuclear capability.

He also stressed his commitment to the men and women in the armed forces.

“Their safety success and welfare will always be at the forefront of the decisions I make,” he said.

Once the committee began its questioning, the hearing atmosphere became more heated.

Several senators grilled Hagel on Israel, but he emphasized that his record shows a clear support of the country and said that he had never voted against Israel in his 12 years in the Senate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) countered Hagel’s statements by bringing up a letter that expressed support for Israel.

“The lack of signature [on that letter] by you sends chills up my spine,” Graham said.

Another recurring theme was Iran. Hagel came under fire following his nomination for his beliefs that the United States should engage with Iran, which has been called a state sponsor of terrorism.

“Engagement is not appeasement. Engagement is not surrender,” Hagel said at his hearing.

.Nuclear disarmament, particularly Hagel’s involvement with Global Zero — an  organization pushing for the elimination of nuclear weapons — and a report co-authored by him in 2012 was called into question by several senators.

“I’m uneasy about that vision expressed in your committee report,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said.

However, Hagel’s most difficult moment may have been Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) questioning regarding the military surge in Iraq, which sent over 20,000 troops abroad in 2007.

“I’m not going to give you a yes or no answer,” Hagel said on whether the surge was correct or incorrect. “I’ll defer that judgment to history.”

“I think history has already made a judgment on the surge and I think you’re on the wrong side of it,” McCain said.

Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) was one of the few senators today who openly expressed support for Hagel and said that he would vote for the nominee.

If Hagel’s confirmation is approved by the committee, it will be brought to a full vote in the Senate, where politicians from both parties have pledged support. The Wall Street Journal predicts that Hagel’s confirmation may take several weeks. Proceedings will continue next Thursday.

But I question this first-response intuition that has been propagated by the mass media. To begin, I want to point out that guns on campus already de facto exist: A person with Concealed Handgun License (CHL) is allowed to carry his or her guns on 21st Street, Dean Keaton, and for that matter, all other public streets, sidewalks and outdoor areas. We attend an open campus where anyone may walk in and out. In this regard, those with CHL are already allowed to have guns on certain parts of campus. Guns are not allowed, however, on University premises, such as buildings and educational facilities.

The equation of guns with violence has been so pervasive in our culture that the possibility of guns curtailing violence is simply lost or rejected. After all, it is harder to prove if guns have prevented crimes than if guns were used to perpetrate crimes. Here are some thoughts and statistics on concealed carry on campus:

1.  According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education’s statistics on campus safety, there were about 1,000 criminal offenses in 2011 across four-year public universities in Texas. Those offenses include: rape, burglary, aggravated assault, robbery and vehicle theft, among others. The question is, should individuals be in control of means for self-defense within reasonable limits against significant campus crimes? I know very little about mental issues, but it occurs to me that a person who is mentally unstable would find means to carry out heinous acts regardless of regulations, if his or her fragile psyche compels such action. Therefore, regulating against the lawful bearing of arms is simply a perverse exclusion of law-abiding citizens from self-defense. Whether you personally agree with the choice of means for self-defense is secondary to the person’s right to choose, especially considering the means in question conform with existing laws regulating concealed carry — namely, through a permitting process.

2. To obtain a CHL in Texas, a person has to complete 10 hours of training on gun laws, proficiency, storage and nonviolent dispute resolutions taught by a Texas Department of Public Safety-certified CHL trainer, on top of strict eligibility requirements that cut out those with criminal backgrounds and psychiatric disorders. The process ensures that only law-abiding citizens are allowed to qualify for concealed carry licenses. TDPS reports that out of all the criminal convictions in Texas in 2011, only 120 out of 63,679, or about 0.2 percent of total criminal convictions, were of CHL holders. This strongly suggests that CHL holders are largely law-abiding citizens who simply want to have a means for self-defense.

3. Existing evidence does not point to a potential influx of guns on campus. Young people ages 18-29 constitute only about one out of every nine CHL applicants in Texas. The dominant college-age group (18-24) constitutes less than 5 percent — about 7,000 in raw numbers — of the total applicant pool in the state of Texas. Thus the notion that somehow universities will be flooded with guns as result of allowing law-abiding faculty and students with a CHL to exercise their right to self-defense is mere illusion and, frankly, demagoguery.

Taking these factors into account, it seems far-fetched to alarm against the sort of “armed matriculation” proposed by another columnist last week.

Growing up, I never expected to be arrested for civil disobedience, but today I find myself and my generation in a desperate situation. We are living in a time of great crisis—the climate crisis. The World Bank recently published a report announcing that we are on track to warm the planet up by four degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The report details predictions of intense heat waves, widespread water shortages, massive wildfires, and the disruption of livelihoods around the world. These alarming details, however, are overshadowed by the authors’ terrifying statement that “there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world would be possible.”

We may not be able to adapt to global warming. The basis of our civilization could fall out from under our feet within our lifetimes. Everything we have ever worked for—all the cities, the families, the art, the science—could be lost.

Unfortunately, the unbendable rules of chemistry and physics have set a very narrow timeframe for action against the climate crisis. After humans have warmed the planet up a certain amount, we will cross a natural “tipping point,” such as the melting of the arctic tundra and the accompanying release of potent greenhouse gases locked under its surface. After these tipping points, the Earth will begin to warm itself, and any success we have in lowering our own greenhouse gas emissions will not stop the warming. No one knows exactly when the tipping points will arrive, but the International Energy Agency has projected that we will be “locked in” to irreversible climate change in four years because of our continued construction of fossil fuel infrastructure.

Rage boils up inside of me when I look at these numbers because the world did not need to let things go this close to the edge. Scientists have been calling for action for more years than I have been alive, yet our government has failed to act. The costs of inaction grow each day, as the timeframe left to transition to renewables shortens and the impacts of climate change, from last summer’s droughts in the Midwest to Superstorm Sandy, start to take their toll. Even today, our government has failed to act with enough resolve to really solve the problem. Its failure is inexcusable.

If our government will not stop these corporations on the basis of strong scientific and economic arguments, then we must produce the political will to stop them through our actions. The traditional methods of political mobilization—rallies, lobbying, even opinion polls that show 88 percent support for government action on climate change—have failed to overcome the stranglehold that fossil fuel corporations have on our government. Civil disobedience has thus become a logical and necessary next step for the increasingly powerful and desperate climate movement.

Our action in Westborough was not an anomaly but rather an addition to a growing nationwide narrative as more and more people turn to civil disobedience to stop the climate crisis. Over 1,200 activists were arrested for a sit-in against Keystone XL outside the White House, while dozens of Texan activists have taken courageous direct action to prevent and delay construction of the pipeline’s southern leg. Coal mines, natural gas fracking wells, and other fossil fuel infrastructure projects are becoming hotbeds for civil disobedience, as are the offices of the decision-makers who irresponsibly let the projects proceed. In a sign of the times, the Sierra Club recently made the first exception in 120 years to its policy against civil disobedience.

By putting our bodies on the line in acts of peaceful civil disobedience, we are making the ultimate moral statement. The message sent by our sacrifices will reverberate through society until the corporations give up or the government finally finds the political will to stop them.

The task of transitioning to renewable energy may look daunting, but as our acts of civil disobedience make clear, our commitment to survival is non-negotiable.

Historically, the contributions of the women in the U.S. military have been devalued by an institutionalized gender bias against them. The specific ban that is being rescinded was established in 1994 restricting women from serving on the frontlines of the battlefield.  Not only did this prevent capable women from serving their country to their fullest capacity, but the lack of battlefield experience also inhibited women from rising up the ranks in the military to the same degree as men.

However, particularly over the last 10 years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, women have proven their value time and time again. Although they weren’t officially allowed to serve in combat roles, the reality of the battlefield in these theaters of war led to women often being drawn into combat. Their performance in these situations convinced Secretary of Defense Panetta and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey, that there was no longer any reason to proscribe women from serving in these roles.

In the past few days most people have welcomed the change. However, a few have continued to speak out against women in combat. Among the opposition is Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said that the committee might “introduce legislation to stop any changes we believe to be detrimental to our fighting forces and their capabilities.”  Those that oppose the ban have echoed the Senator’s sentiment, suggesting that any gains in equality in the military would be overshadowed by a decrease in effectiveness. Although the transition to opening more high-level roles to women will surely not come without any obstacles, the opposition’s argument is baseless because the evaluation for these new positions will be gender neutral. Thus women and men will be held to the same standards.

All the branches of the military will proceed in developing plans to phase in women by May 15 of this year. Although the initial stages of this new era of equality in the military surely won’t be free of unforeseen consequences, overall we should welcome this change as one that will not only allow our military to realize the full potential of its members, but also to achieve a level of equality that reflects the ideals of our country.

The Senate voted 94-3 to confirm Kerry to the post, ending what has been a relatively smooth process after Obama’s first nominee, United Nations ambassador Susan Rice, faced stiff opposition when she made confused comments regarding the Benghazi attacks in Libya that killed U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

“John Kerry’s exhaustive experience and selfless service as a veteran, a senator and a statesman will help him to step seamlessly into the role of Secretary of State,” said Sen. Robert Menendez in a statement Tuesday. “ I am confident that his vast experience and his relationships with the world’s political and military leaders will serve the president and the nation in furtherance of American foreign policy.”

Kerry was approved by a voice vote Tuesday morning by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a committee he currently chairs. Once voted out of the Committee, the full Senate confirmed Kerry Tuesday afternoon.

Kerry, a Vietnam veteran and Massachusetts senator for 28 years, first came on the political scene in 1971 when he testified before the Foreign Relations Committee in support of ending the Vietnam war.

His career in the Senate has been marked by work on issues of foreign policy. Kerry acted as a leading voice toward the ratification of an updated START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia in 2012. He voted in favor of the war in Iraq in 2002, but has since come out against it. In recent years he has also traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt as a diplomat for Obama.

David Palmer, a professor of international relations at Boston Univeristy, listed several major issues Kerry is likely to encounter as Secretary of State.

“Key issues Kerry will face will include Iran, continued Middle East turbulence and especially relations with Israel. [Other issues include] Muslim extremists and the almost certainty of new attacks on Western targets,” he said.

Palmer also said China’s continuing economic and military capacity might pose problems for the U.S.

In his testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, Kerry emphasized that a strong domestic economy would ensure effective foreign policy.

“I am especially cognizant of the fact that we can’t be strong in the world unless we are strong at home,” Kerry said. “And the first priority of business which will affect my credibility as a diplomat working to help other countries create order, is whether America at last puts its own fiscal house in order.”

Kerry faced a relatively warm reception from Senators on both sides of the aisle. When Obama initially nominated Kerry for Secretary of State in December, Sen. John McCain lauded Kerry’s experience.

“Senator John Kerry has served our nation with honor and distinction for many years,” McCain said in a statement from December. “I congratulate him on this nomination, and look forward to considering it as the Senate fulfills its responsibilities to provide advice and consent.”

Every republican in the Senate voted in favor of Kerry’s nomination save three — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick praised Kerry’s advocacy and work for the Commonwealth Tuesday, and congratulated him on his position.

“On behalf of the entire Commonwealth, I want to extend my congratulations to Senator Kerry on his confirmation as our nation’s next Secretary of State,” Patrick said in a statement. “In particular, I want to thank Senator Kerry for his decades of service to the people of Massachusetts.”

With Kerry relinquishing his senatorial seat, a special election will take place in Massachusetts later in 2013. The Mass. Democratic party showed its awareness of this position’s availability in a statement Tuesday.

“As John Kerry moves to the forefront of the world stage, Massachusetts voters will have an opportunity to choose a successor who lives up to the high standards he has set,” the statement read.

Kerry will make a farewell speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, according a Kerry spokesman. He will be sworn in as Secretary of State later this week, replacing Hillary Clinton.

The argument against term limits is so well known that it has become axiomatic. Such restrictions on the membership of legislative bodies, it is insisted, would eliminate officials just as they’ve grown knowledgeable about key issues and influential among their peers. Term limits also would be anathema to democracy, as they necessarily restrict the choices present to voters. “We already have term limits,” opponents assert, dutifully providing a civics lesson to the 75 percent of Americans that support curbing the amount of time their leaders can spend living off their dime. “They’re called elections!”

Anyone who makes this latter argument has either a jejune understanding of political science or, more plausibly, is an elected official himself. Only a starry-eyed tyro to the workings of the world could possibly contend with a straight face that elections currently provide citizens with the unrestrained ability to choose new representatives. After all, the advantage of incumbency is well documented throughout American history. To see it, one need look no further than the past election, when over three-fourths of those in Congress were reelected, despite the body’s 9 percent approval rating—a figure making it less popular than colonoscopies, used car salesmen, and lice. As it turns out, it is a lot easier to run for office when your living expenses are already footed by Uncle Sam.

The other argument in opposition to term limits is more difficult to discredit. The notion that a politician gets better at his job the longer he does it is intuitive—that’s true of every professional. However, one has to remember that public service is not just any profession but rather the embodiment of governing principles. Term limits would downplay the role of individuals’ influence in the legislative bodies. Do we really want our laws to be determined by which states have delegations most likely to be found in a Georgetown geriatric ward?

For years, Hawaii held outsize sway in the Senate due to the high positions held by superannuated veterans Daniel K. Akaka and Daniel K. Inouye, the latter of which had represented the islands since they achieved statehood in 1959. While citizens of the 11th-least populous state did not bemoan the importance of influence in Congress at any point during the last half-century, the simultaneity of Inouye’s death and Akaka’s retirement has put them in the precarious position in which no one in their entire Congressional delegation has served for longer than two years. This could pose a bit of an issue for the state that currently receives the fourth-most taxpayer dollars.

Opponents of term limits often paint the picture of a hapless naïf with big dreams walking into Congress unable to deal with the diversity and subtlety of issues that the experienced professionals have spent years learning. Again this viewpoint is both too idealistic and fundamentally dishonest about the real-world apparatus of the legislative branch of the United States government. Members of Congress do not live in some cloistered world, à la the Supreme Court, in which the ideas manifest in their policy proposals are purely their own. Rather, they turn to staff lawyers to craft bills on issues they want to support. Most don’t even read the bills they are supposed to be making informed decisions on. This is not because they are congressional tenderfoots, but rather because the current proceedings do not provide enough time to carefully examine the thousands of bills introduced each year.

The reason that term limit legislation continually dies in Congress is obvious. It is poison hemlock, and, unfortunately, so few of our elected officials are veritable Socratics. Too many politicians look at Congress as a way to increase their statuses and pad their pocketbooks. The argument that the Methuselahs of D.C. are the only ones who can tackle the nation’s problems is a sophomoric one. We manage to find a new and capable president every eight years; there is no reason we can’t find fresh blood from each state to protect the nation’s interests. Besides, it’s not like there isn’t already a professional government class in the district ready to help the newbies out.

Presidents breathe rare air, and re-elected presidents, rarer air still. Only 44 people in American history have held the office of president; Barack Obama is the just 17th to have been elected twice. Rare air sometimes invigorates; more often it makes people dizzy. An oddity of American politics is that nearly every president wants a second term, but second terms almost never turn out well. The re-elected Thomas Jefferson coerced Congress into declaring a ruinous embargo; Andrew Jackson sent the country into a financial tailspin; Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley were assassinated; Woodrow Wilson broke his health in a vain attempt to persuade Americans to join the League of Nations. The unlucky list goes on.

The second-term curse can be ascribed to an evil alignment of influences. Second-termers enjoy no honeymoon; their opponents attack them and their policies from the moment they retake their Oath of Office. Second-termers typically operate with a second-string team. On first election they get their top choices for cabinet and White House positions, but those first picks generally resign from the most crucial — and stressful — offices by end of the first term. Their successors are usually less talented, less energetic, less credible or less reliable.

Second-term presidencies are prone to scandal. Some of this tendency is a statistical artifact. Presidencies in general are prone to scandal, the temptations of power being more than many people can resist. If a scandal occurs during a first term, that president doesn’t get a second term. If the first term is scandal-free, the odds are likelier to catch up with the president in the second term.

But scandals also reflect a relaxation of standards, a loss of vigilance. First-term presidents who attempt  election to a second term (a group that includes every president since Rutherford Hayes) mind their manners and those of their administrations with great care. Once freed of the burden of running again, however, they often let their guard down.

Yet hope springs eternal for second terms, not least among those who achieve them. Second-term presidents can focus on the long run, on issues too large or with payoffs too distant to survive the short-run tyranny that has constrained them theretofore. A first-term president asks how a decision will read in the next day’s papers; a second-term president asks how it will read in the history books. Second-term presidents can ascend the moral high ground of the national interest, as opposed to the party interest, and not be charged with hypocrisy as easily as first-termers.

What does all this mean for Barack Obama? First, he must be extremely careful to avoid scandal. Nothing stays secret for long these days; the slightest slip by him or a subordinate can ruin what remains of his presidency. The four most recent two-term presidencies ended in ignominy or severe embarrassment: Nixon in Watergate, Reagan in Iran-Contra, Clinton in impeachment, Bush in the Katrina bungle. Obama must be very watchful — and perhaps lucky — to avoid a similar fate.

Second, he should concentrate on a few carefully chosen issues. With these he might have a chance of success. In his second inaugural address, he staked a position on immigration reform that would have been bold before the election but that parallels what many Republicans have been thinking after the election results revealed how thoroughly they have alienated Latinos. Expect a bipartisan law before the end of the current Congress. More difficult yet more pressing is a grand bargain on taxes and spending. Already the Republicans have retreated on the federal debt limit; if Obama doesn’t push too hard, he might win the moderate Republican votes he needs to put fiscal policy on a sustainable path.

Third, he almost certainly will devote more of his time to foreign policy, especially in his seventh and eighth years. Presidents are merely coequals with Congress in domestic affairs, but in matters of war and peace and much of what lies between, they enjoy great autonomy. They can embark on wars, negotiate treaties and do all the other things that lie within the purview of the commander in chief and diplomat in chief. Obama might attempt a transatlantic trade pact with the European Union, issue executive orders on climate change or jump-start the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. There is no guarantee of success — foreign policy is hard. But when the approach of 2016 tempts the Republicans to run out the clock on Obama, as it assuredly will, foreign policy will seem like a vacation.

In fact, foreign policy is often a vacation for presidents, which is another reason it beckons second-termers. There’s no ride like Air Force One.

H. W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History.

For proof that we are not so different, look at the Heritage Foundation’s 2013 Index of Economic Freedom. Canada is sixth in this ranking, Denmark ninth, the U.S. 10th, Finland 16th and Sweden 18th. All of these countries surpassed the U.S. in business freedom as well, partly due to lower corporate tax rates. Sweden’s government commands 51.3 percent of the GDP compared to America’s 42 percent and Canada’s 42.9 percent, and the U.S. spends an additional 5.3 percent of GDP on tax expenditures. At any rate, America, Sweden and Canada can each be accurately categorized as having mixed market economies and big governments.

In light of Sweden and Canada’s substantial welfare states, it is impressive that they have kept balanced budgets and debt-to-GDP ratios below 50 percent. Though much of this can be credited to a steady stream of tax revenue, it is also due to foresighted pension reforms; unlike Social Security, which uses a demographically unsustainable “pay-as-you-go” system, Canada’s state pension plan is partially funded, while Sweden’s state pensions are partially privatized.

Yet we would do well to recall the early 1990s, when Canada had a chronic deficit of six percent GDP in 1994 with unemployment at 10 percent, and when Sweden’s deficit was a whopping 13 percent of GDP with unemployment at 10 percent in 1993. By comparison, America’s current unemployment rate stands at 7.8 percent and the deficit is 8 percent of GDP. Despite elevated unemployment rates, Sweden and Canada massively reduced their deficits during the 1990s, primarily through spending cuts. In Canada, seven dollars of spending was slashed for every one dollar in tax increases. Cherished social programs were gutted and tens of thousands of public employees were let go. But by 1998, neither country had a deficit, while unemployment had fallen as well.

In contrast, over the last five years, the U.S. increased spending and reduced taxes in the face of high unemployment and a high deficit. Compared to Canada and Sweden’s successes in the 1990s, current results in the U.S. have not been nearly as good. While Canada and Sweden also reduced taxes during the most recent recession, they did so from positions of relative fiscal strength, thus aiding the economic recovery without deepening their fiscal holes. Admittedly, these countries began their cuts during the 1990s with spending and tax levels higher than those in the U.S. Thus, tax cuts will be less effective in the U.S. today than they were in Canada and Sweden and spending cuts will hurt more. However, despite the fact that government spending is no longer a larger share of GDP in Canada than in the U.S., Canada continues to forge ahead with such spending cuts.

Beyond fiscal policy, the North still has much to teach us. School choice programs introduced in the 1990s in Sweden have offered parents with limited means the ability to send their children to private schools. Contrary to American fears that such programs will undermine public schools, Sweden’s state institutions improved following the end of the near-monopoly on education, evidenced by the fact that most Swedish pupils still attend public school. Finnish schools — while all public — have a great deal of autonomy in curriculum development and pedagogy. Both Finnish and Canadian schools rely heavily on professional teacher development programs. All of these countries’ schools best American ones on international assessments despite lower per pupil expenditures.

I have not addressed the numerous social programs provided by Scandinavian countries that the U.S. does not offer to its citizens — these no doubt account for part of the high living standards enjoyed by Swedes, Finns and others. Unfortunately, developing such programs is not an option for America, where governments at all levels face gaping budget holes. We can, however, set a path for sustainable budgets and growth in the future, and following the Northern model may be the way to go.

The decision made in Roe v. Wade attempted to rectify the complication of two key interests with regard to pregnancy termination: women’s health and prenatal life. It was established that women should have full access to abortion services until viability. Since we have become accustomed to the issue of choice, the terminology of the decision lacks so much specificity that attempts at defining “life” have become prevalent.

For instance, viability is relative to each pregnancy and cannot be applied in a universal manner and is complicated by conceptions of personhood, as shown in attempts at limiting Mississippi’s Initiative 26. Such are the issues that arise in motions to regulate and enforce the inherent nuances of pregnancy. We have seen efforts aimed at clarifying these problems through the legal system in successive cases brought before the Supreme Court, including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Gonzales v. Carhart.

As we attempt to coalesce action regarding an issue with two main interest camps maintaining their own distinct perspectives on the issue, we will continue to encounter issues of clarity and complications of enforcement. The values with which the groups approach abortion, when applied rigidly, are exclusive of each other.

The valuation of prenatal life over the health of the woman, for one, excludes considerations for the woman’s particular circumstance. The arrival at the decision to abort is deeply personal and regulation of access to abortion services, if any, should respect this agency. This respect for individual authority is an issue that needs to be further articulated and discussed in the public sphere as a uniting valuation we can apply to the many, multifaceted issues that manifest in our modern society.

Many are concerned with the possible actions and subsequent consequences in response to the cases previously mentioned. This inability to come to a compromise on the situation is causing a new, wider rift in our country and people’s political allegiances.

The problem is never going to disappear, and the women who are affected by the possible outcomes and interpretations of new laws face a daunting prospect. Women across the country who have aborted will gain new stigma in the event that pro-life supporters have their way, and those who revile women for discarding the budding life within them will be seen as criminals to the people who reserve the right to govern what happens within their own bodies.

Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that either way, someone is going to be left offended and nursing their ideologically driven anger.

What impacts this will have in 10, perhaps 20 years in the future are as of yet unknown until one standard is implemented. But hopefully, the next few generations will not be as offended at our indiscretions as we were to hear about how doctors once “treated” the mentally ill or how unyielding many previous generations were in accepting the reality of evolution.

“Fools… speak wisely what wise men do foolishly” (As You Like It 1.2)

Stewart defines himself as “a comedian” and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as “fake news.” In an interview on Meet the Press, Colbert described his character on The Colbert Report as “an active idiot.” However, some have argued that the Stewart-Colbert brand of “fake news” can actually be substantive and impactful. Their shows frequently highlight and raise awareness of serious issues, including some that may not receive sufficient attention from politicians and the mainstream media.

For instance, while many politicians decline to talk seriously about climate change, Colbert and Stewart have invited leading scientists to discuss the issue. Indeed, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that, in 2007, The Daily Show “devoted a greater percentage of its news to science/technology and environmental stories than did the mainstream news media.” Shortly after Colbert invited astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson on the show to criticize proposed cuts to NASA’s manned space program, President Obama, coincidentally or not, backtracked on the proposed cuts.

Similarly, Stewart repeatedly lambasted Congress for holding up benefits for 9/11 First Responders (the “Zadroga Act”), increasing coverage of the issue and arguably shaming Congress into eventually passing the bill. Meanwhile, by creating his own Super PAC, Colbert called attention to the issue of campaign finance and what he calls the “politico-industrial complex,” winning a Peabody Award for his efforts.

The substantive content of these shows has not been lost on viewers. While Stewart and Colbert insist that they are not newsmen, some, especially younger viewers, view the shows as legitimate news sources. A 2004 Pew study found that shows like The Daily Show rivaled traditional broadcast news as sources of campaign information for young adults. Meanwhile, an Indiana University study found that The Daily Show’s coverage of the 2004 campaign was as substantive as network news. Furthermore, a 2007 Pew survey found that regular viewers of Stewart’s and Colbert’s shows were much better informed than the national average and were even better informed than those who rely on traditional news outlets.

The appeal of Stewart and Colbert may be largely driven by deep frustration with current political reality. Timothy McCarthy, Director of the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a cultural historian, told the HPR that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have become “place[s] where people would go to get their news because our politics ha[s] become so absurd and so…superficial and really all about a series of performances” that are themselves much like entertainment. Indeed, when asked if the shows ever push the envelope and become offensive, Stewart himself told Maureen Dowd, “I don’t understand how anyone can consider jokes about this stuff worse than the reality of it.”

“There’s no slander in an allowed fool” (Twelfth Night 1.5)

Arguably, an advantage Stewart and Colbert have over mainstream journalists is that, like the jesters and Shakespearian fools of old, they occupy a position outside the societal, or in this case, journalistic, mainstream from which they can tear into politicians and mainstream journalists without fear of pushback or accusations of bias. According to Paul Cantor, a culture critic and visiting professor of government at Harvard, they “share with a venerable satirical tradition,” a willingness and license to “speak truth to power.” Cantor told the HPR that he has been “struck by how many times particularly Stewart has brought up an issue that the mainstream media refused to deal with.”

Clearly, Stewart takes on powerful people and weighty issues, perhaps surprising for a self-described comedian. According to McCarthy, however, “we are in a political and cultural moment where the distinction between entertainment and political journalism is being blurred.” He traces this blurring of the line between journalism and entertainment to the 1996 emergence of Fox News and MSNBC, which offer a mix of news coverage, “explicitly partisan” commentary and entertainment segments like Chris Matthews’ “Hardball Sideshow” and Bill O’Reilly’s “Dumbest Things of the Week.” McCarthy believes that the emergence of Stewart and Colbert “even further complicates and blurs those lines of distinction” between journalism and entertainment.

At times, Stewart and Colbert have even flirted with activism, though with mixed results. Their joint “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” received less-than-glowing reviews. McCarthy says that he attended the rally but left early, finding it to be “politically bankrupt” and a tremendous missed opportunity to “cross over into a serious political space while bringing all the humor and absurdity.” Meanwhile, Colbert acknowledged on Meet the Press that “everyone was critical of” his testimony before a Congressional subcommittee, which was intended to shine a light on the plight of immigrant farm workers.

This suggests a possible limit to their influence. Ultimately, McCarthy concludes, Stewart and Colbert are quite able to “generate political energy and rile people up,” but they generally do not “determine political outcomes.” Similarly, Cantor argues that, in terms of elections, “their effect is marginal.” To be clear, Colbert and Stewart have emphasized that they are not attempting to influence political outcomes or, as Stewart told Maureen Dowd, be “warriors in anyone’s army.” Their real power lies in their capacity to question authority and show, in Cantor’s words, “that the emperor has no clothes.”

“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own” – Jonathan Swift

Some would argue that with their present influence, whatever its extent, come certain ethical obligations. The Daily Show may claim to be “unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity or even accuracy,” but media experts Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini write that even “fake news” shows should be held to some journalistic standards. Williams and Carpini complain that “The Daily Show does a much better job shining a light on the foibles of others than it does taking responsibility…for its own truth claims.”

It is difficult, though, to say exactly what sort of standards Stewart and Colbert should observe. Jeffrey Seglin, Director of the Communications Program at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, told the HPR that their “ethical standard is driven by the genre they’re working in.” Since that genre is satire, they should be afforded some “license to exaggerate and…embellish the news.” Seglin adds that the viewers, themselves, “have some responsibility to be more informed.” For example, a study published in The International Journal of Press/Politics suggested that at least some conservatives watch Colbert and fail to get the joke: they believe that he is a genuine conservative, rather than a satirist parodying conservative talk-show hosts. Seglin considers this “a problem with the viewers,” not Colbert, adding, “I don’t think there needs to be a disclaimer that says ‘this is fake news’” for a show on Comedy Central.

McCarthy broadly agrees: “I’m not sure that Stewart and Colbert should be held to the same kinds of standards as, say, New York Times journalists.” He notes that “we’re not holding the political pundits on MSNBC or Fox News, or CNN for that matter” to the traditional standards of “objectivity and ethics” either. McCarthy views this as further indication that, “the definition of what is journalism and what is entertainment [has] shifted” over the past 20 years.

Indeed, freedom from strict journalistic standards is central to the ability of Stewart and Colbert to do what they do best. Perhaps a more apt criticism is that they tend to use their comedic license as a shield as well as a sword. McCarthy notes that they, and especially Stewart, have a worrisome tendency, “when they get really sharply criticized,” to “pull back and say ‘I’m just a comedian.’” McCarthy calls this an “abdication of a certain kind of political responsibility” and argues that it is difficult for them to dodge criticism in this manner and still “be taken seriously as a political force.” Stewart and Colbert may benefit from the breakdown of distinctions between politics, journalism and entertainment, but that breakdown can be a double-edged sword: as McCarthy puts it, “it’s hard…to reestablish those lines of distinction once you’ve blurred them.”

“Satire is parody with a point” – Stephen Colbert

Heirs to a long tradition of political satire, Stewart and Colbert enjoy special license to expose the folly of society’s leaders. That said, they are also very much products of their times. Their prominence, not only as comedians but also as news sources, stands as a testament to widespread popular dissatisfaction with current politics and the mainstream journalists who cover it. They epitomize the breakdown of old distinctions between entertainment and political journalism. Even if they cannot shape political outcomes, they have considerable power to inform voters, expose and shame politicians, and increase political engagement.

With this power comes a responsibility: not a responsibility to adopt the strict and confining “balanced reporting” standards of mainstream journalists, but a duty to embrace their unique capacity to enhance political discourse without retreating, as Stewart sometimes does, behind the “I’m just a comedian” shield. Just a comedian?  When Comedy Central rivals mainstream network shows as a source of substantive news, perhaps Stewart would be better advised to shed the modesty and take a leaf from the in-character Colbert’s book. “I AM a comedian (and so can you!).”

Within the past month (all while UConn was out on break), Obama nominated Chuck Hagel to be the new Secretary of Defense, John Kerry to be the new Secretary of State and John Brennan to be the new Director of the CIA. All white males, true. But it is too early to claim that all of Obama’s second-term positions will continue that trend. For example, both the soon-to-be-vacant Secretary of Labor and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will have to be filled.

Obama claims his white male picks have been reflecting the people who are best fit for the job, which should surely be the most important qualification. Whether somebody is the “most” qualified person of all 315 million American citizens is nearly impossible to determine, of course, but his first three picks appear very qualified. Hagel was a U.S. senator and Vietnam War veteran, Kerry was also a U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Brennan is the Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security.

Obama has had some racial and gender diversity in his first-term picks. Attorney General Eric Holder was black, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was female, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was female and black and Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki were both Asian. He also appointed two females to the highest judicial office in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court.

Would a completely homogenous Cabinet be good for the nation? No, since a lack of diverse viewpoints could hinder the contemplation of all reasonable policy ideas. At the same time, diversity should not take a front seat over quality and intelligence. It should be a secondary consideration to how well somebody can do the job. And in that respect, Obama appears to be balancing Cabinet diversity (an ideal) with Cabinet meritocracy (a requirement).

As Jimmy Fallon noted on his television show, “Late Night,” last week, “Obama came under fire from the GOP over the lack of diversity in his cabinet. Obama was like, ‘You know I’ll be there too, right?’”

In my first “PR Presidency” class, we addressed this talk with a talk of our own. First, we talked about the many names rumored to be 2016 contenders, and then about just one of those names: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

My professor gingerly brought up the subject of Christie’s girth and then, as politely as possible, asked us, “Is Chris Christie too…fat…to be president?”

But, forgive me, this is my maiden editorial column in The Eagle, and I have neglected to introduce myself. My name is Ryan Migeed, I am a sophomore and I do not believe that Christie is too fat to be president.

The problem with the “Christie is too fat” arguments is that they are all preconceived. He and his team of savvy politicos can anticipate any claim and prepare for it. “Heart disease” is countered with “no history in the family.” “High blood pressure” is refuted with “What presidential candidate doesn’t have high blood pressure in such a fast-paced campaign?” And the surest answer to any query is a clean bill of health from his doctor, which is entirely possible. (Granted, that bill of health would include a scribbled note from the doctor saying, “Lose weight,” but let’s ignore that for a moment.)

The kicker, of course, would be an exercise regimen, and many argue that if Christie starts to lose weight, he is definitely running in 2016.

But I argue that Christie can be a contender – and quite possibly win – without ever dropping a pound from now until Election Day 2016. His weight will be an issue, but only a subconscious one. His opponents won’t bring it up out of courtesy, and only reporters and town hall-goers will dare to broach the subject.

To be sure, Christie will be asked about his weight. But if he has a ready-made answer that displays enough humor (without getting angry at the premise of the question or the questioner’s right to ask it), he can effectively turn his weight into a non-issue.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 one-liner? When asked a question about his age—he would become the oldest president elected—Reagan coolly responded, “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” If Christie can have a similar “Reagan moment” (and he can), he will beat the “Christie is too fat” argument.

Not to mention, Christie’s weight simply plays into his devil-may-care attitude. It is as much a part of his character as his aggressive press conferences. And characters do well on national television.

What is most interesting about this whole “Is Christie too large?” debate is that it seems to be divided on generational lines. In my class, many, if not most, students dismissed Christie’s weight as an unimportant factor. Meanwhile, our professor (who is about our parents’ age), could not accept the idea that the American people would ignore such an obvious trait.

Perhaps the youngest voting generation is more willing to overlook physical differences in light of policy differences. After all, we were the ones who helped propel the first African-American into the presidency. Perhaps we’ll do it again with the first modern president who happens to be…big-boned.

The White House’s online petition page, “We the People,” now requires that a petition have more than 100,000 signatures to receive a response from President Barack Obama’s administration after several silly petitions managed to gain enough support to force an official response.

These petitions include the petition for the secession of Texas, as well as several other states. First starting in November after Obama was re-elected, the petitions had enough signatures to force a response from the White House staff.

“In a nation of 300 million people — each with their own set of deeply held beliefs — democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that’s a good thing,” said Jon Carson, Director of the Office of Public Engagement.

A petition last November asked the government to begin constructing a Death Star. It received more than 34,000 signatures in 30 days, again forcing the White House to respond in a light-hearted way.

“The administration does not support blowing up planets,” wrote Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The petition page will most likely stick around, as it allows “the president and the White House to get a sense of what people are thinking and what interests them,” said David Peterson, professor of political science.

“Not surprisingly, because it’s on the Internet, it’s gotten kind of silly at times,” Peterson said.

When the “We the People” page started in September 2011, only 5,000 signatures were required within 30 days to force a response. This was changed to 25,000 less than a month later.

Use of the site has doubled in the last two months of 2012, dropping the average time to reach the 25,000 threshold from 18 to nine days, according to White House reports.

More than 9.2 million people have signed a petition. This may have contributed to the recent change to 100,000 signatures.

While the silly petitions garner attention, they are the minority.

“I don’t think the White House is ignoring the real [petitions] in favor of the silly ones,” Peterson said. “Any politician or political operation worth its salt is going to keep an eye on these things.”

Even though the signature requirement has been raised, Peterson believes the page will continue to be used.

“Part of the reason they’re keeping it is because it’s nonbinding or official. The president doesn’t have to respond to any of these,” Peterson said. “On some level, they are a nice mechanism to allow grassroots folks to actually get their opinion heard.”

Current petitions include legally recognizing the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group, which has over 328,000 signatures, as well as recounting the election results and repealing Obamacare, which both have over 50,000 signatures.

If you wish to create or sign a petition, visit: petitions.whitehouse.gov.

9/The film opens with calls of 9/11 victims trapped in the tower with no accompanying image, sending the viewer back to a day perhaps too painful to witness. Bigelow doesn’t sensationalize the infamous day with the cheapness of an image, and instead humanizes it with a cacophony of desperate voices. This explosive opening prepares the rest of the film for a series of aftershocks: torture, misinformation, dead ends, suicide bombings and an indolent bureaucracy — unwelcomed fallout for a nation hell-bent on justice and revenge.

The manifestation of this national bloodlust is Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA agent who spends most of the film convincing a male-dominant bureaucracy to act on the accumulated evidence of Bin Laden’s whereabouts. The film falters after the midpoint, as Maya attempts to rally her government to attack Osama bin Laden’s stronghold. Writer Mark Boal includes a montage of Maya defiantly scribbling a count of the number of days that have gone by without attack on her superior’s glass pane. This is Boal’s desperate attempt to breathe some life into the mundane intelligence office sequence, but he doesn’t explore the bureaucratic process enough to make it worthwhile.

After this slow section, the audience is shaken awake with the film’s payoff: the raid on Osama’s stronghold. Bigelow exhibits her mastery of the war film in this dark, grungy attack laden with night-vision shots and sweat-inducing silence. The audience becomes complicit in Maya’s mission. The camera acts as her omniscient eye over the event — she is a woman with commanding vision and we live vicariously through her victorious moment, which takes on a greater meaning for all Americans.

While we follow Maya through the story, we get little insight to her background and, perhaps even more disturbingly, her motivation. But the opening of the film is her motivation — it’s the panic, doom, dread and suffering of those trapped in the twin towers that needs to be avenged. As critic Scott Foundas aptly points out, “She’s a fanatic hunting a fanatic.”

Indeed, Maya has her own Jihad or “religious crusade,” which leads one to ask: “on our quest to kill bin Laden, have we become just as fanatical and violent as our enemy?” This impersonal, nationalistic goal leaves our very human protagonist drained and purposeless once achieved. She parallels a suicide bomber, except she lives through her Jihad and finds nothing on the other side.

____

Zero Dark Thirty is a rare, significant film because it stirs up the socio-political war gauntlet while maintaining the focus on its human characters. Many critics have taken issue with the former aspect, especially in regard to the film’s portrayal of torture. Critics have problematized these scenes with an unimaginative, vehement outcry, with Rethink Review’s critic Jonathan Kim as their lead crusader. Many critics claim torture doesn’t work as a means for extracting useful information and that it didn’t contribute to the hunt for bin Laden — therefore its function in the plot, not its portrayal, is the point of contention.

After all, if we believe for an instant that the critic knows more about torture than we do, then the critic escapes with her contempt and ignorance unquestioned. I offer a new perspective: the torture sequence could arguably be a poetic summation of American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The body of the terrorist takes on the meaning of a larger Middle Eastern population — one America has invaded, bombed, accused and ravaged in its unflinching search for Osama.

Regardless, Kim brings up a considerable point: why does Bigelow claim this film is “based on firsthand accounts of actual events,” if parts of the film digress into fact-twisting and historical digressions?

Kim and many other critics fail to understand that the story subsumes events and acts committed by the military into a general narrative revolving around one character, thus inherently fictionalizing it. If the film didn’t do this, these same critics would be bemoaning an incoherent, scattered narrative unable to string together a causal chain leading to bin Laden’s killing. Furthermore, Bigelow has no obligation to tell her story as it exactly unfolded, even with the opening claim being based on firsthand accounts. Such a film would be inherently dull. Intelligence worked for eight years — enough time to assemble a staggering six million-page document — before finding bin Laden. Who wants to watch these preliminary intel-hunts unfold in three hours?

Critics bemoan Zero Dark Thirty’s use of torture as a means for inaccurately pushing the plot forward. They refer to a report from Diane Feinstein, head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which claims torture did not directly lead to finding bin Laden. However, as CIA director Michael Morell states, “Some [information] came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques,” adding that “whether enhanced interrogation techniques were the only timely and effective way to obtain information from those detainees, as the film suggests, is a matter of debate that cannot and never will be definitively resolved.”

Film critics, government officials and any moral-do-gooders who found a comment box online have disregarded Morell’s statement (ironically, the person in the best position to see all sides of the issue) under the rhetoric of “discrepancies” and “potentially inconsistent,” desperate to affirm their anti-torture crusade.

When Kim contends that the plot from torture to bin Laden should be taken literally (and thus morally reprehensible), he reveals his severe ignorance to intelligence-gathering techniques. His own evidence laughs back at him: the six million-page intel document. Any effort to retrace causality from one clue to another would be futile.

Zero Dark Thirty uses torture as an expedient plot device with multiple functions: it takes on a wider poetic significance as the larger Middle East reveals Maya’s character and brings an American audience face to face with something ugly that did happen in the war effort. Unfortunately, the plot’s use of torture has become the major hang-up of critics missing the film’s more implicit significance. Perhaps Bigelow would’ve been wiser to muddy up the investigational timeline to dissipate the strong causality between torture and information.

___

Critics who claim the portrayal of torture in the film is immoral need to rethink the way torture serves the plot without thematizing or condoning it. At the end of the day, the US did torture detainees — whether by Maya’s hand or someone else’s – and the film presents that. Critics instead reveal contempt for the audience, determined to wave a warning flag crying, “it didn’t really happen like this!”

We get it — but it’s a movie and you’re a movie critic, not an intelligence officer. None of us know exactly how it happened and none of us wish to piece together every clue that got us there.

The real contention lies not in the how, but in whether or not Bigelow’s reductionist portrayal of intelligence gathering reveals her own misunderstanding or a conscious artistic decision to tell a complex revenge story. I’ll go with the latter.

To be sure, Likud Beitenu, a joint list of Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu, will walk away with the largest number of seats in the 19th Knesset: 31 out of 120, if the latest estimates hold. However, in light of the fact that the two parties entered the race with a combined 42, the results stand as nothing less than a severe drubbing. If they haven’t already, heads are expected to roll in the halls of Israel’s secular right-wing establishment. And far from the second-place finish for which they were angling—and which enthusiastic youth support suggested possible—Naftali Bennett’s high-tech, beardless brand of annexationism fared no better: 11 seats, something on the order of a tie for fourth place. In short: not including the ultra-Orthodox parties, which are mostly concerned with maintaining the state’s theocratic trappings and their own massive welfare allocations, the unsinkable Israeli right managed hardly more than a third of the total pie.

Having just returned from the unplanned bustle of Yesh Atid campaign headquarters, it is fair to say that the winner at Netanyahu’s expense is a strikingly handsome Yair Lapid, the son of the late secularist politician Tommy Lapid and a well-respected former news anchor at Israel’s Channel 2. Once written off as a mere personality cult, Lapid’s Yesh Atid (“There Is a Future”) party seems poised to pick up 19 seats, whose occupants would include a former Shin Bet chief, an American-born Hopkins-educated Orthodox rabbi, two Ethiopian immigrants, and as many women as men. Decidedly centrist and concerned mostly with a bevy of domestic issues (religion and state, equality in national service, education reform), Lapid’s party is now poised to make or break the prospect of a third term for Netanyahu—in the turn of a black swan event that only Yesh Atid’s on-the-ground operatives claim in hindsight to have predicted.

Despite the great surprise of tonight’s results, most pundits aver that the most likely path forward is a shakier, more compromise-ready Likud-led government. This is with good reason; but, I would urge against jumping to conclusions. First, it is important to note that the media story on Likud Beitenu’s collapse remains woefully understated: because the terms of the Likud-Yisrael Beitenu merger stipulate a parting of ways after election day, Netanyahu and Lieberman’s parties will be forced to split a grand total of 31 seats. In what appears to be the least-reported statistic of the night, this would leave the Likud at 20: the smallest predominant party in Israel’s history, holding 1/6 of the Knesset’s total seats and just barely edging Yesh Atid and Shelly Yachimovich’s center-left Labor as the largest faction.

More than just a testament to Israeli politics’ descent into schizophrenic hyper-pluralism over the course of the last eight years, this fact could induce President Shimon Peres, endowed with the power to choose which party gets to build a ruling coalition, to defy the odds and hand the job to Lapid or one of his center-left counterparts. While the mathematics and popular narrative suggest this an unlikely scenario, it is important to note that Peres—a peace-driven veteran of the Labor Party—might be looking for an excuse to intervene against a prime minister he believes to have badly fumbled the Palestinian issue. If Washington is serious about resuscitating the peace process, it is likely that President Obama will be spending the first few days of his new term in talks with Israel’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning elder statesman, figuring out a way to configure a government sans Netanyahu.

As you wade through the next few weeks of dense post-electoral coverage, the concept to follow will be coalition-building, the means by which every Israeli government since 1949 has come to be. In the likelier (author’s prediction: modestly, not overwhelmingly) case that Netanyahu is granted the opportunity to build a coalition, he will have to choose two of three constituencies to include: Yesh Atid’s secular centrists, the Jewish Home’s hard-right annexationists, and Shas’ ultra-Orthodox Mizrahi ethnics. Forced into diplomatically destructive territory by a newly-minted farther-right Likud list, it is generally understood that Netanyahu—an eternal pragmatist—would prefer to rebalance his coalition toward the center than to embrace the full weight of the right-religious bloc. In the less likely event that Lapid is called to form a coalition, it will require the full cooperation of the entire center-left bloc, as well as either the admission of either an ultra-Orthodox party or the unprecedented inclusion of Arab-Israeli factions. And finally, a shift in just a few seats from the current projections could shake up the entire map.

Whatever configuration comes into power, the story of tonight’s upset can be reduced to one word: turnout. As concerted campaigns by the left-wing NGO Peace Now and President Peres suggested, Israel’s democratic outcomes have a tendency to skew rightward because of turnout disparities between settlers and the ultra-religious on one hand, and secular urbanites and Arab citizens on the other. Conventional wisdom failed to account for the possibility that these efforts, which targeted young, urban audiences, might actually make a difference—something reflected in today’s turnout rates, the highest since 1999 and markedly high in secular urban strongholds. Conversely, turnout in the Arab sector appears to have hit rock bottom—somewhere in the neighborhood of 40%—a factor that very well might have narrowly prevented a total upset by the center-left bloc.

I urge you to stay tuned for more opinion and analysis as the 19th Knesset begins to take shape behind closed doors. At the least, expect me to argue that no Likud government, however tempered, can be expected to make serious overtures toward peace. In the mean time, enjoy the rush of an election result that, absent an Israeli Nate Silver, has thrown the entire Middle East punditocracy into chaos.

Adam Lanza killed these children, and I will name each and every victim, because I refuse to give their murderer more attention here than I give them. And if we keep these victims in the spotlight, we will be motivated to continue our discussion of the event that killed them until measures are taken to prevent it from happening ever again. Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Rachel D’Avino, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Dylan Hockley, Dawn Hochsprung, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, Ana Marquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Anne Marie Murphy, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoria Soto, Benjamin Wheeler and Allison Wyatt died Dec. 14, 2012, in what should have been the second safest place for them on earth, after their homes.

The Sandy Hook tragedy brought increased attention to the issues of public shootings and violence in the United States. But too soon, the discussion shifted from matters of gun control to those of mental health and the cultural normalization of violence.

Forget about banning guns, people say. The real solution, many believe, is to improve mental health care. Others dismiss gun availability as the cause of mass shootings and instead blame popular culture — namely video games, rap music, television and film — for glamorizing violence. I agree that both inadequate health care for the mentally ill and our culture’s obsession with violence are key problems that often contribute to heartbreaking tragedies like that of Sandy Hook. But to fixate on these issues undermines the discussion and actions that could ultimately put a stop to mass shootings.

Let’s be frank. It is a given that even the best mental health care system is occasionally going to allow a sick person to slip through its cracks. And although we can strengthen regulations on games and movies and music, it is impossible to erase all violent aspects of popular culture, especially in a society that so deplores censorship of any kind. Remember that little thing called the First Amendment? It’s even more prominent than the Second.

No, the action that will make the most progress in ending public, large-scale shootings is banning automatic- and semiautomatic-style weapons for good. Forget poor health care and a violent society. Fixing these problems does nothing so long as these kinds of weapons are legal. Because even that one mentally ill person who slides by the best mental health experts can’t kill 20 children in a matter of seconds without one.

Maybe if Lanza’s weapon had been a knife, or even a non-automatic pistol or rifle, more of the Sandy Hook victims would have survived. It would not have been possible for him to burst through doors, there would have been more time for teachers and children to hide, and there would have been more time for the police to arrive. But when he was wielding a semiautomatic? Those children and their teachers did not stand a chance.

Though I personally believe it is possible to make a case for banning all guns, I’m not sure it’s prudent to argue for that at this time. But no civilian citizen needs an automatic or semiautomatic weapon. These weapons are not necessary to fulfill the requirements of gun supporters, because they are not necessary for hunting or self-protection and should not be protected by the Second Amendment right to bear arms. These kinds of weapons did not exist when the Second Amendment was passed. And I would challenge the commonly held notion that the Second Amendment legitimizes gun ownership — a person’s right to bear arms does not surpass a child’s right to grow up. Yet, regardless of how one interprets the Right to Arms Clause, there is simply no viable argument against banning the types of weapons that killed the victims listed above.

As a nation, we are certainly talking about the tragedies of the past year. Photographs of the victims — and, unfortunately, of their murderers — are everywhere. Donations continue to pour in for the families and friends of the Sandy Hook victims, and for those of the victims of similar events all over the country. But it is not enough. Yes, we can bemoan the losses and cry and shake our heads. We can complete 26 acts of kindness in honor of the victims, and we can rant about whatever cause we blame for the massacre. But until we seriously advocate a nation-wide ban on automatic-style weapons, and until we pass the necessary legislation, the deaths of the past year occurred in vain. We will have to live with the knowledge that, while the self-indulgent cling to their supposed rights, children will lose their lives.

As weeks pass, the country’s mood has turned from mourning to alert. Advocates of gun control view the shooting as another reason why legalization of guns is dangerous and why the Second Amendment needs to be eradicated and, honestly, I can understand that. We have massacres that involve deadly weapons; naturally, the solution would be to ban such weapons.

But there’s more to the story than that. Perhaps the solution is not to ban guns, but to give more leniency to carrying the weapons. The fact of the matter is that guns, being able to deal death, work as protection as well because everyone fears of being on that receiving end.

The worst shootings in our nation’s history have been in gun-free zones. These are designated areas in which registered concealed weapons are not allowed. Shooters, however (as nice and honorable as they might seem), are not likely to obey laws and regulations as they prepare to take lives. While gun-free zones seem like they would provide safety, they only disarm American citizens — the ones not planning on murder.

On Dec. 17, a theater shooting occurred in San Antonio. But it was not widely circulated by the mainstream media, and it’s rather clear why. In this instance the shooter was stopped before many could be injured. The theatre (in a non-gun-free zone) happened to be in the company of an off-duty cop (carrying a concealed weapon) who shot the shooter before more harm could befall movie goers.

Another recent news story not widely circulated involved a mother of two shooting a home invader in order to protect her family. When the man attempted to break into their home, the woman hid in a crawl space with her children and shot the intruder once he found their hiding place.

Had these citizens not been in the possession of guns, their lives may have turned out very differently. More would have been injured or killed in the San Antonio shooting, and a family could have been destroyed.

So while guns can kill, the proof is right there in front of us that their ability to kill is also what keeps many Americans safe and allows them to feel secure. Taking guns away from all American citizens will not keep guns out of everyone’s hands. Criminals and murderers who plan shootings and the like will not read the paper “Guns now banned” and think, “Oh my! Well I guess I’m out of luck then.” They will always find a way to obtain such weapons — but with guns banned, they now are released against an unarmed and defenseless populace.

I know, I know, we’re not defenseless! We have police! The San Luis Obispo Police Department has a goal of a four-minute response time — and they meet that 95 percent of the time, according to their own measures. That’s a speedy arrival, I will surely give them that, but four minutes when faced with imminent danger is awfully long.

The guns don’t even have to be fired; announcing that you carry one to an intruder or mugger is enough to soon see them dashing out your window or fleeing to the nearest crowded area. Their own tactics are turned against them — and man, how they hate it when the tables are turned and they’re the ones watching their lives flash before their eyes.

Gun-free zones and even complete eradication of the Second Amendment will not result in a safer America but a vulnerable and less free one. There’s a reason the Aurora Batman shooter drove past countless theaters to get to the one in a gun-free zone: so he alone carried a gun and had the potential to kill.

That’s the future of America if we give up our right to bear arms — a fundamental right. With our ability to freely pursuit happiness and justice, we surely too have the freedom to feel safe in our own homes.

And so here’s to hoping there won’t soon be a South Park episode featuring our favorite rednecks shouting “They took our guns!”

Since Barack Obama took office as president, the national debt has increased by almost $6 trillion. During President George W. Bush’s time in office the national debt increased by more than $5 trillion. In amassing for us and our posterity such large financial obligations, the programs mentioned above give higher priority to the personal benefit of individuals than they do to the health of the United States of America.

I used to think this crisis of debt, along with all the other misguided policy initiatives, stemmed from a failure of Americans to follow President John F. Kennedy’s exhortation, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Put in the language of one Anti-Federalist contributor — probably Robert Yates of New York, writing as “Brutus” — to the constitutional ratification debates in 1787, “The object of every free government is the public good, and all lesser interests yield to it. That of every tyrannical government, is the happiness and aggrandisement of one, or a few, and to this the public felicity, and every other interest must submit.”

The problem, however, is misunderstanding of what “country” actually is.

Citizens of republics direct their patriotism toward the republic that existed before them and, if they are good stewards of it, will exist after them. Citizens of democracies direct their patriotism toward their country’s citizens. The United States is a republic, and the country of the United States is composed of the institutions of its constitution and the understandings in which those institutions and that constitution were formed. The United States does not consist of the people who live in it or pay taxes to its government; they are mere biological organisms that live and die. And although the United States is nothing without its citizens, the people who live within its boundaries are not Americans without the United States’ institutions.

Politics and government should deal with the ties that hold people together, not the people themselves. Indeed, politicians should act in the same way that chemists concern themselves not with alchemy, trying to convert one element into another, but with discovery of new elements and ways in which elements bind to one another in their various permutations.

An analogy aptly articulates my argument.

Consider an apartment building. This apartment building represents all of society. Each member of society owns a unit in the building. For the same purposes as the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 gathered — “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” — the inhabitants of the apartment create a government for it.

That government ought to confine itself to maintaining the building’s exterior walls, the walls between the units that separate the private lives of the people who live in it, and the spaces in which the inhabitants have an opportunity to interact with one another — hallways, elevators, stairwells, laundry rooms, etc.

Whatever goes on within individual units and does not threaten to affect the spaces between the units, should be of no concern to the building’s government. Whatever threatens to affect those spaces — say, a fire — deserves the government’s attention, but unless it actually does damage to those meeting points, the government should not act.

It may be nice or moral or ethical for the individual inhabitants to come to the aid of their neighbor, but personal, private assistance is something a government — which uses force to carry out its judgments — should never pursue.

An adage often repeated to children is some variation on the maxim, “Just because everybody does it, doesn’t mean it’s right, and just because nobody does it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.” Politics and government should operate on the same basic principle. The fact that a problem is common — that many people have the same problem — does not mean the problem is held in common. The grass between the houses of Boston and the streets of Boston might be equal in size to that of the Boston Common, but that does not mean the city’s residents have just as much right to spend their leisure hours in your front yard as they do in the country’s oldest public space.

President Barack Obama continued to advise ideals of reinvention and change as a way to adapt to challenges in America’s future after he was sworn into his second presidential term at Monday’s inauguration ceremony.

His inaugural address urged Americans to work toward individual liberties as a collective, unified nation.

“We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, reach higher,” Obama said in his address. “But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American.”

Because of a stipulation in the Constitution, the president is required to take office Jan. 20 of his new term. This private ceremony occurred Sunday in the Blue Room of the White House, according to the White House website. John Roberts Jr., chief justice of the United States, administered Obama’s oath of office. Vice President Joe Biden was also officially sworn in Sunday by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.

Several U. Texas students had the opportunity to witness Monday’s inauguration firsthand because of the University’s Archer Fellowship Program. The program allows students who are interested in areas of public service to intern at various institutions in Washington, D.C.

Amanda Almeda, UT marketing and government junior and a current Archer Fellow, said being at the ceremony with other fellows made the experience more exciting.

“It was great that we were all there together just as we’re starting our lives and internships in D.C.,” Almeda said. “It was cool to be in the presence of so much history.”

Ha-Vi Nguyen, UT government and economics senior and an Archer Fellow, said Obama’s mention of moving forward with LGBTQ rights is a new but welcome addition to the history of presidential inauguration speeches.

“I’ve never seen [a stance] like that in any inauguration ceremony,” Nguyen said. “It was a good response from the crowd — everyone just cheered. It was just a great moment.”

Obama’s speech showed promise of moving forward with American ideals, Nguyen said.

“This speech was more of a tone of trying to keep America moving forward, whereas his speech from four years ago was about change and rebuilding,” Nguyen said. “Now we just have to keep pushing forward.”

Monday’s inaugural ceremony included performances by musicians James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson and Beyonce. Following the ceremony, Obama made nominations for members of his cabinet. He nominated former Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry for secretary of state and former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense.

Because of dual ceremonies, Obama is the second president in United States history to be sworn into office four times, with the other being Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served four terms. Obama’s first term required him to be sworn in twice because of a wording issue between him and Chief Justice Roberts during the first oath.

Almeda said the feeling of witnessing the ceremony surrounded by so many other Americans was gratifying. Obama’s address exuded more confidence in initiatives he has been pushing since his first term, she said.

“It was a very intense experience, feeling like an American citizen and knowing that we’re all in it together,” Almeda said. “[Obama] came off more confidently about the points that he pushed for in his original campaign, now that he’s in his second term.”

Hundreds of thousands of people — predominantly minority groups and females — braved the cold on the National Mall and along the parade route to see and celebrate the president taking the oath of office. Considerably fewer people attended Monday’s events than Obama’s first inauguration, but those in attendance were noticeably excited about his re-election.

Eager spectators donned Obama apparel, danced to Stevie Wonder and chanted across Pennsylvania Avenue in anticipation of seeing the first couple make their way from the Capitol Building toward the White House following the inaugural address. Volunteers worked to keep the crowd enthused.

U. Michigan senior Michael Nevitt, who attended the inauguration with a group of University students, said he’s been a supporter of Obama since 2008 when he worked on the then-senator’s presidential campaign. He said resisting cuts in Pell Grant funding so more students could attain a higher education was one of the biggest factors in his decision to support the president.

Nevitt added that he believes Obama could improve on issues affecting college students such as tuition affordability and the environmental protection.

“He said some progressive things about climate change today,” Nevitt said, of the address. “But I’d like to see a stronger commitment and stronger goals because I didn’t think that was addressed enough in his first term.”

UM senior Lauren Coffman, the communications director of the University’s chapter of the College Democrats, said the president’s focus on LGBT issues during his speech was a welcome addition. ABC News reported that Obama made history as the first president to use the word “gay” in an inaugural address.

“The president laid out his vision for his second term and highlights our nation’s continuing struggle for equality for all citizens,” Coffman, who traveled to Washington D.C., said. “His support for LGBT rights and undocumented students set a historic precedent for equality and inclusion.”

Stephan Coleman, a 2010 graduate of U. Maryland and current Maryland resident, said he hopes Obama continues to push for lower student loan debt rates in his second term.

“Four years ago, tuition was seriously high … now it’s so much better since (Obama)’s been in there,” Coleman said. “I think there’s so much more work to do though.”

George Washington U. sophomore Adey Debebe also said the student loan issue played a crucial role in her support for Obama and believes the president is a major advocate for college students.

“He said it in his inaugural speech: It’s all about helping us so we can help this country further in the future,” Debebe said. “He doesn’t want us to be unemployed when we come out of school … I think it’s really important that people pay attention to that kind of thing.”

Jessi Wolz, Washington, D.C. resident and recent graduate of George Washington U., said she’s optimistic about the president’s next four years in office.

“I’m really looking forward to Obama being able to undertake some more difficult policies,” Wolz said. “It’s his last four years, and I think he can be a little more bold.”

Speaking from Ann Arbor, Michigan senior Dana Rollison said she was excited to hear Obama speak at length about sustainability issues. Obama’s largest environmental push — a carbon cap and trade measure that aimed to limit the output of greenhouse gasses — was stymied by a divided Senate in 2010.

“I know he can’t get very specific in an inauguration speech … but a lot of times he has fantastic speeches and the follow-through might get lost a little bit,” Rollison said. “If he follows through with what he said in his speech, I will be the happiest person in the world.”

At the pre-inaugural Michigan Congressional Open House on Sunday, Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said student excitement for the president, contrary to popular belief, is still high. He also emphasized the importance of University students’ support of Obama’s re-election.

Levin said Obama’s role in keeping the student loan interest rate from doubling did not go unnoticed by the president’s college-aged supporters.

Obama placed his hand at 11:50 a.m. on a battered Bible used by Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War president who delivered perhaps the most famous second inaugural address. Speaking for 19 minutes, Obama made reference to Martin Luther King Jr., whose national holiday was being celebrated on the same day as the first black president returned for four more years in the Oval Office.

The Mall was packed from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, with large screens available for the many attendees of the proceedings. A considerable number of Georgetown U. students were among the crowd, many of whom arrived early the night before to stake out a prime perspective in the audience. Some received tickets from members of Congress, which allowed them to stand closer to the inaugural stage.

About 15 members of the Georgetown College Democrats made the early trek to the Capitol, leaving campus at 3:30 a.m. “It was an incredible opportunity,” said Trevor Tezel, president of the group. “One that we only get once in our time at Georgetown. That being said, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. It’s a big commitment, but it was a great experience.”

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were each sworn in privately Sunday in accordance with the Constitution’s Jan. 20 inauguration date, and Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor were again on hand Monday to administer the public oaths to Obama and Biden, respectively. Whereas Obama and Roberts famously stumbled through the oath in 2009, the event this year was blip-free from start to finish.

The one-hour event also included opening remarks from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), performances from singers James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson and Beyonce Knowles, and a poem from Richard Blanco. Absent were former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, the latter of whom was in the hospital earlier this month. Also missing Monday was 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Thousands of audience members on the southwest side of the Capitol were captive to anti-abortion protests from one man who climbed to the top of a nearly 50-foot tree and shouted continuously for five hours before and during the event. The man, later identified as having participated in similar large-scale demonstrations, shouted things such as Obama is an anti-Christ and abortion is responsible for the December shootings in Newtown, Conn. Police attempted to talk the protester down from his perch but were unable to make an arrest before the inauguration had ended.

In his speech, Obama balanced unifying rhetoric with a broad outline of policy ambitions for his second term. One of the most applause filled passages from the speech detailed the quest for equal rights for women, homosexuals, voters and immigrants.

Obama also alluded to the imminent fight over gun legislation in Congress, saying, “Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.”

Obama closed his speech with a flourish, seizing the optimistic moment as he enters what is expected to be another four years of challenging partisan debate.

“The oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction … they are the words of citizens, and represent our greatest hope.”

We the people, said President Barack Obama, more than ever, must work together as one nation, as one people.

Evoking the Declaration of Independence, Obama called for the pursuit of the document’s ideals through collective action and cooperation.

In his second inaugural address, Obama addressed the crowd of more than 800,000. He faced the challenge of addressing his people, four years after his first inaugural speech revealed many aspirations that remain unfulfilled.

“Faith in America’s future” was the theme of today’s inauguration.
The theme of faith ran through the ceremony – faith in the country and its future prosperity, faith in each other to work together, and faith, ultimately, in Obama.

He addressed the deficit, saying difficult choices must be made to reduce it, as well as healthcare spending, but caution will remain.

“…we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future,” he said.

He emphasized equality throughout the speech. Equal pay for women, full legal rights and benefits for homosexuals and non discrimination against the downtrodden and poor.

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone.”

He stressed the need to preserve the earth and combat Climate change.

He asserted the United States’ role as leader of the world, maintained not through war but, “through strength of arms and rule of law.”

Obama also addressed immigration, a topic largely tabled in his first administration, saying it’s time to reform the process.

He closed with a charge to the public and to himself.

“With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.”

More than 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln placed his hand on a small Bible and became the 16th president of the United States during a turbulent time in American history.

This weekend, the same Bible used by Lincoln will be present during another historic moment: President Barack Obama’s second inauguration.

“It’s nowhere near the same degree [as during the Civil War], but the degree of polarization in this country and the divisions that we face have been increasing over the last four years,” said David Peterson, professor of  political science at Iowa State U.

Obama’s views on the political climate will be expressed during his inaugural address.

“The inaugurations stand out for their inaugural address. This is an opportunity for presidents to leave their mark, and there have been some quite famous ones over the years,” Peterson said.

Obama will take the Oath of Office during the public swearing-in ceremony on the Capitol steps on Monday, Jan. 21. He will be sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts using the Lincoln Bible as well as one that was owned by Martin Luther King Jr.

Vice President Joe Biden will be sworn in by Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor.

Performers lined up for the event currently include Beyonce, Kelly Clarkson and James Taylor.

The actual inauguration, however central to the flurry of activities set to take place in Washington, D.C. this weekend, is certainly not the only event.

Included is the National Day of Service on Jan. 19 and a National Prayer Service on Jan. 22 at the National Cathedral.

On Jan. 20, the president and vice president will take their oath during their private swearing-in ceremony. The ceremony is private because their term starts on a Sunday.

Following the public swearing-in ceremony on Monday will be two major events: the Presidential Inaugural Parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and the Inaugural Balls.

The number of official balls — two — is the lowest in recent history. Obama announced the cutback was to dissuade government spending.

“The inauguration of a second term for a president is always less exciting than the first. Particularly than four years ago,” Peterson said. “There was a lot of optimism in the air when Obama was inaugurated the first time, and this time it’s going to be a toned down affair. He’s toned it down some intentionally, and it’s never quite as exciting.”

Despite the cut in events, however, local businesses are bracing for the visitors that will spend the week in Washington, D.C., even though crowds are predicted to be much smaller than four years ago.

“We prepare a long time in advance. A lot of hotels go under renovation and things like that to make sure that the product is up to par,” said Alexandra Byrne, director of sales and marketing at the Fairfax at Embassy Row Hotel.

Byrne listed museums, transportation, and high-end shops that often set up in hotels as things in high demand during that time.

“An inauguration is differen. … Everything is different, and you just need to make sure that you’re going to adapt and be flexible,” Byrne said.

Despite cuts in the festivities and smaller attendance numbers, the celebrations will be as significant as the history already woven into them.

I have come to notice that many people advocating for gun control know precious little about gun policy or even the subject in question: guns. Only hours after the massacre, I read a Facebook post by a Dartmouth student who hoped that the U.S. would “finally address the major issue of automatic weapons in this country.” The post was “liked” by quite a few people, including other Dartmouth students. However, automatic weapons are not a major issue and the Newtown shootings had nothing to do with automatic weapons. These kinds of knee-jerk responses actually harm the debate on gun control because anyone who knows a thing or two about weapons will quickly write these poorly informed critics off as imbeciles.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a similar gaffe in an interview with ABC News correspondent Cynthia McFadden when he equated assault weapons with automatic weapons. When McFadden politely corrected Bloomberg, the mayor did not acknowledge his ignorance but instead changed the subject to high-capacity magazines. The head of a media empire and of the largest city in the U.S., who funds gun policy studies at Johns Hopkins University did not know the difference between a semi-automatic rifle and an automatic weapon. How can you advocate policy for a subject you really have no knowledge about?

Yet the media keeps fueling the hype. The Los Angeles Times easily wins the prize for the most ridiculous piece of feigned outrage. When the Los Angeles Police Department held a gun buyback program in the wake of the Newtown shootings, the paper ran an article about two rocket launchers being bought at a gun buyback program. As part of the program, people could bring in their guns and receive $100 to $200 gift cards in exchange for their weapons. Apparently, two inspired entrepreneurs even brought in the spent tubes of an AT-4 anti-tank weapon. To be clear, these are military arms that once fired can never, under any circumstances, be reloaded or used again. However, the LAPD happily paid for both tubes, which is the equivalent of buying bullet casings and celebrating the guns you took off the street.

Seriously, in Afghanistan, AT-4 tubes are used as makeshift poles. Furthermore, it is illegal to own an AT-4. Even if these weapons had been live, their resale was not the consequence of loose gun laws, but rather a serious crime.

Stirring up outrage or advocating policy with woeful ignorance of the subject is detrimental to the debate on gun control. Gun loyalists view these gaffes with the same disdain most liberals would a birther. This fuels the idea among the gun crowd that there must be something more at play — the government is coming for their guns or there’s some sort of conspiracy at work. The gun lobby, with its “over my dead body” rhetoric, also hurts the debate, as most discussion of gun control is interpreted as a gun ban.

Yet gun control does not equal gun prohibition, and I fail to see the harm in waiting periods or registering a weapon as one would a car. Ultimately, both sides of the divide prevent meaningful discussion: one by viewing the subject as a totalitarian takeover and the other by demanding action with a stunning lack of awareness about the subject.

After having 507 days to address the problem, the Senate agreed to a deal three hours before the deadline. This deal prevented the country from spiraling off the proverbial cliff, and 21 hours later, the House of Representatives approved the deal. The resolution led to an extension of the Bush tax cuts for middle class families while also creating a 2 percentage point increase in the payroll tax rate for most workers.

Unlike other parts of the resolution, the 2 percentage point increase directly affects more consumers by making their paychecks smaller. Sean Snaith, a U. Central Florida economics professor, said the payroll tax raise will impact those working students while also affecting faculty and staff.

“It is going to impact working UCF students; they are going to see 2 percent[age points] less in their pay checks. That affects everyone. People across the spectrum are getting less, from millionaires to the middle class to the working poor,” Snaith said.

UCF freshman health sciences major Kim Tran will face financial consequences from receiving less of her paycheck due to the resolution.

“It’d definitely be harder to pay for my car payments and my credit card bill. I mean, each month I’m gonna be spending about $500 for my car and gas, so I definitely won’t be happy,” Tran said.

The Bush tax cuts were extended for people who make less than $400,000 and families that make less than $450,000.

“The fiscal cliff extended tax cuts for middle class families — that’s $2,000 that middle class families and students can put towards paying the cost of tuition and books,” Brian Zagrocki, a freshman economics major, said. “The middle class tax cut also gives our families money that would prevent UCF students from taking out an additional student loan.”

Snaith also talked about the benefit of having the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

“The benefit, besides for people making $400,000 above, is the agreement keeps the Bush tax rates so income taxes will not go as scheduled. Future negotiations may change that though,” Snaith said.

Zagrocki believes the fiscal cliff results will help middle class families and students.

“Extending the tax credit for the middle class was very beneficial to the economy, since we need a strong middle class in order to grow our economy. We need an economy that is grown from the middle out, not the top down,” Zagrocki said.

Snaith, on the other hand, said that due to the increased payroll tax rate, the middle class would have less spending money to put back into the economy.

“It is a loss of disposable income. This simply means that there is less money to spend in consumers’ pockets. It will impact purchases of food, clothing, health care, you name it,” Snaith said.

Justin Karpf, a UCF senior legal studies major, thought the resolution, with its flaws, did do something for the economy.

“It was far from perfect, but it was better than doing nothing,” Karpf said.

While the fiscal cliff was averted for now, the question of the debt ceiling and spending cuts were delayed for two months, according to the Huffington Post.

“What they did is they basically created a new fiscal cliff, but a smaller one. None of the tax stuff will affect students because students are poor,” UCF senior economics major Isaac Fratti said. “If we go over this new cliff, it will slow the economy.”

President Barack Obama released his plan titled, “Now is the Time,” to reduce gun violence and signed 23 executive actions toward the same goal  in a speech on Wednesday.

The plan focuses on four major points. These include; closing background check loopholes for purchasing guns, banning military style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, making schools safer and increasing access to mental health services.

“We can’t put this off any longer,” Obama said as he began to outline the plan, which was created through recommendations by Vice President Joe Biden and Obama’s Cabinet.

The proposed actions will now make there way to Congress.

Iowa State U. professor Steffen Schmidt believes that Obama will choose to have the plan first introduced in the democratically controlled Senate where he will “have a friendlier audience.”

Schmidt said that it “looks a little iffy” on whether or not the proposed plan will make it all the way through Congress.

“The Republicans in the House are not looking to enthusiastic about all of the proposed gun laws,” Schmidt explained.

President Bill Clinton previously signed into law the Federal Assault Weapons ban in 1994, which banned the civillian use of certain semi-automatic firearms.

The ban was allowed to expire in 2004.

“We can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale,” Obama said in his speech.

Obama finished the speech by signing his 23 executive actions, which have the full force of law.

“Those [executive actions] are perfectly legal and constitutional,” Schmidt said, but explained that a person can choose to sue the federal government if they do not agree with the actions.

The National Rifle Association responded to the proposed plan by saying that they “look forward to working with Congress on a bi-partisan basis to find real solutions to protecting America’s most valuable asset – our children.”

The NRA also stated that, “attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation. Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.”

Boehner alluded to the looming debt crisis in the speech he delivered Nov. 7, 2012, — the day after the election — saying the best solution to the cliff is “an agreement that begins to pave the way for the long-term growth that is essential if we want to lift the cloud of debt hanging over our country.” However, Boehner quickly moved on to reiterate a commitment not to an issue that the United States faces, but an issue that individual members of the United States face. Throughout his speech, Boehner touted his vision of a plan that would strengthen the economy. In turn, a strengthened, growing economy would lead to more revenues that would allow us to pay off the debt.

Obama replied in a speech two days later, on Nov. 9, 2012.  The American people elected the victorious politicians, including himself, he said, “to focus on your jobs, not ours” — to focus on the jobs of the voting population. “Our top priority,” he said, “has to be jobs and [economic] growth.” He and Congress should work to avoid the fiscal cliff because “It would be bad for the economy and it would hit families that are already struggling to make ends meet.”

As the Jan. 1 deadline for enacting a solution to the cliff loomed, Obama delivered another speech in which he did not prioritized debt reduction but job security for jobs, government benefits and a few thousand dollars per year per family. He said the best solution was “a balanced plan that would … above all, protect our middle class and everybody who’s striving to get into the middle class.”

But the magnitude of our indebtedness is so looming now that we cannot afford to wait for our economy to grow. Taking out debt might be a prudent investment in the future, but allowing it to accumulate and shrugging it off is nothing less than reckless abandon.

Debt is more than a rain cloud hanging over the heads of those who owe money to others, especially when it is so large that paying it off in the foreseeable future (i.e. within the lifetimes of those Congressmen and women who voted for it) is next to impossible. Yet, the enormity of how difficult it would be to pay down the debt at this point in time, makes such payment all the more necessary.

Reducing the national debt is more important than creating pro-business or pro-consumer tax policy because, to the extent that a person — or a country — owes more money than it can immediately pay to its creditors, he coexists with them in the same relationship as a chattel slave exists to his or her master. In a country with a gross domestic product of $15 trillion that collects $2.57 trillion in revenue, our national debt clearly limits us.

Why is it so acceptable for us to live outside our means? For, clearly, that is what we are doing, in pledging away our national fortune. From Rome’s dealings with barbarian hordes to Great Britain’s relations with the United States in her desperate struggle to beat back Hitler’s Germany, taking on debt and paying tribute have been the ruin of nations.

Republics and democracies — of which the United States is one, I am told — are ruled by the people. Before John Adams became president, he defined a republic as “a government of laws, and not of men.” In our plan of government, no man or woman is above the law.

As the people live, so the government will live. And if indebtedness is a condition individuals should seek to avoid — think of how eager your parents are to pay off the mortgages on their houses, or how proud your grandparents were that they rarely used credit or how excited you are to pay off your car and student loans (and how much noise is given to reducing student debt, from student body presidents to the president of the United States) — why is it not a condition the whole country should seek to avoid?

I suggest that it is because we have failed to maintain a rigid discipline in what is, and is not, the purpose of government and politics.

As people struggle to react, the media must also find the proper way to report such a delicate story. Regardless of the underlying ethics of giving the media such immense power, the tone of media coverage heavily dictates national opinion. While most coverage of the tragedy itself is respectful and informative, there is a small portion of news stories that serves to fuel and perpetuate a twisted interest in the killer himself. Where is he from? Who is he? What is his family like? Articles that aim to answer questions like this give the killer exactly what he wants — fame — and undermines the evil of the incident.

Many pro-gun supporters such as conservative strategist Grover Norquist strongly condemned calls for gun control. “We have got to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes,” Norquist said. This backlash under the guise of being respectful and tasteful actually masks a fear of confronting the nation’s most pressing issues. Oddly, this expectation of tact seems to be absent when it comes to sensationalist stories about Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza. This conventional sensitivity sadly prevents people from fully addressing the politics at the heart of tragedies involving mental illness and, especially, gun control, but it also prevents the media from indulging in the nation’s perverse fascination with the killer.

After the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., film critic Roger Ebert wrote an editorial for The New York Times criticizing the media for its shameless obsession with the shooter, James Holmes. “I don’t know if James Holmes cared deeply about Batman. I suspect he cared deeply about seeing himself on the news,” Ebert wrote. He argued that the media gives shooters the exact notoriety and fame that they crave, as most killers become household names. Ebert urged the public to address the root problems behind the issue. Instead of focusing on the killer’s identity, his past, family, motives and so on, the victims and the media should focus on the underlying causes, such as the lack of proper mental health care and the accessibility of assault weapons.

We can talk about Holmes or Lanza as minor celebrities, men so horrible that a careful investigation into their histories and psyches must be launched, but it only elevates them to the notoriety they desire. This media obsession with the killer plays right into the hands of other potential shooters. Not only is this disrespectful to the victims of school shootings, whose names are often forgotten long before that of the shooter, but it also is counterproductive. Realistically, the only way to enact permanent change is to foster political dialogues regardless of the taboo of “politicizing” a tragedy.

If the media focused on the victims and the controversies regarding mental health and gun control as opposed to emphasizing the killer and his backstory, not only would more intelligent dialogue result, but a clear message would also be sent to other shooters that their plan would not get them the national infamy they may desire. When major media outlets accidentally pander to the murderer by fact-mongering for any sort of particularly salacious piece of information about his tumultuous family life, recent job loss or divorce, they throw the real issues to the wayside. The proper way to honor the victims would be to actually have the gumption to address these inflammatory political conflicts that are inseparable from cause of these national tragedies. Trying to enact permanent change that could prevent these shootings is not disrespectful — in fact, it is more disrespectful to ignore these issues.

The fact that the ATRA was passed with almost 90 votes in the Senate is indicative of the political unpalatability of potentially allowing the consequences of diving over the fiscal cliff to occur. While the fiscal cliff was designed as a measure to reduce the ever-ballooning national debt, the occurrence of its provisions would have, according to Congressional Budget Office projections, led to a mild recession and an increase in the unemployment rate. Obviously, this was not an option for Congress, even in a non-election year. The economy, after spending several years mired in the sewer, is showing signs of cautious improvement. Unemployment has slowly declined and home sales have increased. A reversal of these already-fragile gains, apart from tangibly harming the American public, would have turned an unpopular Congress into a loathed one. And so, the men and women on the Hill were faced with two options — find true compromise and enact difficult yet meaningful budget reform, or push through an ineffectual measure and act satisfied. Unsurprisingly, they chose the latter path, and the nation will, in the long run, hurt for it.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the revenue raised by tax increases in the ATRA is 41 times greater than the revenue saved by spending cuts. The figure should seem strange and alarming even to those who have no knowledge of economics or fiscal policy. Such an imbalance can be only explained by the fact that the real dollar amounts analogous to this ratio are comparatively small, thus the underwhelming nature of the law. The new taxes will raise approximately $60 billion per year for the next 10 years, a token figure in the context of a trillion-dollar budget deficit. Most of the new tax revenue is derived from an increase in the income tax for those making over $400,000 per year and an increase in the payroll tax. The latter measure is a two percent tax increase on everyone; the former, while not totally objectionable, is little more than a bone thrown to the sizeable segment of the population that wrongly believes that the nation’s problems can be solved by putting the screws to the rich. Since the revenues raised by such measures pale in comparison to the future cost of America’s entitlement programs, the actual potency of these new taxes towards reducing the debt is near-zero.

And so, Congress conveniently ignored solutions that, while tricky, would have provided for lasting reform. These potential solutions are well-known and are neither innovative nor new — Social Security reform and more efficient defense spending are two examples. These expenditures are deeply entrenched in the Washington status quo, and tackling them would be hard. However, the difficulty of such action does not change the necessity of it. The spectre of a United States with an ever-reddening balance sheet and the consequences of such a situation are far graver than the potential threat of a temporarily recessed economy. In theory, legislators would understand the importance of providing for the future, even at the possible expense of the present. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case. However, as college students who necessarily have to look towards the future, this is indeed a lesson that we need to understand.

Last week marked the 11th anniversary of the facility’s use as a torture and detention facility in the U.S.’s never-ending “war on terror.” Less noticed, it was also the four-year anniversary of President Obama’s inaugural pledge to close the prison in less than a year.

With hindsight, we might be less inclined to trust Obama’s words. The president who came into office proclaiming a sunshine transparency policy has classified more documents than any other in history. The candidate who unequivocally vowed to filibuster any bill protecting illegal Bush-era wiretapping later voted for precisely such a bill—the 2008 FISA Amendments—and as president insists upon the right of warrantless eavesdropping.

Obama’s signing of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act now ensures he cannot legally fulfill his long overdue pledge to close Guantánamo any time soon. Meanwhile, 166 prisoners remain locked up at the camp, many developing the debilitating physical and psychological conditions of indefinite detention and extreme isolation. Egregiously, 86 of them, who have been unanimously cleared for release by relevant federal agencies, remain imprisoned.

We were once chastised by Obama to look “forward,” not backward, on the U.S.’s crimes of torture, but the men at Guantánamo are allowed neither luxury. Their personal histories as well as futures have been forsaken. At the prison camp’s sham tribunals, evidentiary disclosure of torture is blocked from the public, throwing a dark veil over the CIA’s storied abuses.

But the stories are there. Journalist Sami al-Hajj, wrongfully held at Guantánamo for six years and released only after a 438-day hunger strike, recalls being tortured, attacked by dogs and hung shackled from ceilings. Brandon Neely, a former Guantánamo guard, watched as a medic beat an inmate he was supposed to treat.

Further troubling, Guantánamo has become only the barely-visible tip of the U.S.’s sprawling secret torture regime. Although in the fantasyland of 2008 rhetoric Obama claimed, “We don’t farm out torture,” referring to the CIA’s practice of “rendering” terror suspects out to torture contractors, he has since embraced the policy. The European Court of Human Rights last year revealed that CIA agents wrongfully shackled, sodomized and beat a car salesman named Khaled El-Masri. Picked up on a case of mistaken identity, he was later dumped on the side of an Albanian road. A similar fate—down to the gruesome extreme of ritualized rape—befell Suleiman Abdullah, wrongfully detained at several foreign U.S. detention facilities, including Bagram Air Force Base, for five years and later released with no compensation. In 2010, an American-born teenager named Gulet Mohamed sobbed to reporters on the phone, unable to understand why the Obama administration had arranged to have him beaten and tortured while on a visit to Kuwait.

Basic human compassion demands we contend with these individuals so heinously wronged by our legacy of torture. Looking forward, we must also ensure such grievous mistakes are never again repeated.

Yet our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president seems incapable or unwilling to express remorse. The Justice Department has definitively indicated that no Bush-era war criminals, even in the case of death-by-torture, will ever be prosecuted. John Kiriakou, meanwhile, an ex-CIA official who refused torture training and was the first to publicly admit the torture program’s existence, received a neat jail sentence. He now holds the dubious distinction of being the only person against whom the U.S. has pressed any charges with regard to post-9/11 torture.

John Brennan, a vocal advocate of Bush-era wiretapping and torture (even beyond waterboarding), has now been awarded with a nomination for the CIA directorship. In 2008, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for the same post amid these precise concerns, but they have since been forgiven. As Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, Brennan is best known for leading the extrajudicial drone assassination campaign and accompanying para-militarization of the executive branch. In that capacity he was also caught outright lying about the civilian casualties of drone strikes, claiming there were none despite glaring contrary evidence.

The brutal contrast between Brennan and Kiriakou’s treatment by the Obama administration showcases its true values—unabashed secrecy, militarism and dishonesty—far more clearly than any statement ever issued by an official.

Policies once controversial under a Republican president in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack have thus been superseded and cemented by his Democratic successor. Perhaps we should add to the oft-repeated truism “only Nixon [avowed Cold Warrior] could go to China” a slogan for our era’s false progressive hope: “only Obama could spy, torture and assassinate.”

The South China Sea has long been a flashpoint for regional rivalries and tensions. Subject to a range of competing territorial claims—including from Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan, the South China Sea is at the nexus of competing and converging interests. Through these contested waters flows over one-third of world trade, and within it lies a plethora of natural resources—including oil, natural gas, and fishing reserves. Here too, a seemingly inane but critical distinction for the claimants has been the difference between a “rock” and an “island,” the latter of which must be able to support human habitation. This is a concept subject to contention, as various tenuous outposts have been established, often overlying reefs that would otherwise be submerged. While a rock only commands a 12 nautical mile expanse of territorial waters, an island may be the basis for a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that grants rights over the resources within. Recent developments—including an estimate by the Chinese oil company CNOOC that the disputed areas could contain up to 17 billion tons of oil as well as 498 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—have raised the stakes.

Beyond the relevant regional players, the United States too has much at stake. At the July 2010 meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Vietnam, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton articulated the United States’ “national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.” As the U.S. now ‘pivots’ to the Pacific, it has sought a more active role in this dispute. This past July, at an ASEAN forum in Cambodia, following “intense” and inconclusive discussions on the South China Sea, Clinton warned, “None of us can fail to be concerned by the increase in tensions, the uptick in confrontational rhetoric and disagreements over resource exploitation.” The trajectory of this longstanding dispute may prove to be a test for the development and potential stability of the region.

Equilibrium and Interdependence?

One paradox at the heart of the South China Sea is the uneasy equilibrium that has largely been maintained. Despite the occasional confrontation and frequent diplomatic squabbling, the situation has never escalated into full-blown physical conflict. The main stabilizing factor has been that the countries involved have too much to lose form turmoil, and so much to gain from tranquility. Andrew Ring—former Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Fellow—emphasized that “With respect to the South China Sea, we all have the same goals” in terms of regional stability and development. With regional trade flows and interdependence critical to the region’s growing economies, conflict could be devastating. Even for China—the actor with by far the most to gain from such a dispute—taking unilateral action would irreparably tarnish its image in the eyes of the international community. With the predominant narrative of a “rising” and “assertive China”—referred to as a potential adversary by President Obama in the third presidential debate—China’s behavior in the South China Sea may be sometimes exaggerated or sensationalized. Dr. Auer, former Naval officer and currently Director of the Center for U.S.-Japan Studies and Cooperation at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, told the HPR that “China has not indicated any willingness to negotiate multilaterally” and remains “very uncooperative.” Across its maritime territorial disputes—particularly through recent tensions with Japan in the East China Sea—Auer sees China as having taken a very aggressive stance, and he claims that “Chinese behavior is not understandable or clear.”

Nonetheless, in recent incidents, such as a standoff between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal this past April, as Bonnie Glaser, Senior Adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, emphasized, “this is not an either or.” Multiple parties are responsible for the tensions, yet the cycle of action and reaction is often obscured. Nonetheless, Glaser believes that “The Chinese have in every one of these cases overreacted—they have sought to take advantage of the missteps of other countries,” responding with disproportionate coercion. In addition, China has begun to use methods of “economic coercion” to assert its interests against trade partners.

A Tipping Point?

Has the dynamic in the South China Sea shifted recently? Perhaps not in a fundamental sense. But with the regional military buildup, governments have developed a greater capacity to pursue longstanding objectives. According to Peter Dutton, Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College,  “China’s recent behavior in the East China Sea and assertive policy in the South China Sea” is “a serious concern.” He believes that China’s willingness to resort to force in defense of its territorial claims has been increasing over time, partially as a consequence of its rising power. As such, Dutton sees the situation as reaching a “tipping point in which China is…no longer satisfied with shelving the dispute.” Is confrontation or resolution imminent? Worryingly, Dutton observes, “the international dynamic in the region is motivated largely by fear and anger.” However, the use of unilateral military force would be a lose-lose for China,” particularly in terms of its credibility, both among its neighbors and in the international community.

The Pivot in the South China Sea

From a U.S. perspective, a sustained American presence in the region has long been the underpinning of peace and stability. However, excessive U.S. intervention could disrupt the delicate balance that has been established. Although the U.S. has always sought to maintain a position of neutrality in territorial disputes, remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that referred to the South China Sea as the “West Philippine Sea” led China to challenge U.S. impartiality. If the U.S. engages with its regional allies without seeking enhanced engagement with China, then U.S. actions in the region may be perceived by China as efforts at containment. Moreover, as the U.S. strengthens ties to partners in the region, there is risk of entanglement if conflict were to break out.

There has long been an undercurrent of tension between the Philippines and China—most recently displayed in the standoff over the Scarborough Shoal in May 2012. Shortly thereafter, in a visit to Washington D.C., President Aquino sought U.S. commitment to military support of the Philippines in the event of conflict with China on the basis of the 1952 Mutual Defense Treaty. However, despite providing further military and naval support, the U.S. has refrained from making concrete commitments. Although the U.S. would not necessarily be dragged into a dispute, if a confrontation did break out, it might feel compelled to respond militarily to maintain the credibility of commitments to allies and partners in the region. Strong ties to the U.S. and enhanced military capacity could also provoke more confrontational behavior from U.S. partners. Yet, Ring emphasizes that the U.S. navy and military are also unique in the “ability to facilitate military cooperation and communication among all of the claimants” and particularly to “be that bridge…uniquely situated to build some flows of communication” that could facilitate a peaceful resolution to future incidents.

Long-term Options

Beyond these tensions and speculations, one must also consider the long-term prospects of a viable solution. Speaking on the record at a Weatherhead Center seminar at Harvard, Michael Dukakis raised the question, “Why isn’t the United States urging that these disputes be resolved in the International Court of Justice? Isn’t that what it’s for?” However, in addition to U.S. ambivalence, China and other main players would also oppose such a step. Traditionally, in cases of territorial disputes, the ICJ has tended to privilege longstanding administrative presence. China’s claims to over 80 percent of the South China Sea, on the other hand, have been framed in terms of a historical narrative—expressed in the “nine-dashed line” first drawn on a map in 1947 by the Kuomintang government then exiled to Taiwan—rather than the rules and norms established through UNCLOS. According to Dutton, “China is abrogating these principles [of international law]…and pursuing its own version of history in the region [with] frankly coercive policies in order to press its neighbors.”

In the adjudication of this patchwork of competing claims, ASEAN has long played a mediating role, as through its issuance of a “Declaration of Conduct” in 2002. According to Ring, “ASEAN is the key” to resolving this dispute and “one of the few organizations that has the pedigree” to serve as a legitimate mediator, with its foundational norms of respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and freedom from external intervention. However, ASEAN, which relies on full consensus, is unlikely to move quickly. The next chairs of the bloc—Brunei as of 2013—are unlikely to press this issue. Moreover, China has tended to resist settlement of the territorial disputes in a multilateral forum and instead has sought direct bilateral negotiations, which would maximize its relative leverage.

Although a long-term solution and the protracted process of redrawing the map could take years yet, with mounting economic pressures and a voracious appetite for natural resources, economic factors may induce the establishment of some sort of profit-sharing mechanism in the short-term. For instance, Taiwan suggested in the 1990s that a joint development company for the South China Sea be established.

Looking to the Future

The South China Sea will likely remain a focal point of tension for years to come. China’s increased naval power may make a more assertive stance natural and inevitable. In this environment, Glaser sees that “the U.S. is more welcome in the region today than it has ever been.” The United States must find a balance between accepting this welcome and not overreaching—maintaining a stabilizing presence without provoking further suspicion from China or arousing concerns among regional partners. All in all, the South China Sea may prove to be a test, not only of whether China will be a “responsible stakeholder” in its own neighborhood but also of American strategy as it relates to a rising China.

In his talk, “Afghanistan Beyond 2014: A Perspective on Afghan–U.S. Relations”, held in Gaston Hall, Karzai acknowledged that expectations had not been met on either side of the partnership but expressed confidence that peace and stability are assured in Afghanistan’s future.

The Afghan president, who met with President Obama earlier today for what the White House called bilateral meetings, also announced an expansion of his country’s relationship with the United States in a bilateral security agreement. This new dynamic entails the reduction of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a limitation in the use of these same troops after 2014, the continuation of U.S. training efforts and the transition of the control of security and border protection into Afghan hands.

Karzai, who holds an honorary doctorate degree from Georgetown, began his speech by commenting on the progress made so far on the goals undertaken by the United States and Afghanistan in 2001, which included freeing the world of terrorism, removing the Taliban from power and establishing a democracy in Afghanistan. According to Karzai, the partnership was successful in freeing Afghanistan from the control of the Taliban. He particularly credited the return of women to the workplace and classrooms as well as the growth of technology in the country as examples of this progress. However, the two nations have made less advancement in other areas.

“The second part – freeing us all from terrorism and radicalism – didn’t work as smoothly as we expected,” Karzai said.

In that vein, Karzai noted the complaints of both Americans and Afghanis, saying that the war on terror has been costly to both the U.S. and Afghan people. Despite that, he believes that Afghanistan is moving in the right direction as it approaches its third set of presidential elections and the reduction of U.S. operations in its territory.

Karzai particularly expressed confidence in a more mature relationship between the United States and Afghanistan and the future success of a peace process that will retain the elements of social progress made since the Taliban’s fall. Going forward, Afghanis on a local level advocate the continuation of U.S. support but also U.S. acknowledgment of their sovereignty as a nation.

“We will forget the less than pleasant aspects of our relationship, and we will move forward in the gratitude of the [Unites States],” Karzai said.

After speaking for less than 20 minutes, Karzai ended his talk with a revised version of the end of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the Wood on a Snowy Evening.”

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before we sleep,” he concluded.

After the lecture, the floor opened to five student questions, one taken from an open poll on Facebook and four drafted by Georgetown student groups. These included the International Relations Club, the Georgetown University Student Veterans Association, the Muslim Students Association and the Georgetown University Lecture Fund, which helped organize the event. Students posed queries about the threat of Al Qaeda, Afghanistan’s unemployment problem for former fighters on both sides of the civil war, the government’s plans for education policy and the hope that Karzai can offer against claims of corruption and worries about the nation’s security. The president responded vaguely to each of the questions, stating that Al Qaeda is no longer a security issue and that the government will continue to be concerned with the education of women.

Through both his lecture and question answers, Karzai attempted to diminish concerns about the stability and future of Afghanistan as a nation and its relationship with the United States.

“The hope has already been offered in Afghanistan,” he said.

Take Richard Nixon for example. Although he infamously left Washington with his reputation in tatters, his influence was seen on the Supreme Court for the next thirty years. Nixon’s four appointees—Warren Burger, Harry Blackmun, William Rehnquist, and Lewis Powell—included two consecutive chief justices (Burger and Rehnquist) and included the famous ruling in Roe v. Wade (where both Burger and Blackmun were in the assenting majority that women had a right to an abortion). Rehnquist’s longevity on the court arguably paved the way for the appointment of John Roberts – Rehnquist served through eight years of the Clinton administration and through George W. Bush’s first term before passing away, enabling a Republican president to nominate his successor.

In replacing Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor with Samuel Alito and John Roberts, George W. Bush cemented his own judicial legacy by moving the Court farther to the right. He replaced a moderate who sided with liberals on key cases like Casey and Grutter with Alito, whose votes have been solidly in line with originalist thinkers Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. The younger Bush famously uttered that he expected judges to “strictly apply the Constitution and laws, not legislate from the bench” and established a clear judicial theory for his administration. In addition to Alito and Roberts,  Bush appointed 62 judges to United States Circuit Courts of Appeals and 261 judges to United States district courts over the course of his presidency.

The Obama Administration’s position on the issue has been a stark departure from his predecessor. Historically, Republicans have been more active in appointing judges to the courts than Democrats, prioritizing it as a means of advancing their policy agenda. Through his first term, Obama had appointed two members to the Supreme Court (Sonia Sotamayor and Elena Kagan) but only 30 to circuit courts and 141 to district courts. By this time in their presidencies, Bush and Clinton had appointed 169 and 167 judges to circuit courts, respectively. Obama has pursued the common practice of allowing senators in states with vacant openings to nominate individuals before reviewing or nominating his own, something that Bush disregarded while in office. Also unlike Bush, Obama has waited for the American Bar Association to vet each nominee in advance of nomination to the Senate. Bush, who preferred to have his nominees approved by the independent Federalist Society—whose criteria were more aligned with Bush’s own legal philosophies—could often push nominees through the appointment process quicker and was very successful during his presidency in this regard.

As he heads into his second term in office, one of the more puzzling parts of Obama’s presidency has been his position on legal issues. Despite being a constitutional heavyweight in many regards—the President was the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review in law school before going on to teach at the University of Chicago Law School—Obama has yet to issue a definitive judicial philosophy. Perhaps the most notable of his achievements is the diversity of his nominations. He is the first to nominate an openly gay black man (William Thomas) and nearly half of his nominees have been women, with 19 percent being African-American (versus 23 and seven percent, respectively, for Bush). He talks about ‘judicial empathy’ and the need for judges of all walks of life to be in the courthouse in order to consider the effect of their rulings on everyday citizens, yet the meaning of ‘judicial empathy’ is ill-defined and unclear. Senator Orrin Hatch derogatorily referred to Obama’s philosophies as a “code” for liberal activism.

As Jeffrey Toobin notes in The New Yorker, there are currently 74 open spots on the district and circuit courts and the Obama Administration has only submitted names for 32 of those. While there has been increased resistance to the nomination process, and according to the Federal Judicial Center, Obama’s confirmation percentage of 80% is lower than either of the previous two Presidents, it is also true that Obama’s unusual means of nomination has scuttled many a nominee. Obama was reluctant to nominate during the initial stages of his Presidency—during which he held majorities in both houses of Congress—because he wanted to keep the legislative focus on his crown jewel, the Affordable Care Act. Greg Craig, Obama’s legal counsel during that time, said, “We were looking for mainstream, noncontroversial candidates to nominate.” Obama’s nominations have similarly been on average four years older than Bush’s, limiting their influence on American legislation in positions where they hold lifetime terms. The American Bar Association has torpedoed the candidacy of 14 different candidates, further slowing the process.

Obama enters his second term without the security blanket in Congress with which he entered his first and any nominee to the Senate will be a source of contention. The polarization of the appointment process—especially to the Supreme Court—has led to constant filibusters over nominees and divisions on the Senate floor along party lines. ‘Borking’ a candidate – the name given to the process of dismissing a candidate because of extremist political or legal views – has become more and more common and even Harriet Miers, a Bush candidate for the vacancy later filled with the Alito, was dismissed by Republican leadership for not being firmly conservative enough.

The past two appointments to the Supreme Court faced a new source of opposition—the NRA. In ‘scoring’ the nomination, the organization made it extremely clear to senators that they would receive low marks on the NRA’s personal scoring sheet by voting for either Kagan or Sotamayor. This, despite Kagan never having voiced any opposition to gun control in her career as a litigator and as dean of Harvard Law School. After hunting for the first time with Antonin Scalia, Kagan commented that she found it “kind of fun.”

Kagan’s case is a good illustration of the faults inherent in the current nomination process and the polarization of what should be the appointment of independent legislative minds to the nation’s highest court. With Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 79) likely to retire this term, and Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia into their late 70s (both are 76), Obama may have the opportunity to make two or three nominees to the Supreme Court before this term is up. Names like Diane Wood, who was considered twice for the earlier appointments but both times dismissed from consideration, will return to the national spotlight. It is important that in the years to come that Obama clearly articulate his legal philosophy; it is key for the Democratic Party that he put a greater emphasis on the appointment of judicial nominees in his second term. With the eight years of Clinton and now a second term for Obama, Democrats can make it 16 of 24 years of presidential appointments to the legal system. With the current composition of the federal courts (before Clinton, 12 of the previous 16 years saw a Republican in the Oval Office), Obama’s selection of nominees will be key in shaping legislative policy for years to come. The current division of the Supreme Court—two four-justice liberal and conservative coalitions with Anthony Kennedy leaning to the right in the middle—could be changed drastically with the appointment of two or three young liberal justices, who would join the 52-year old Kagan and 58-year old Sotamayor for the next two or three decades. If the Affordable Care Act decision this summer reminded America of the power of the American judicial system, perhaps the beginning of the new term will cement a Democratic commitment to it.

The most recently adjourned Congressional body, steeped in fringe politics and partisan interests, could barely perform its most fundamental civic duty of voting on and passing laws. It was the most inefficient and unproductive Congress ever, compromising the least to consider the fewest bills, while enacting even fewer — many of which were routine or mundane matters like reapproving administrative procedures or formally naming post offices. Meanwhile, the U.S. Postal Service hangs on the brink of bankruptcy.

A Senate that is constitutionally sanctioned to form its own rules and procedures has embraced obstructionism to influence lawmaking in the form of the filibuster. So long as someone keeps talking — and boy do these senators ever love to hear themselves talk — no one has to worry about actually passing laws. The Senate does not have to do its job.

Congress allegedly serves ordinary citizens in matters of law, but our representatives have focused mostly on promoting themselves, kowtowing to deep pockets and special interests in a perpetual effort to stay in office. Lobbying has become a $3 billion-a-year industry with a revolving door plainly situated between the public and private sectors.

Even if a cabal of billionaires were ultimately unable to purchase the presidency for their fanatical free-market darling, it is no less assuring that President Barack Obama’s greatest financial supporters — including Hollywood and the banking industry — benefited from considerable tax breaks embedded in the recent band-aid legislation addressing the fiscal cliff. Meanwhile, taxes increased for just about everyone, while essentially nothing was done to curb an unsustainable, decade-long federal spending spree. (Congress says they will sort all that out in two months. What reason could we possibly have not to believe them?)

Tax breaks for corporations are one thing, but exoneration for clear criminal activity is another entirely. I could face life in prison for distributing cocaine just once at Dartmouth. British bank HSBC knowingly helped Mexican drug cartels launder billions of dollars through the U.S. banking system over the course of a decade. The Department of Justice slapped the bank with a hefty fine but refused to pursue criminal charges, citing fears of destabilizing the global financial system. First they were too big to fail. Now they are too big to jail.

While innocent moviegoers and schoolchildren are gunned down, our nation defers to a vaguely-worded passage in a 200-year-old document, as if our nation’s founders had prophesized the development and proliferation of lethally accurate, high-powered hunting rifles when crafting the Bill of Rights. A similarly reflexive concession to the preceding amendment prompted our most powerful judicial body to sanction unlimited, anonymous campaign donations and to defend the Westboro Baptist Church’s hateful spew over the privacy and respect of fallen soldiers.

If our legislative framework is failing us, Constitutional chicanery has often served as our primary mode of societal progress. The federal government was entirely powerless against nefarious private interests until it used a liberal reading of the commerce and elastic clauses to justify an expansion of powers. And while we surely require a formal framework to organize an American polity, maybe it’s time, after more than two centuries, that we reevaluate or even renovate that framework. Maybe instead of jury-rigging legal arguments to stay in line with some constitutional precedent, we need to reconsider the Constitution itself.

I acknowledge that mine is an audacious suggestion. To be clear, I fully appreciate the ingenuity of our Founders’ creation and do not propose a complete overhaul. But the idea that the social, cultural and political environment in which our Constitution was created would yield solutions that remain eternally relevant in an increasingly complex and interconnected world is absurd. The Founders may have known this — Article V allows for the ratification of individual constitutional amendments and more radically, the formation of a Constitutional Convention to propose and enact multiple amendments at once.

The need for such a convention and a comprehensive reformulation of a systemically problematic political system is inevitable. That may come two or two thousand years in the future, but in light of recent events, the conversation is warranted right now.

Last November, right before the break, we published an editorial offering our two cents on weapons. In reflection — on the shootings in the Clackamas Town Center in Happy Valley, in Newtown, Conn., at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and in New York where firefighters were lured to a burning house and car only to be shot upon — we still agree with what we said.

Guns have a place and time, people have the right to own them, but crazy people will be crazy. The guns aren’t the problem; the people behind them are. So naturally, we should outlaw people — or something realistic.

It’s true, President Obama is prepared to use executive orders to apply restrictions on weapons in this country — if he has to. It’s also true the plans being discussed limit which guns are accessible to civilians, decreasing the amount a magazine holds, banning Internet sales of ammunition and mandating federal background checks. Though, like everything left up to our elected officials, nothing has been decided on a countrywide level.

Although Congress is taking their sweet-potato time, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a plea to the Congress on Wednesday to step it up. He’s also pushing for New York to be the first state to reform laws on gun control.

But why is it so difficult for our nation to come together and work on this very serious issue?

On Tuesday, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart made the point that we can’t come together on this issue because gun advocates are afraid the government will extend their sticky fingers into our homes and take away our guns. Like Gov. Cuomo said, this is not about the government taking away our guns.

We own guns. We have gone shooting and hunting. We like our guns, and we don’t want anyone to take them away. These facts, however, do not inhibit our ability to see what’s in front of us. Americans need to understand there are unstable people willing to march into a shopping mall, lure firefighters to a fire or even barge into an elementary school with deadly intent.

We don’t believe taking all guns away will help — that would only lead to drawn out regulations on bows, knives or hammers. A free-for-all, however, isn’t the answer either.

We don’t have a plan of action, or a solution better than what our Congress has put out there. We do agree civilians don’t need a semi-automatic AR-15. We do agree more intensive background checks shouldn’t be fought. We do agree limiting a magazine to fewer than 10 bullets is a fair idea.

No, none of this will stop gun violence, because there will always be crazies. Just like prohibiting alcohol wouldn’t stop drunk driving. However, little things like a drinking age and a campaign to promote alcohol awareness has helped reduce drunk driving fatalities by 52 percent since 1982, according to The Century Council.

Just saying.

Last month, the Department of Education introduced a new Pay As You Earn student loan repayment plan, which will cap monthly payments for Federal Direct Student Loans at 10 percent of discretionary income. In addition to reducing monthly loan payments, the program allows graduates to pay off their loan over a 20-year period, rather than the standard 10 years.

“We know many recent graduates are worried about repaying their student loans as our economy continues to recover, and now it’s easier than ever for student borrowers to lower monthly payments and stay on track,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement.

Changes in student loan policy are sure to affect much of the undergraduate population at U. Michigan. According to the University’s Office of Financial Aid, about 85 percent of resident undergraduates and 55 percent of non-resident undergraduates receive need-based and/or non-need-based financial aid.

Pam Fowler, executive director of the Office of Financial Aid, said this new plan is a step in the right direction but still foresees graduates running into some difficulties. Because the government offers multiple repayment plans, Fowler said some students may find it difficult to determine which repayment plan is best for their financial situation.

On the other hand, many students are unaware of the abundance of loan options available, Fowler said. In some cases, graduates are not getting good information about alternative loan repayment options from the federal servicer who handles their case. As a result students may have issues making their payments in full and on time.

If graduates are not receiving sufficient information from their federal servicers, Fowler suggested they contact the Office of Financial Aid for advice.

Pay As You Earn, which went into effect at the end of last month, will not have any effect on the limit a student can borrow from the federal government. The Office of Financial Aid is responsible for reporting costs of attendance and the maximum amount a student can borrow each year for accuracy in government loan collection.

The new plan will also not affect how the Financial Aid Office operates, Fowler said. The Department of Education will continue to send the office a list of graduates who are late on loan payments, and the Financial Aid Office will try to contact them in order to get them back on track.

Fowler warns that students need to borrow responsibly and ensure that they are able to repay the loan entirely.

“We still have to do a very good job of cautioning students to borrow for needs, not for wants,” Fowler said.

Still, she said Pay As You Earn is a great way to give graduates more relief in paying off their debts.

“Any plan that will keep a student out of default is a good thing, and that is what these plans are designed to do.”

In the statement issued Thursday, the association, comprised of 62 universities including U. Florida, is pushing for the federal government to reform gun laws.

While UF is in the association, Director of Public Affairs Janine Sikes said it is not a UF-related initiative and was unaware if UF has taken any stance.

Jodine Castin, a 22-year-old health education and behavior senior, said she was glad the association was calling for action.

“Part of my fear was that it would be forgotten,” she said. “There needs to be at least one law made.”

Stating that schools have become “centers for national mourning,” the statement issued by the executive committee has asked that action occur on three domains: gun control, care of the mentally ill and the culture of the contemporary media.

The Association of American Universities has joined more than 300 college presidents who have signed College Presidents for Gun Safety, an open letter demanding Congress pass stricter gun control laws.

UF has not signed the list, which is made up of mostly private colleges.

Criminology and sociology professor Ronald Akers said he thought the association’s requests were reasonable and supported the call.

“The passage and outcome of any policy changes will be more symbolic than actually effective in dealing with or preventing events such as at Sandy Hook elementary,” Akers wrote in an email.

Stating that mental illness has played a role in mass violence in America, the association has requested more thorough examinations of the treatment of the mentally ill in the search for ways to extinguish mass violence.

The Association of American Universities has also called for a ban of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

Yet, Akers said higher levels of gun violence are often found in stronger gun control jurisdictions.

“Whatever failures of gun control that can be identified in such instances predict too much,” Akers wrote. “The same failures are found all over the place without the same outcomes.”

Linda Nhon’s approval of tighter gun control by the federal government was heightened after she left a Largo, Fla., music venue, and two gunshots were fired when a fight broke out.

“There were kids there,” said the 21-year-old UF junior. “It makes me feel unsafe to go to public places, especially around my own peers.”

Sydney Madrigal, a 19-year-old UF freshman, is also in support of more regulations when it comes to buying a weapon.

While the association is focused on gun control and mental illness, the statement also points blame to the media, which they said is fueling crime with their “addiction to violence.”

“The exposure to media portrayals of violence in American society is very widespread, so there should be very large, even massive numbers of such incidents,” Akers said. “Yet there are relatively few, so few that when they occur they attract enormous attention.”

Akers said the policy changes that stem from traumatic events can reach a level of moral panic that produces strong public fear.

“Once the policy changes are made we tend to think we have fixed the problem, but the evidence and the probability that any of the recommended actions will have real, meaningful and consequential outcomes is pretty low,” he said.

With the approval of the bill, taxes increased for married couples making more than $450,000 a year, and unmarried citizens making more than $400,000. These increases are reminiscent of the tax rates of the Clinton era.

Under the bill unemployment was also extended, which helped 2 million out-of-work Americans, and tax credits for college tuition created by the 2009 stimulus package were also extended for five years, which aided 25 million low-income families. The House also approved to revoke the $900 congressional pay raise.

A major benefit point for students with the approval of the bill is the tax credit for college tuition extension. With tuition increases becoming commonplace, and the price of education rising as textbooks and materials become more expensive, this credit is a small nod to the plight of the student — a relief of sorts for many, especially the low-income families mentioned above.

Although the benefits we reap for this deal are important, the hysteria the deal has cultivated cannot be ignored. The fiscal cliff, and the possibility of reaching it, has been a talking point ever since the election.

People have been fretting over possible hikes in taxes and the next time a major deal needs to be made; there needs to be open negotiation and more visibility and public discussion to, “not scare the heck out of folks quite as much,” as President Barack Obama stated in the White House briefing room after the deal passed.

For Congress to take until the last possible moment to reach a resolution shows a major flaw in the legislative system of our nation. Party affiliated actions have too much power and too much prevalence within the system. Legislators don’t take what is best for the country into account anymore. Rather, they take what is best for their political party. A legislator’s job is to be a voice for their constituents, not of corporate sponsors or to garner political popularity and enjoy perks associated with it. Power and influence are dangerous things. Those who use it for themselves instead of others don’t deserve it. Sadly, in Washington, that doesn’t seem to be a widely held principle.

While it’s important to note that some individuals did cross party lines when voting on the deal, it’s also important to point out desperation was the main factor in the legislators doing so. Compromise was not made for the sake of fairness and a just resolution for all. Compromise was made to distance themselves from blame if things did not resolve in a timely manner. Fear motivated this compromise, not honor. Forced compromise is not compromise. Although the fiscal cliff was avoided, large problems and limits with the legislative system still need to be addressed if Congress is to serve its public adequately and fairly. And if they are unable to do this, their chief task, then their purpose is moot.

Ensconced, encased, and engrossed within the chokehold of mob rule do we find in this most dire of dilemmas — the “fiscal cliff” — both the Democratic and Republican Parties.

Opinions from The Atlantic, Huffington Post and The New York Times suggest that President Barack Obama ought to take a democratic, “I won the election” attitude to working with Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives. Indeed, he did win the election. Nevertheless, he faces divided government. In the same election, Republicans retained their majority in the House. In the face of such divided election returns, no mandate exists.

For all their posturing for and pandering to the folks back home, for all their use of their bully pulpits to replace rather than supplement their interactions with one another, no member of Congress has an obligation to pay any heed to the public opinion polls that say that most Americans support tax increases. Barely more than 500 Americans have a direct say on the language of bills or whether they become law. It is time for the president, senators and representatives to start dealing with one another rather than agitating their intellectual dependents like a bunch of bums.

The source of the fiscal dilemma is none other than the majoritarian reductionism with which we have been infected for decades, if not centuries — first, by amending the Constitution so that presidents and vice presidents are elected as tickets; second, by amending it so that senators are elected by popular majorities rather than the legislatures of the states from which they hail; and third, by requiring the members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for president and vice president in accordance with their states’ popular vote returns.

At the core of the problem is the conflation of what is best for the United States of America with what is best for a certain class of Americans in their personal capacities. How else could Obama advocate a plan that “asks the wealthiest Americans to pay more, … will strengthen the middle class over the long haul, and grow our economy over the long haul”?

In his statement following a last-minute meeting with Congressional leaders, Obama reiterated such dedication to a solution that would “above all protect our middle class and everybody who’s striving to get into the middle class.”

Haggling over tax brackets and rates demonstrates this conflation as much as anything else. Initially, Obama wanted to allow taxes to rise on family income above $250,000 per year. Boehner’s so-called “Plan B” would have raised taxes on incomes of more than $1 million per year. Obama countered with a proposal that taxes rise on incomes of more than $400,000 per year.

It is time for everyone — including the “middle class” which, in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, is “the backbone of this country;” which, according to the Pew Research Center, is an income bracket made up of 51 percent (a majority) of Americans — to pay more. If the middle class truly is the backbone of America and its ideal class, it has just as much an obligation to contribute to its coffers as the richest among us.

Focusing so much attention on the taxes of the rich, which would bring in so little more, makes us look like vindictive perpetrators of class warfare in the mold of the Roman Gracchi, the English Levelers, or the French and Russian revolutionaries. If we shoulder them with responsibilities disproportionate to their equal citizenship, the rich Atlases of the world will begin to shrug, unsettling us all.

President Abraham Lincoln said in his famous Gettysburg Address that the United States is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Each of those words — of, by and for — forms one corner of a triangle. If one of them ceases to exist, the triangle crashes down. The rich are the most prominent among us, but they are not the only Americans. Even the poorest have civic obligations and must share in the governing “by the people.”

Politicians of all stripes like to flaunt and campaign on their patriotism. At the end of the day, however, patriotism belongs to the men and women who will pay the ransom, who will flinch in the game of chicken.

One Biblical story comes to mind. Once, two women confronted King Solomon, each claiming to be the mother of a baby. Since each woman was insistent, Solomon proposed that the baby be cut in half and that each woman receive half of it. One woman acquiesced. The other, however, exclaimed that the baby should be kept whole, and given to the other. Solomon concluded that the desperate woman was the child’s mother, and gave it to her. American politicians should have the same desperation to save the object of their trust.

Failure to come up with a compromise to avert the so-called fiscal cliff by midnight Monday will trigger an 8.2 percent across-the-board cut in non-defense discretionary spending. As a result, Harvard will lose out on millions of dollars in promised federal grant money for the 2013 fiscal year.

Because the cuts will be applied to the current fiscal year, which began July 1, the loss in sponsorship will be compounded onto the second half of the fiscal year, worsening the blow for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal calendar.

The University received roughly $656 million in federal sponsorship during the 2012 fiscal year. Though the University has yet to release information for the 2013 fiscal year, sponsorship figures were not expected to change drastically from current levels. Federal sponsorship comprised about 16 percent of the University’s overall operating budget for the fiscal year 2012, according to the Office for Sponsored Programs 2012 annual report.

The schools most at risk from federal cuts are Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, both of which rely heavily on the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for funding. The Medical School alone took in over $250 million in federal funds during the 2012 fiscal year, a sum that accounted for 34 percent of its operating budget. Though the School of Public Health brought in a slightly smaller total of nearly $193 million, that amount was 55 percent of the school’s overall budget.

Of all University schools receiving significant federal support, The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is the most diversified, relying heavily on private sponsorship in addition to federal support. FAS received just over $135 million in federal monies for the fiscal year 2012—about 12 percent of its overall budget.

Roughly 75 percent of federal sponsorship to Harvard comes from the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the NIH. But the University also receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Defense, which stands to experience cuts at the slightly higher rate of 9.4 percent.

Younger faculty who rely on upstart research money for their first projects are particularly vulnerable to federal funding cuts, but all University researchers receiving federal sponsorship will be forced to tighten their belts.

University President Drew G. Faust has already warned Congress twice about the dangers of cutting funds for research. This summer, she and more than 100 other university presidents wrote to Congress and the President, urging them to avoid the automatic cuts. “Sequestration is an undiscerning and blunt budget tool that would substantially harm our nation’s future by blindly slashing valuable investments in education and scientific research,” the letter read.

In November, Faust and 15 other leaders of Universities and other research institutions signed a letter sent to the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation, calling on the legislature to avoid cuts to funding that schools “depend on to deliver innovations essential to economic growth.”

Faust told The Crimson in early November that in the long term, the University could make up for federal funding shortfalls through new sources of revenue, including partnerships between researchers and industry or philanthropic support for research. The University already receives millions in private research funds, but those numbers will likely grow as long term cuts are made at the federal level.

According to University administrators, threats to federal funding are not a new concern. Robert D. Reischauer ’63, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation—the University’s highest governing body—said that the Corporation’s budget meetings have discussed preparing for slower growth or reductions in research funding for some time.

“The flashing red lights have been flashing now for a few years,” he said in early December.

The recent set of fiscal cliff measures was written into the Budget Control Act of 2011 in order to force Congress to address mounting budget deficits before the end of the year. The law calls for the sequestration, or automatic trimming, of discretionary and non-discretionary federal spending to the tune of $100 billion. Cuts will take effect on Jan. 2 and increase progressively in coming years. Additionally, Bush-era tax cuts and other more recent breaks will immediately expire.

Any deal that is reached before the fiscal cliff deadline—now less than 48 hours away—is expected to address only taxes, not spending, though Congress has expressed optimism it will reach a broader compromise after the deadline passes.

Last year, guns killed 31,347 American civilians. Only forty died in mass shootings, and the most liberal estimates available claim only a few thousand gun-related deaths were a result of assault weapons. (These weapons most likely account for less than 1% of gun violence.) Even in the recent Newtown tragedy, the shooter had more than enough guns to use if his Bushmaster .223 rifle had not been available. Renewing some version of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban would be a great start towards preventing certain kinds of gun violence, but let’s not consider it anything beyond a start.

What else has been proposed? Some Republicans have called for more guns; the likes of Ann Coulter have regularly noted that more concealed carry permits would lead to fewer mass shootings, and that’s right. If the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary had a gun, priceless lives could have been saved. The same goes for those present in the Aurora theater, the Sikh temple, and the Tucson “Congress on Your Corner” event. This view, however, ignores the more important studies that find a positive relationship between gun ownership and gun violence in the United States; saving ten lives in a mass murder isn’t worth losing fifteen lives in a dark alley.

America might be better served if politicians heeded the oft-uttered mantra “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” International evidence confirms many countries, unlike the United States, have lots of guns and relatively few murders and vice versa. (Look at Switzerland.) While there may not be a correlation between some nations’ gun ownership rates and their gun violence, there seems to be a common cause that increases the lethality of this combination in America: culture. The issue is not easy access to guns, but instead our desire to obtain and use them. This is the root of the issue, and any attempt to limit gun ownership merely provides a temporary, patchwork solution. At the same time, there’s a lot we can do to reduce gun violence—we don’t simply have to throw our hands in the air and accept it.

Criminologists have identified a number of factors that noticeably increase violent crime: racism, gender inequality, bad parenting, poor schooling, bullying, alcohol use, religious involvement, lack of mental health treatment, income inequality, and so on. In relation to the rest of the industrialized world, America scores quite poorly on many of these indicators; not surprisingly, our firearm-related deaths are much higher than Europe’s.

The government cannot play Big Brother and try to fix all of these issues—many are beyond its scope or ability to fix. But let’s stop pretending guns are the main issue. Anyone truly interested in reducing gun violence shouldn’t write their congresspeople asking for gun control, but instead should request universal healthcare, better public schools, more progressive taxes, less public worship, expanded welfare programs, an Equal Rights Amendment, etc. Rarely, if ever, do advocates of a safer society bring these issues to the forefront; they seem undoubtedly partisan and unrelated to the problem.

America has developed a culture of fear and violence. To steal an example from Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, Canada has gun laws as lax as ours, yet they have significantly lower rates of gun violence. Some cultural differences may remain forever embedded in American society, but following Canada’s lead in addressing the needs of the underprivileged could do more than any increase in gun control. Though another assault weapons ban is probably a good idea, it won’t go far enough towards solving the real issue. We cannot end violence with one bill, but we can begin to address gun violence by recognizing our societal flaws and pushing for broader public policy changes.

Since the state does not offer alternative, pro-choice plates, the Choose Life plates “constitute viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment,” the judge wrote in the court ruling Friday, according to CNN.

Choose Life is a nonprofit that assists states that want to sell the specialty plates and currently, 29 states sell Choose Life plates.

In 2011, the bill making Choose Life license plates available in North Carolina was passed. At the same time, amendments to create alternative pro-choice license plates were shut down.

The judge’s ruling makes sense. License plates are distributed by the state. By passing out plates that represent only one side of an issue, the state gives members of that side an unfair advantage. If license plates addressing the abortion issue are going to be offered at all, they should be designed to reflect all sides of the issue. Residents should have equal opportunities to express themselves. Denying some residents that opportunity is unconstitutional.

The effectiveness of these plates is also something that should be addressed. Are these plates worth the hassle? Perhaps not. If the initiative behind the plates is to sway other drivers to adopt a pro-life or pro-choice stance, this seems like an ineffective way of doing so. A few words on a piece of metal hardly seem convincing. Initiating talks on the subject seem like a more effective way to encouragesomeone to take one side over another.

Also, who says pro-life or pro-choice messages can only be displayed on license plates? If residents are intent on displaying these messages on their cars, they can purchase on bumper stickers or other items that are not issued by the state and are subject to their restrictions.

The state seems to have shot itself in the foot here. Measures to provide alternative pro-choice license plates were proposed and shut down. While the court has confirmed their error, it is something that the state should have realized earlier on.

Two bills were pushed through state House votes on Tuesday. House Bill 4003 — which applies to public sector unions — was passed at about noon in a 58-51 vote, and Senate Bill 116 — which applies similar regulations to private sector unions — passed 58-52 shortly after. Both bills consolidate legislation that passed through the House and Senate last week.

House Republicans invoked a motion to reconsider the private-sector bill in order to prevent Democrats from doing the same, but rescinded that motion later in the day.

Right-to-work legislation would prohibit the requirement of union membership in any job and outlaw mandatory fees associated with membership for most public and private-sector employees, excluding police and firefighters. Currently, 23 states have similar policies. During the November election, Michigan voters turned down a ballot proposal that would have enshrined collective bargaining into the state constitution.

Proponents testified that the legislation would increase workers’ options and freedom of speech. Opponents believe the legislation is an attack on Michigan’s unions, which have played an important role in decades of national organized labor debates.

East Lansing Police Officer Todd Quick said the ELPD was prepared for unruly behavior, such as protesters rushing the doors of the Capitol building, but he found it unlikely that dangerous situations would arise.

“Once it’s voted yay or nay, it’s basically done,” Quick said. “Nobody’s been unruly, out of hand, nobody has bothered us … everybody’s been friendly.”

However, protesters did knock down and vandalize a tent owned by Americans for Prosperity — a conservative group that came to support the legislation — situated on a reserved space of the Capitol building’s front lawn. Police were concerned about the incident because two people and a propane tank were caught under the canvas.

Law enforcement officials on horseback kept the crowd at bay while they retrieved the tank and trapped people. Once the risk was removed, police vacated the area and protesters went back to chanting.

“Down with the Snyder regime. One dumb turd,” read a union member’s sign.

Alex Neitzke, a second-year graduate student and Teaching Assistant at Michigan State University, said he thinks the passage of right-to-work will disintegrate unions, and he can’t imagine unions not being around.

Although from Chicago, Neitzke said he doesn’t think the decisions made by Snyder in the past two years have Michigan’s best interests in mind.

“He’s always centrist in rhetoric, but very conservative in actions, and so I think Snyder should be judged by his actions, and thus negatively,” Neitzke said.

Lame duck legislators — those who are nearing the end of their term and generally have successors named — were a prevelent topic of discussion at the rally.

Barb Fuller, a volunteer with Planned Parenthood, said term limits increase the turnover rate of legislators, decreasing their personal responsibility.

“So between term limits and lame duck, there are people who can cast any vote they want to without any accountability or repercussions,” Fuller said. “So what you’re seeing is some pretty radical legislation.”

Jeanne Hummel, an employee at the Monroe Department of Human Services and Chief Steward for UAW 6000, said she was at the protest to support middle class families who need the unions in order to make a living.

“The thing that’s really sad is that the governor flip-flopped,” Hummel said. The governer initially stated right-to-work was not high on his agenda before eventually pledging support.

Earlier in the day, Marica Close, who also works at the Monroe Department of Human Services, said there is only one thing that she hopes to happen if right-to-work legislation passes: “Recall Governor Snyder.”

Members of the Graduate Employees Organization and the University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council were in the capitol to protest the legislation, along with thousands of members of other unions. They could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday at the Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Mich., President Barack Obama criticized the legislation.

“What we shouldn’t be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages,” the president said. “These so called right-to-work laws have nothing to do with economics, they have everything to do with politics.”

Scalia came to Princeton U. to discuss his recent book and share his thoughts on interpreting the Constitution. Scalia, the longest-serving justice on the current Court, has been described as the intellectual anchor of the Court’s conservative wing.

When questioned by Duncan Hosie, who identified as gay, on his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas — which struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law — Scalia stood behind his decision. Hosie questioned Scalia’s comparison between having a moral objection to sodomy and having a moral objection toward things like bestiality or murder. Scalia defended his comparison as a form of argument.

“If we cannot have moral feelings against or objections to homosexuality, can we have it against anything?” Scalia asked, explaining his dissent. “It’s a reduction to the absurd … I don’t think it’s necessary but I think it’s effective,” Scalia said, adding dryly, “I’m surprised you weren’t persuaded.”

Born in nearby Trenton, N.J., Scalia applied, but was not accepted, to Princeton. He instead attended Georgetown where he graduated summa cum laude as valedictorian in 1957. He later graduated from Harvard Law School.

Scalia was notably plain-spoken during both the lecture and the Q-and-A.

“For those of you who have been to some of our previous lectures, you’ll notice it was a little different this time,” said politics professor Robert George, the campus conservative leader who introduced Scalia and offered closing remarks.

Scalia declined to discuss issues related to active cases or potential future cases during the Q-and-A, instead directing the conversation back to the general arguments he made during the lecture.

During his lecture, he defended his view that focusing on the text and the original meaning of the Constitution are the best interpretive measures to protect the Constitution and democratic ideals.

“The text is what governs,” said Scalia, explaining that it would be wrong to bring in the historical circumstances at the time of the Constitution’s signing or to attempt to interpret the intent of those who wrote the document.

“I don’t care what their intent was. We are a government of laws, not of men,” he explained.

Scalia lamented that the trend has moved toward viewing the Constitution as a living document that is open to new interpretations. He explained that the most common argument for this approach is flexibility, explaining that his opponents argue that as society changes, the Constitution must grow with the society it governs.

“The Constitution is not an organism; it’s a legal text for Pete’s sake,” Scalia said.

He argued that while viewing it as a living document can guarantee new freedoms, it can also eliminate old ones. That is in part why Scalia said he views the structure of the Constitution as more important than the enumerated rights contained within it.

“Every tinhorned dictator in the world has a bill of rights,” Scalia said. He explained that the Founders rightly spent most of their time debating the structure and treated the Bill of Rights as an “afterthought.”

He explained that unless the structure prevents the centralization of power and provides for adequate checks and balances, any protection of freedoms could be ignored. Scalia acknowledged that this same structure, which impedes rights from being taken away, also has a tendency to slow down the process of change.

“God bless gridlock,” he said. “It’s the principal protection of minorities.”

He explained that despite his continued warnings, the idea of a “living constitution is incredibly seductive.” Scalia added that the idea is especially “seductive” to his fellow justices, and it is hard to talk someone out of such a viewpoint.

“I don’t know how we got to this stage,” he added, explaining that the approach he defends is rarely taught in law schools anymore.

“At the end of the road is the destruction of the Constitution,” Scalia said. “Unless you give [the laws] the meaning of those who enacted them, you’re destroying democracy.”

Obama, speaking before several hundred UAW workers as well as many members of the Michigan Democratic Congressional delegation, chastised Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and other Michigan Republicans for championing the recent right-to-work bills. If signed by Snyder — which is expected to occur on Tuesday — the legislation would make union due payments voluntary for private and most public-sector unions.

“What we shouldn’t be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages,” Obama said to enthusiastic applause. “These so called right-to-work laws have nothing to do with economics, they have everything to do with politics.”

Obama pointed to Michigan’s automotive unions as representative of the importance of collective bargaining in the formation of the middle class and the success of the larger United States, and he said state and national representatives should be fighting to preserve the process.

“What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money,” the president said. “America’s not going to compete based on low-skill, low-wage, no worker’s rights — that’s not our competitive advantage.”
that right now.”

“Tell it to Snyder,” a UAW worker yelled to an approving crowd as Obama described how America would be better off when workers were able to afford the products they produced.

Obama toured the plant before his speech, during which he discussed the rebirth of the auto industry and the necessity of a strong middle class.

His remarks were intended to address the looming fiscal cliff and the possible tax increases Americans family may face should he and Congress not come to a consensus on the spending cuts and additional budget deficit measures needed before the end of the year. The President said Congress must pass a law to prevent a tax increase on the first $250,000 of every American’s income.

“That means 98 percent of Americans … and 97 percent of small businesses wouldn’t see their income taxes go up a single dime,” the president said. “Congress can do

He said he is willing to work with Republicans in Congress on a plan to reduce the deficit, but is not willing to forfeit investments in education, infrastructure improvements, or research and development.

“Our success as a country in this century will be defined by how well we educate our kids, how well we train our workers, how well we invent, how well we innovate,” he said. “That’s how you bring good jobs back to Detroit.”

After the speech, State Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D–Detroit) said the president’s remarks about unions and the right-to-work legislation was “on-point.” She said the actions taken — or not taken — by her Republican colleagues in the Legislature to pass the laws so quickly seemed undemocratic.

“It’s absolutely destructive,” Tlaib said of the legislation. “To think that some of the reasons that they’re using to pass this through so quickly is absolutely unbelievable.”

Maxine Graff-Goodman, a resident of Farmington Hills, Mich., said though she and her husband are not union members, they came to show support for the President and the rest of the UAW.

“We think that we won the election, it’s time for the Republicans to realize that,” Graff-Goodman said. “If we’re going to move this economy forward, we need to take steps in the right direction to do that.”

The recent Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations General Assembly encapsulates everything wrong with Netanyahu’s government, a coalition of religious nationalists and out-and-out racists led by his right-wing Likud Party. With significant European backing, the resolution to make Palestine a non-member observer state passed overwhelming despite objections from the United States, Israel, and seven other countries. The Jewish state had a right to be angry: The UN bid arguably violated the Oslo Accords, which prohibit unilateral action by either Israelis or Palestinians. That said, this was an avoidable embarrassment. Last year, the Palestinians attempted the same thing at the UN Security Council, a request nixed by the U.S. Between then and now, the Netanyahu government could have returned in earnest to the negotiating table, if it only had agreed to a halt to settlement-building, an offer that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, made repeatedly.

In remarks at the Begin Center in Jerusalem, Bibi Netanyahu struck a sanctimonious tone. “It doesn’t matter how many hands will be raised against it,” he said, “there is no force in the world that would cause me to compromise Israel’s security.” Writing off the international community wasn’t enough. He had to double down on the behavior that has paralyzed the peace process, announcing plans the next day to build 3,000 new housing units in the E1 corridor between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, which would bifurcate the West Bank between north and south, further entrenching the Israeli occupation. As the left-leaning daily Haaretz wrote, this was “a step that, first and foremost, punishe[d] Israel.” The U.S., which had proven itself a true friend to Israel, issued a stinging condemnation. Five European nations summoned Israeli ambassadors to protest the Jewish state’s actions. Further recriminations are in the offing.

Some commentators conjectured that Bibi’s move was designed to gin up his base ahead of the election, after which he would cut a deal. This runs deeper than that, though. Bibi is heir to an expansionist and exclusivist Zionist vision of a Greater Israel that encompasses the occupied territories—and perhaps other lands. While he endorsed a two-state solution three years ago, his government’s settlement binge and legitimization of arguably illegal outposts indicate that he is not a true convert. An ability to overcome the past is the mark of the peacemaker. Menachen Begin and Anwar Sadat had it. Abbas might have it. Bibi probably doesn’t.

And that’s where the election comes in. Right now, Likud, which merged with the Arab-hating Yisrael Beiteinu party, is poised to rout a dispirited left beset by infighting. For its part, the Israeli electorate has grown more hawkish since the second intifada. But voters could be won over to the left if Netanyahu is seen as having damaged American-Israeli relations, a matter that bears heavily on their minds.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Bibi of hurting Israel by breaking for Romney. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the peace camp’s last, best hope, said Netanyahu “poked Obama in the eye” by approving settlement construction in E1. President Obama could give credence to both those arguments, and it would be just deserts for a government that thinks friendship is a one-way street.

U.S. action should be targeted at settlement-building, the biggest roadblock to peace. In 2010, The New York Times reported that $200 million in tax-deductible donations were funneled to the settlements by American charities. Removing that deduction would not make a big dent monetarily, but it would send a powerful signal. To ratchet things up, America could condition its loan guarantees to the Jewish state, $3.8 billion of which will be disbursed through 2016, on a cessation of settlement activity, subtracting the amount Israel spends on building from the sum of its guarantees, an idea occasionally floated. Finally, Obama could announce that military aid to Israel—in excess of $3 billion annually—is under review because of E1 construction, a development that would earn Netanyahu brickbats from across the political spectrum.

Such a decision would ignite a firestorm in America, but it might be the only way to rescue the Israeli left and win the peace. Plus, Obama’s already been re-elected.

As the specifics of gun laws will likely always be in contention, the more important aspect — the emotional and psychological state of the person who commits gun crimes — should garner a lot more attention both before and after these of tragedies occur.

During his halftime segment on Sunday Night Football, NBC broadcaster Bob Costas quoted a piece from Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock, who wrote, “‘In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? But here,’ wrote Whitlock, ‘is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.’”

Costas received criticism for his report on social media from Second Amendment supporters who thought his comments were misinformed and that he should not have used the broadcast medium to express his opinions. But the point that both Whitlock and Costas tried to make should not be the main concern regarding this or other crimes like it.

The statements only serve to polarize the climate in the aftermath of tragedy and detract from the legitimacy of the arguments.

The problem in solving the gun violence dilemma is that both sides of the argument have inherently valid points. Guns are just objects, paper weights if you will, that only result in devastation when the user has the psychological determination to aim and pull the trigger.

However, guns serve only one purpose: to shoot a projectile with a potentially dangerous force. Whether individuals use this power to cause harm or prevent it is based solely on the emotional and psychological stability of the user.

Whenever tragedies like the one in Kansas City occur, it is far too easy to shift the blame to the availability of guns, getting us so caught up in that debate that we forget about the underlining cause. We did the same thing when news broke regarding the Aurora, Colorado shooter James Holmes and even more so after the Columbine High shooting in 1999. In both instances the gunman’s emotional stability was questioned but the continual rhetoric afterwards concerned how to stop gun violence rather than how we, as a culture, could alleviate the emotional volatility of the perpetrator.
It will never be easy to delve into the mind of someone who could take another human beings life. It is almost easier to forego the uneasiness and push the blame onto something else. But before we rush to blame a piece of machinery we need to fully understand the most powerful weapon that humans can wield — the mind.

Presently, there is a 35 percent rate on inheritance above $5 million. However, as a part of the fiscal cliff, the estate tax is in for an automatic increase on Jan. 1. The $5 million threshold will drop to $1 million, and the rate will jump from 35 to 55 percent. If on Dec. 31 you happen to be on your deathbed with a $5 million inheritance set aside, surviving one more day will cost $2.3 million dollars in taxes. That’s quite the predicament if you’re on life support.

The argument in favor of a higher estate tax is easy to see. Advocates argue on moral grounds that it is an easy way to help level the playing field of equal opportunity between the rich and the poor. However, opponents argue against it on the grounds of economic efficiency and, surprise, even morality.

For example, consider two individuals, Bob and Joe, who each started businesses and sold them at retirement for $10 million. Bob spent his retirement gambling away his money, but Joe invested his, living modestly while his savings financed new businesses and economic development. Is it fair that Joe be penalized for his financial choice? Moral arguments alone make for a difficult method of justification.

So what of the economics of the death tax, as it is sometimes pejoratively nicknamed? Many economists, such as former University of Minnesota professor and Nobel Laureate Edward Prescott, favor a complete repeal of the estate tax. Like any good ol’ American tax, it is full of loopholes.

This results in a plethora of inefficiencies and distortions in decision making. Because the estate tax raises very little revenue, about 0.2 percent of gross domestic product, some economists express doubt that the revenue exceeds the opportunity cost of all those lawyers, accountants, government administrators, IRS agents and the drag on economic growth.

The estate tax is another form of capital taxation, widely believed to be a harmful way to raise revenue. This brings to mind another hot topic in the public eye: capital gains, the tax on investment income. For the ultra-rich who make most of their income on investments, this can make for a lower tax rate than many Americans deem fair. Currently at 15 percent, President Barack Obama favors raising capital gains to 20 percent. One caveat is in order; he will have already raised it for high earners by 3.8 percent through the Affordable Care Act.

In reality, the capital gains rate can be much higher than 23.8 percent, as it will become on Jan. 1. Suppose you make an investment of $1,000 and it grows by 10 percent, however, in that same time there is 10 percent inflation. Thus, the real value of your investment is unchanged. Despite having no increase in wealth, you still pay taxes on the nominal gain of $100. That’s a tax rate of infinity! Because capital gains also tax inflation, the real rate is almost never as low as it looks on paper.

Suppose you make your investment in the stock market. The fruits of your investment — the retained earnings of the company — are already getting taxed through corporate income taxes; your investment is taxed twice. Since you have already paid taxes on the wage income that gave you money to invest, your income is subject to taxation three separate times.

Last week Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “A Minumum Tax for the Wealthy” in which he scoffed at the notion that a higher capital gains rate would discourage the wealthy from pursuing investments. “In the years from 1956 to 1969… the tax rate on capital gains inched up to 27.5 percent. I was managing funds for investors then. Never did anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment opportunity that I offered.”

In addition, and without any constructive solutions, he criticized tax maneuvering by the wealthy to the Cayman Islands as “sickening.” What Mr. Buffett ignores is that a higher capital gains tax is a major contributing factor to the use of foreign tax havens and offshore accounts.

In fact, there is a wealth of economic literature suggesting the optimal capital gains tax rate is at or very near zero. This literature has found ample evidence that capital taxation is overly burdensome on the growth of the economy. While economic inequality is a large concern for many Americans, policies that seek to address the issue still affect everyone. The more the economic pie is redistributed, the more the pie shrinks. When the economy fails to grow, those who suffer most are the poor.

It should be mutually agreed that economic growth is fair and beneficial to everyone. As John F. Kennedy famously quipped, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” While it is a noble position to advocate the rich paying more through estate and capital gains taxation, the drain on the growth of the economy is a cost paid by all.

The morals of society and what it collectively decides is fair are virtues which cannot and should not be divorced from policy making. Neither can we let objective economic arguments, which are intimately linked with fairness, be separated from the rationale behind the policies we endorse.

Three major events happened over the last month in Palestine: Gaza and Israel waged an eight-day battle, Palestine became a non-member observer state at the United Nations, and Israel simultaneously cut their aid to the Palestinian Authority and expanded the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem. Collectively, these actions symbolize another lost generation on the never-ending path to peace and Palestinian statehood.

Let’s look at each event individually.

There are a couple of very bad ways to understand the conflict in Gaza. Unfortunately, these are also the most popular ways. The first one is to count dead bodies and then use them to make an argument about “ethics.” If you are seeking the laziest moral standard possible, just remember, whichever side had the lowest number of people die is automatically the bad guy!

Another fallacious way to understand the conflict is to ask who started it. Israel technically broke a peace agreement when it killed Al-Jabari, Hamas’s military commander. But Hamas is officially committed to Israel’s destruction, so all peace deals are temporary. Al-Jabari himself led an operation that smuggled hundreds of rockets from Iran into Gaza through Sudan and Egypt.

The latest battle between Gaza and Israel really revolves around the development of military technology over the last 10 years, not to mention Iran’s pivotal role in that development. Whereas Gaza’s rockets in the 2008 engagement with Israel were highly inaccurate and faulty, often with a range under 10 miles, the new Fajr-5 rockets weigh more than 2,000 pounds and are capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Although Israel and Gaza arrived at some sort of peace agreement, Hamas’s new access to high-level Iranian military technology raises the stakes both within Palestine and across the region.

Unlike the conflict in Gaza, the “achievement” of non-member observer state status by Palestine’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, could probably be described as a charade. Crowds in the West Bank greeted Abbas like a conquering hero, which a cynical observer could describe as the only concrete goal of the vote at the United Nations.

Abbas claimed that his effort to receive non-member observer state status for Palestine was motivated by the stalled status of peace negotiations with Israel and the continued developments of settlements. That’s half nonsense. The Palestinian Authority’s long-time president desperately sought public support as Gaza slipped further from his sphere of influence and he appeared helpless in the face of Israeli settlement construction. Regardless of whether one wants to attribute Abbas’s move to Israeli intransigence or his own motivation to stay in power, the move unequivocally sets back the peace process.

Regardless, Abbas will need all the public support he can garner in the West Bank, too, if the International Monetary Fund’s economic predictions are correct. The IMF’s mission chief for the West Bank, Oussama Kanaan, predicted in September that the Palestinian economy would soon experience an economic slump and a spike in unemployment. He blamed Israel’s limits on Palestinian trade and a severe drawback in donor money from the Arab world.

This brings us to the latest event. In the aftermath of the vote at the United Nations, Israel quickly responded. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the planning and zoning for construction in the area of West Bank town, Ma’ale Adumim. Building in that area would “make it nearly impossible to create a contiguous Palestinian state.”

Yesterday, Israel chose to withhold its transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, accusing them of violating peace deals by upgrading their status at the United Nations. This will only exacerbate the social unrest engendered by the West Bank’s economic slump.

In the coming decades, observers will ask themselves how the region slid from the promise of the Oslo Accords to these lows. They may discover that this last month’s events were the watershed moment when both sides committed their next generation of youth to the never-ending conflict.

As someone with close Israeli and Palestinian friends, I sincerely hope that the passing of time will prove me wrong. History may prove once again that pundits should avoid the prediction-making business.

UN recognition of Palestine should be an important step forward to finally establishing a secure state for the Palestinians. But Israel’s approach to the “Palestinian problem” is outdated and requires re-evaluation in light of the recent U.N. vote. For a long time, Israel has used brute force to agitate the Palestinian territories and used the dysfunction caused by Israeli meddling as an excuse to not bring any realistic demands to the negotiating table. The Israeli embargo on the Gaza Strip, which prevents goods like construction materials from passing in to the area, only convinces Palestinians that peaceful diplomatic efforts are failing and that violence is the only way to defend Palestinian interests. The Israeli government has used the separation wall and Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank to prevent a geographically coherent potential Palestinian state. Israel does this under the guise of security. However, the Israeli government needs to understand that the best way to promote its country’s security is to convince the rest of the world that they are no longer oppressing Palestinians and rather intend to live alongside them in peace.

Unfortunately, Israel’s actions after the UN vote demonstrate that the hawkish Netanyahu administration cares little for a two-state solution. In fact, Israel revealed on Friday that it would commence with construction plans for 3,000 settler homes in a highly contentious area known as E1 in the West Bank, a move that was immediately condemned by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Israel then announced that it would withhold $120 million in tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

These moves come on the heels of a bloody Israeli military operation on the Gaza Strip, which killed more than 150 Palestinians, including many women and children. This was an extreme response to a Hamas operation that killed only a few Israelis. The deaths of innocent Palestinians do nothing but increase support for Hamas’ terrorist activities in the West Bank, weakening the non-violent Palestinian Authority that currently governs the West Bank. If Israel ever wants peace, it must stop antagonizing the Palestinians. The rest of the world has spoken, and overwhelming international support for the creation of a Palestinian state is clear. It is time for Israel to get on board, too.

The United States, too, is on the wrong side of history. Just a year ago, President Obama threatened to veto Palestine’s bid to achieve full member status of the United Nations. Recently, he pledged support for the recent occupation of the Gaza Strip, despite news of IDF soldiers killing entire Palestinian families in Gaza and shooting dead Palestinians protesting against the IDF in the West Bank. Israel has long been an important ally to the United States, but unwavering U.S. support for Israeli belligerency is unacceptable in light of the death of innocents. American support for Israel has long been unpopular in the Middle East and has proven to be a major diplomatic obstacle between newly democratic Arab countries such as Egypt. It is time for America to do the right thing and work toward establishing a state of Palestine, even if that means ignoring the more aggressive demands of Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stated shortly after the UN vote, “The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: enough of aggression, settlements and occupation…[and] issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine.” I hope that we can continue to talk about the “State of Palestine” and “the Palestinian government” rather than “the occupied territories.” But perhaps this is too hopeful: Today, Israel holds all the cards in its Likud-ruled hands and has America’s indefatigable support as the ace up its sleeve. The history books have yet to be written, and I can only hope that the political tide in Israel will turn and future Israeli governments will show a gentler hand in the coming years.

The lowering of drug prices for those with Medicare is a plus, but where are the other benefits? With a decrease of $716 billion for Medicare, President Barack Obama is using a double-edged sword on senior citizens, as hospitals have to downsize staffs to afford budget and salary cuts. This does allow senior citizens in hospitals and nursing homes to have the same benefits with lower costs and deductibles. However, there will not be enough staff to attend to the sick and ill, which in the end will fuel the two main causes of incidents in nursing homes right now — the transferring of patients to different facilitations, as well as abuse and neglect.

One of the most recent problems for sick and disabled senior citizens is their treatment in nursing homes. Florida has come under fire during the past few years due to many investigative reports revealing the true nature of these facilities and lack of care being provided.

Brian Lee, the former long-term care ombudsman for Florida and current head of Families for Better Care, a nursing reform advocacy group, explained the need for reform to untangle the massive nursing corporation conglomerate that subcontracts the task of running these facilities and to provide transparency. Facilities need to stop sacrificing quality, trained staff members for profits.

“I’ve seen more neglect in my lifetime than anyone ever should: Elderly people beaten, slapped around, dehydration, bedsores,” Lee said to Take Part. “There’s no end in sight unless nursing homes are accountable with their money. And the way to do that is through transparency.”

What will become of these rampantly neglected nursing homes providing subpar care when budget and staffing is cut even more?
Gov. Rick Scott has failed to acknowledge the effect it will have on the Florida nursing facility system, and major counties have reported various adverse incidents, incidents in which facility staff or personnel could have exercised control, but occurred as a result of the resident’s condition.

According to the Agency for Health Care Administration, there was a total of 2,090 adverse incidents from 2007-2008, with 37 percent of these cases resulting from neglect and abuse. Counties with the most incidents are concentrated in South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties), Orange County and Pinellas County, where 44 percent of the population is more than 55 years old.

The Miami Herald featured a three-part series investigative report about nursing homes in Florida. The series investigated the causes of deaths, leading to the exposure of many horrible truths about conditions in nursing homes.

The articles discuss various patients who died due to preventable circumstances had there been a better and more attentive staff. According to the Miami Herald, the Agency for Health Care Administration has failed to properly oversee Florida’s 2,850 nursing homes and operators, investigate dangerous practices or act on notifications submitted by its own inspectors about possible instances of neglect and abuse.

One incident included a 71-year-old patient who died from burn injuries. The mentally ill patient was left in a bathtub with scalding water in a Hialeah nursing home. In 2011 alone, police made roughly 13,250 calls to assisted living facilities in Broward County. This averages out to about one call every four hours. The signs of possible nursing home neglect and abuse also include dehydration, frequent infections and also overmedication/sedation.

In 1980, Miami Congressman Claude Pepper passed the Residents Bill of Rights to protect and uphold the quality of conditions and lifestyle present in these facilities, but it seems as though Florida has digressed in recent years.

Will the new cuts to Medicaid and Medicare under Obamacare aid our senior citizens, especially those in nursing homes? With the requirement of health insurance, yet less funding to provide the benefits and funding to the programs, there is a correlation between the continued poor care of these patients, especially in the conglomerate that the nursing facilitation industry has become.

But in a generation where quality is sacrificed for quantity, we must ask ourselves does the state government really care at all about these senior citizens, the nursing homes and the growing issue of the sublevel quality of life in these institutions? The answer is clear.

Yes, I know it sounds insane. But despite the equivocating, fear-mongering and hysterics occurring on Capitol Hill, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is not the financial apocalypse Democrats are trying to claim. By their own standards, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts should be a good thing for the country.

Why? It’s merely a return to the Clinton rates. And as we’re constantly reminded, the Clinton years were economic Valhalla.

There’s certainly a growing financial crisis, but it has nothing to do with the coming expiration of the Bush tax cuts and automatic budget cuts.

It has everything to do with Obama’s hypocrisy on spending and deficit levels.

When Obama was merely a candidate, he called Bush’s spending, which led to a $9 trillion deficit, “unpatriotic.” Apparently, pushing that number to $16 trillion in less than four years isn’t.

And as if that burgeoning number wasn’t enough, Obama’s serious solution unveiled this week to pull us from the economic brink is $1.6 trillion in tax increases on “millionaires and billionaires” over the next 10 years. Let’s not forget those evil $250,000 a year millionaires who just won’t pay their fair share. This number is double what he proposed during the campaign. What’s worse about this grand bargain is that it makes no concessions to spending cuts — merely a promise of looking for future savings of a paltry $400 billion in Medicare and other entitlement programs. Remind me how well that promise worked for Ronald Reagan? Oh, that’s right; it didn’t.

Apparently those numbers are acceptable because, as Nancy Pelosi reminded us this week, Congress worked to institute utterly draconian cuts of .07 percent last year. How could we possibly cut any more?

Finally, showing a blatant disregard for federalism, the deal gives Obama virtually unlimited power over the debt ceiling. He proposes to ban limits on the debt ceiling. Now, in his benevolence, he allows Congress to pass a resolution blocking debt ceiling increases, but gives himself the power to veto that resolution, which can only be overridden by a two-thirds Congressional override.

That’s not unconstitutional in the slightest.

Yes, raising taxes on the super wealthy polls well. But don’t be deceived by the bromides; this isn’t just an income tax raise. Obama’s plan also includes a hike of the inheritance tax on estates over $3.5 million — which even some Democrats have been hesitant about — and a tax on regular-income dividends. Again, this is a measure the Senate did not even consider. Obama has also proposed getting rid of the charitable tax donation.

So yes, maybe letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high income earners isn’t that bad.

But that’s not the whole deal.

There are massive tax increases hidden in this proposal, and they don’t just affect upper income earners. Because trickle down economics is indeed more than just “fairy dust,” this will affect everyone: business owners may be forced to lay off workers in order to keep their doors open, consumers’ dollars won’t go as far, charities, etc.

Historically, revenues increase when taxes are lowered; It happened when Kennedy and Reagan lowered tax rates. And yes, even when Bush — whose only concern was lining the pockets of his fat-cat Wall Street pals — instituted his tax cuts, and the tax base expanded.

It’s the fiscal cliff, or Tax-maggedon. Either way, the result is pretty grim unless serious budget cuts are worked out. And Obama’s laughable deal — which includes more stimulus spending and axing the debt ceiling — shows just how seriously he’s taking the budget crisis, which is not at all, hence the market crash that followed this election.

And that’s why Republicans need to hold firm and go over the cliff, proving once and for all just how reckless the Democrats are when it comes to economic policy. Remember, in the past they praised the economic policies under Clinton. Now their return is  being painted as a sort of doomsday scenario.

It is Obama who is responsible for this showdown. Republicans have put forth serious proposal after serious proposal, have been shot down and met with asinine proposals. Now is not the time to back down on principles.

Despite challenges combating a disease that continuously changes and adapts within the host cells of patients, recent research indicates that it may be possible to control the transmission of HIV. The HPTN 052 study, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, used a randomized clinical trial to understand whether antiretroviral treatment, a combination of drugs already used to treat HIV, could prevent sexual transmission of HIV among couples in which one member was HIV-positive. Remarkably, the study demonstrated that ATRVs as a form of treatment is actually a form of prevention: The uninfected partner does not contract the virus. By providing patients with treatment, transmission of the virus can be stopped.

As a result of Congress’ failed attempt to come up with a fiscal solution to last year’s debt-ceiling crisis, the Budget Control Act of 2011 was enacted to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion in the next decade (starting this January). Different sectors will be impacted differently by the cuts, but all will be hurt, and small programs will get hit the hardest. For example, sequestration will be disastrous to health research, an area that already struggles with receiving adequate funding. A 7.8 percent sequester is to be enacted for agencies such as the National Institute of Health, which will lose $2.4 billion, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ($444 million), and the National Science Foundation ($538 million). On the whole, discretionary funding is projected to decline by $39 billion. In addition, global health funding will be slashed by 8.4 percent across the board. This reduction is estimated to result in an increase of global AIDS-related deaths by more than 60,000. Nearly 275,000 people will be left without AIDS treatment and services. Although the Budget Control Act was presented last year, there is still the possibility for Congress to enact another solution by January—a solution that would not put lives at risk.

The fight against HIV/AIDS is perhaps the single bipartisan issue of our time. Lauded by Bill Clinton as a legacy of the Bush administration, U.S. efforts to combat AIDS both at home and abroad must continue, even in the most pressing of economic times. Congress should take decisive steps to ensure that the U.S. remains an undisputed leader in the fight against AIDS. The fiscal challenge cannot be used as an excuse to slash domestic and global programs that are keeping patients alive. In the U.S. alone, the onslaught of devastating sequestration would bring life-saving research to a halt and leave thousands of people without the medicine they depend on for survival.

The time to fight the AIDS epidemic is now. In recent years, tremendous progress has resuted from research, prevention, and treatment initiatives funded by the federal budget. These allowances comprise a tiny portion of the federal budget relative to defense spending and tax breaks. As of September 30, the U.S. directly supported nearly 5.1 million people on antiretroviral treatment through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. This is a three-fold increase in four years, up from 1.7 million in 2008. We cannot afford to undercut this progress by defunding domestic and global programs.

This Saturday at 11:30 a.m., members of the Harvard Global Health and AIDS Coalition and ACT UP Boston, an AIDS advocacy organization, will meet outside of Senator John Kerry’s home to demand that funding for HIV/AIDS treatment programs be protected. As a member of the congressional debt super committee, he can significantly influence the outcome of the federal budget. GHAC will also be hosting a screening of “How to Survive a Plague,” a powerful documentary about the history of the AIDS movement and where it stands today. The screening will be followed with remarks from guest speaker Gregg Gonsalves, an activist featured in the film. This is the time. We invite you to stand with us on December 1 as we call on Congress to save lives.

Out of the 193 members of the General Assembly, the final vote tally was 138 to 9, with 41 abstentions.

Before the vote, Palestine’s West Bank, and the Gaza Strip were considered “non-member observer entities.”

The West Bank is under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas , and the Gaza Strip is under control of Hamas, which violently split from Palestinian Authority in 2007.

Now, Palestine is considered a “non-member observer state,” which is equivalent to the Vatican. Palestine now has access to UN agencies, most notably, the International Criminal Court, but can’t vote on UN resolutions, nor sponsor any resolutions.

Arthur Goldshimdt, a Penn State Middle-Eastern history professor, said the move was timely.

“There was a lot going on between Palestine and Israel with both sides sending rockets at one another, and it was ended recently when Morsi [Egypt’s president] and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brokered a truce between the two,” Goldshmidt said. “I still think this move won’t change much legally.”

This is important to Palestine, but to be admitted as a full-member state, it must be approved through the UN Security Council, he said.

The vote came with support from Arab countries and some European countries, including France and Spain.

Heather Qader, former president of Students for Justice in Palestine, said this was a small victory.

“It’s not as big as we think, but it’s a small step,” Qader, Class of 2012, said. “This vote represents what the people around the world believe.”

Israel refuses to recognize the Palestinians as people, she said. The way they bomb villages with no remorse shows how they really feel about the Palestinians, she said.

Qader also said she thinks the pre-1967 borders of Israel and Palestine are fairest.

The United States, and most notably Israel, is unhappy with the final notes.

“Today’s unfortunate and counterproductive resolution places further obstacles in the path to peace,” Susan Rice, the United States’ UN ambassador, said.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, said the address by President Mahmoud Abbas to the General Assembly shortly before the vote was “defamatory and venomous.” He also added the speech was “full of mendacious propaganda” against Israel.

The book began with a quote from English statesman Edmund Burke: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” Today, there is an epidemic of lawmakers sacrificing their judgment not to public opinion, but only one man: Grover Norquist.

You may be asking yourself, as President George H.W. Bush did in an interview with Parade Magazine, “Who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?” He is a colorful anti-tax crusader whose group Americans for Tax Reform maintains a “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” Washington’s version of a blood oath. Any politician who signs it risks the wrath of Norquist and his extensive network of allies if he votes to raise tax rates or eliminate deductions at all for the rest of his career. It sounds more like a mafia hit list than a tool for tax reform.

After decades of skulking in the back alleys of Washington with shady characters like lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he burst on the national stage with the debt-ceiling crisis of last year. His pact, signed by almost every Republican in Congress, almost prevented the United States from paying their debts. Now he’s back in the spotlight again with the coming “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts, which is about to hit the economy hard.

His obstruction of a potential deal has brought anti-Norquist sentiment to a head. Former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson said he wanted Norquist to drown in a bathtub. That’s a reference to Norquist’s idea that government should be “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Peter King, one of the Republicans who has denounced the pledge, said this of Norquist in response to his insults against King’s wife: “He better hope he doesn’t (meet my wife). She’ll knock his head off.” Clearly, things are getting ugly.

Amidst all the ugliness, Republicans are slowly beginning to back away from Norquist and his ilk. They do this despite the threat of being “primaried” by more conservative opponents and the all-powerful Norquist. Seven prominent congressional Republicans — Sens. Tom Coburn, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander, and Reps. Peter King and Tom Cole, among others — have come out against the pledge in recent days. They offer a modern-day profile in courage, willing to stand up against their party and this hooligan and do the right thing for the country.

Norquist maintains that he’s not worried; after all, he’s been Washington’s chief obstructionist for 20 years and has a pretty good success rate. Take his response to Lindsey Graham: “If you had a pink unicorn, how many dollars in taxes would you raise to trade for the pink unicorn? Since pink unicorns do not exist in the real world, it’s never occurred to me to worry about the senator from South Carolina.”

These courageous congressmen can’t do it alone. Neither can President Barack Obama, who said on Wednesday: “I can only do it with the help of the American people. … Do what it takes to communicate a sense of urgency.” He requested that people call their congressman, just as they did last summer.

Let’s get on it. Let’s mobilize in support of these profiles in courage and show Mr. Norquist that he should be really worried. Let’s show him pink unicorns are real.

Unless both sides of the political aisle can agree on a deficit plan to prevent the federal government from going over the metaphorical cliff, the country will face automatic budget cuts to the defense budget and programs such as Medicare and the Federal Pell Grant Program — an important issue for students to pay attention to. These changes are a direct result of the Budget Control Act of 2011 going into effect — the congressional response to the country nearing the debt ceiling and not coming to a compromise on whether to raise it or not — and the expiration of tax cuts passed during George W. Bush’s time in office.

Just as tempers raged in the months leading up to the election, lawmakers continue to prove that bipartisan antics hindering productivity have just as much of a stronghold on the political landscape afterward — even in the face of economic turmoil.

The primary issue is how the government plans to raise revenue, and definitions of revenue generation differ across the political spectrum. To do this, our lawmakers are faced with a choice. On one side, the tax rates can be raised for those who make more than $250,000, and tax loopholes can be closed to increase revenue, leaving the amount of spending the same. On the other side is the notion that cutting spending on government programs and extending Bush-era tax cuts would be the best solution.

Both of the ideologies make logical sense. The only question is which plan is easier for the U.S. to predict the turnout of after it is implemented. Lawmakers should be working together to find a solution, instead of making “Taxpayer Protection Pledges” to not raise rates, a tactic spearheaded by conservative figure Grover Norquist. This pledge is a childish way for legislators to go about avoiding a compromise.

Regardless, the fate of the country’s economy and the lives of students relies on the ability of Congress and the president to come to a compromise which is literally impossible if the climate of bipartisan arguing continues.

Since then, drone use has been on the rise and has diversified to include other countries, and drone operations are targeting various terrorist groups.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, there have been more than 300 drone strikes and 2,500 people killed by those drone attacks since Barack Obama took office. The Obama administration and the American people need to think carefully and critically about the ethical implications of drone use, as well as what the United States’ use of drones says about our country’s philosophy and global agenda moving forward.

It is unfortunate that President Obama has taken the stance he has regarding the use of drones in military action. As a man who champions himself and is lauded by a good deal of the American people as a supporter of human and civil rights, Obama’s backing of drones doesn’t jive with his ethos.

Obama has sold himself as a President who has concerns for minorities and the weak. Does the use of a remote controlled killing device that sometimes kills children fit Obama’s character? Does it comply with what we want America to be?

Many say the use of unmanned drones is a necessary evil to protect the American homeland. Others will roughly guffaw that President Obama and the government who support drone use aren’t letting down the American people, but keeping them safe. A United States that believes civilian life in Pakistan is less valuable than civilian life in Maryland is not a United States I am proud to be a part of.

While some might groan at the prospect of an increasingly global world community, it is happening and is irreversible. We would be good to embrace the changes, rather than try and fight them. We don’t have a very good track record of attempting to deny cultural shifts.

The legality of drone use has been continually questioned by American and global leaders. A UN specialist on extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, has suggested that some drone strikes constitute “war crimes.” Other experts like Ian Seiderman, the director of the International Commission of Jurists, have said that because of drone use, “immense damage was being done to the fabric of international law.” Experts are indeed worried US drone use might be doing more harm than good, encouraging terrorists to act out and possibly provoking other countries to violate laws set up by events like the Geneva Convention.

The ethics of drone use is probably the most challenging argument, as has already been mentioned with the loss of civilian life. A joint 2012 report done by law school researchers at NYU and Stanford titled “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan” details the terrorizing effects drones are having on people in the affected areas.

According to the report, “their way of life is collapsing: kids are too terrified to go to school, adults are afraid to attend weddings, funerals, business meetings or anything that involves gathering in groups.” Obviously drones are not just sniping out evil individuals – they are destroying cultures and innocent lives.

One of the most defeating moments of the 2012 presidential elections came in the last debate when both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama refused to deliberate over the use of drones, both basically conceding that what was happening was working for the country and didn’t need a change. When asked about Obama’s drone policy, Romney said, “I support that entirely and feel the president was right to up the usage of that technology and believe that we should continue to use it to continue to go after the people who represent a threat to this nation and to our friends.” No discussion about the ethical implications or civilian deaths caused by drone use ensued.

While American drone attacks have indeed killed terrorists, legal ramifications and human rights violations must be reconsidered. Like any technology, continued analysis and questioning must be done as America and other countries navigate toward finding peace on the earth. President Obama would do better to reassess his position under the lens of his human rights campaigns.

The American people need to look outside themselves and view all civilian lives as valuable, not just ones with whom we share citizenship. Those things we deem as necessary evils are still exactly that: evil.

But the fate of the Palestinian people living in Gaza is unfortunately at the mercy of Hamas.

Israel is attempting to give the Palestinian people aid and end the horrendous treatment that Hamas provides to the innocent Palestinians living in Gaza.

The history of Hamas is one of violence, a direct quote from Article 7 of the Hamas Charter states.

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,” it said. “Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out, ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”

This reaffirms that Hamas’ mission is not to create lasting peace with the Israelis, but to kill the Jews.

The conflict that is now arising in the Middle East is in response to rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip into the state of Israel. Hamas has been indiscriminately firing them for the last 12 years, paying no heed to what — or whom — they are targeting.

Hamas has been known to use human shields to cause civilian casualties, in an effort to appeal to the international media.

The fact is, Hamas has killed three Israeli civilians and wounded 68, according to the Associated Press. These numbers would be much higher if the Iron Dome defense system did not exist in the state of Israel — it is an anti-rocket defense system that is fired from Israeli soil to intercept and destroy the Fajr-5 rockets that Hamas has been firing into Israel.

Since the beginning of the “Pillar of Defense,” the operation Israel launched Nov. 13, Iron Dome has intercepted more than 325 out of 700 rockets fired, heading for civilian populations in major cities such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The only purpose of the rockets fired into Israel by Hamas is to kill Israeli civilians.

Israel is amassing troops on the border for a possible ground assault. A cease-fire was attempted when the Prime Minister of Egypt met with Hamas leaders on the situation. Yet during the meeting Hamas vowed to continue firing rockets onto Israeli soil, thereby ending any hopes of a cease-fire.

Unfortunately, the Palestinians casualties have been high, but more than 50 Hamas terrorists and leaders have been killed. Israel attempts to clear civilians from bombing sites before any operation. Unfortunately, Hamas keeps women and children against their will, making them vulnerable to Israeli rockets — another example of the mistreatment by Hamas to the people it supposedly represents, and the reason why civilian casualties have been so high.

At the end of the day, what Israel truly wants is a lasting peace and to coexist with its neighbors without the threat of rockets hitting Israel on a daily basis. Israel is ready to negotiate unconditional peace, but it is up to Hamas to do the same.

People in Europe didn’t understand why Bill Clinton stepped down after having an affair; they largely considered extramarital affairs to have no bearing on leadership capacity. While there may be a difference in cultural norms between, generally speaking, Europe and the United States, the underlying presumption, from a European perspective, still stands—why would a leader’s personal affairs be of concern to American citizens? Even when I was in high school, I was critical of the media’s incessant hounding on Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol. Sarah Palin was an idiot regardless of how many pre-marital children her daughter popped out by Election Day—why should the personal life of her daughter have anything to do with Governor Palin’s capabilities, or lack thereof, of being Vice President. The personal lives of political figures, in no way, affect their ability to perform their duties.

In the case of Bill Clinton, perjury was the reason for his impeachment. Federal law declares perjury to be a felony. Clinton lied under oath and, unfortunately for the American people, was nixed for it—unlike his predecessor, which we’ll leave to another article. Petraeus’s situation, however, was quite different. He resigned amongst controversy, but not as a result of an sort of immediate conviction. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this situation is the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted the initial investigation into supposedly harassing emails exchanged between Broadwell and an acquaintance of Petraeus, Jill Kelly. Perhaps the proximity of Broadwell to Petraeus somehow justified this awkward intrusion by the FBI, but I find it difficult to justify the FBI then ceasing a personal email account of Petraeus’s, uncovering a deeper cause for investigation, and then acting upon it, outing Petraeus’s affair.

Regardless of my opinion that the FBI should have little business in the affairs of leaders in other intelligence agencies, even if it was “accidentally stumbled upon,” an affair, in no way, affects a leader’s capacity to carry out their duties. While I am not condoning adultery, I find it disappointing that the personal lives of officials are brought under the public eye. They have a right to privacy just like everyone else and I don’t think they should have to relinquish that right in their service to the American people.

In fact, with its economic heft, the U.S., as a seemingly silent superpower, is a larger player in the chaos ensuing now than perhaps either Israel or the Gaza strip.

But as Israel has intensified air strikes and bombs in retaliation to Hamas-launched rockets from Gaza, the U.S. response has spoken as to what side the American taxpayers will be supporting.

While President Barack Obama has said it would be “preferable,” according to the Associated Press, for violence to not exist, he has consistently defended Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

But according to the New York Times, Gaza health officials have reported at least 600 injuries and 70 deaths since Wednesday and Israel has reported 79 injuries and three deaths, the human rights violations being brought upon the people of Gaza by Israel are not things the U.S. should endorse.

While the initial violence of the rocket launch is not condonable, Israel’s response — the response sponsored by the taxpayers of America — is certainly not either, and coupled with the history of aggression and blatant disregard of civilian, women and children’s lives, the U.S.’s strategic oblivion is one that goes against the very value of democracy that allied Israel with the U.S. in the first place.

Gilad Sharon, the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called for the “flattening of Gaza” in an op-ed written for the Jerusalem post.

“We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza,” he wrote. “Flatten all of Gaza. … There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing.”

The U.S. has a strong, vested interest in Israel — an interest so expansive (and expensive) that it is willing to overlook important aspects of democracy, such as human rights, to secure its own best interest in an utterly undemocratic process.

Israel has received about $115 billion in U.S. aid, and continues to receive about $3 billion a year, making it the largest recipient of U.S. aid since World War II. According to a Congressional Research Report prepared for the U.S. Congress, the Bush administration approved a 10-year, $30 billion package for Israel’s Foreign Military Financing grant, which Obama has continued.

The very Iron Dome system, the system that has intercepted 245 rockets for Israel since the recent burst of violence, is largely funded by the U.S, which provides an additional $70 million for it per year, according to CNN.

While it is incredible that this technology protects Israeli civilians, does the U.S. government value their lives more than Palestinians?

Though a 2011 Gallup poll found that 63 percent of Americans supported Israel over Palestine, it is worth a closer look as to whether cozying up to Israel solely because of its “democratic” roots is worth the fiscal and humanitarian costs.

A democracy is not simply electing leaders, and by turning a blind eye to these injustices, the U.S. is further distancing itself from other Middle Eastern nations at a time in which diplomacy is most needed.

Now, the hip new disappointment tactic is to petition to secede from the union.

The secession movement stems from Texas, where an online petition to secede has more than 93,000 signatures as of Nov. 14 on WhiteHouse.gov.

According to ABCNews, the White House said it will review petitions that collect more than 25,000 signatures in 30 days, like the petition from Texas.

The Obama administration created the “We the People” website in 2011 so that Americans could easily petition for the redress of grievances. So naturally, people in more than 35 states have started petitions to free their states of the now socialist government of America. Arizona is one of them.

Let’s take a moment to think about what the world would be like if Arizona seceded: First of all, Jan Brewer would be the president.

Welcome back to the union.

Secession isn’t exactly new to Arizona. In 2011, people in Tucson wanted to secede from the state of Arizona to create Baja Arizona. They were driven to make the move because they were tired of the Republican policies of the state, specifically ones that defied the power of the federal government.

Though less far-fetched, because secession from states has happened before without resulting in war (see Maine from Massachusetts and West Virginia from Virginia), the idea was just as ridiculous as current attempts to secede from the union.

It was as though people thought that once Obama was re-elected, the country would turn into an apocalyptic state, where those gay folks getting married would forever destroy straight marriage and all the poor people would knock on the rich people’s doors for free money, as if every day were grown-up Halloween.

But people are forgetting a pretty important fact: Obama has already been in office for four years. Things aren’t going to start going to hell because he has another four years. In fact, things are probably going to get better.

You know that whole economy thing people are worried about? Prior to the election, a Slate magazine analysis predicted that by maintaining current trends, 7.8 million new jobs would be created, regardless of who won the election. And financial experts predicted that, with some improvements, there will be around 12 million new jobs created.

And you know that universal health care thing everyone is freaking out about? The majority of democratic countries around the world have that. Want to move to Canada? England? Spain? Australia? All of those countries have the same universal health care that you’re so angry about.

It’s time to come out of your toddler years, and stop throwing a hissy fit every time something doesn’t go your way. Secede from the union? That’s bullshit. We don’t need to be even more divided right now.

Sure, maybe it’s the crazy people that actually think about seceding, but we need to cut those crazy people out of the conversation.

Let people who want to secede leave the country to form a new one. They can move to a tropical island and call it Idiotsland. I’ll make sure to never visit.

Thankfully, this does not appear to be the case. While there were a great deal of contributions made to Super PACs by wealthy individuals and many wealthy candidates self-funding their campaigns, it appears that having more money does not always win an election. No amount of spending can convince the public to elect a candidate they just don’t like.

Although Super PACs are legally forbidden from coordinating with candidates’ official campaigns, there are many that have been created solely to support one candidate. In the presidential race, Restore Our Future backed Governor Mitt Romney, and Priorities USA Action backed President Obama. Over the course of the election, Restore our Future spent $142,645,946, and Priorities USA Action spent $66,482,084. In addition, the American Crossroads Super PAC run by Republican Karl Rove outspent Obama’s own PAC, spending $91,115,402. Yet despite his Super PAC spending over two and a half times more than his opponent’s and having the help of other groups like American Crossroads, Romney still lost the election by a significant margin. While it certainly had an impact, spending by Super PACs did not decide the presidential election.

Similarly, wealthy individuals were unable to buy the election, in spite of their new ability to contribute unlimited amounts of money to Super PACs. The biggest individual spender of the 2012 election was casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who contributed a total of $53.7 million to various campaigns and Super PACs. All eight of the candidates backed by Adelson lost. Harold Simmons, the second-highest spender at $26.9 million, donated to 7 campaigns. Six of them lost.

Of course, there are some other explanations to consider when looking at these trends. It is possible that candidates who were trailing in the polls attracted more donations than those who were leading by healthy margins. A candidate in a safe seat does not need to spend a lot to win, while an underdog needs more money in order to have a chance at victory. This is especially true when running against an incumbent, a difficult and costly endeavor.

Money is certainly a factor in political campaigns. There is no denying that. In fact, having a sizeable war chest is essentially a requirement of winning an election. Yet whether a campaign is fueled by a nearly anonymous Super PAC or a wealthy self-funding candidate, money alone isn’t enough to win. A core principle of American democracy is that one person gets one vote and no amount of money can convince voters to elect someone they don’t like.

In his 40 years of power, Gaddafi suppressed Libyan civil society, violently repressing any perceived threat to his rule. Gaddafi was ruthless and unforgiving. University students, a source of potential for change, knew this all too well. In April 1977, following university student protests in 1976, Omar Dabbob and Mohammaad ben Saud were hanged in public on the campus of Tripoli’s Al-Fateh University. Leaving nothing to chance, the hangings were broadcast on state television, in case anyone was still unaware of the consequences of dissent. The students had held anti-Gaddafi protests in light of his declaration banning all independent student unions. Between 1977 and 1984, April 7 was a day of annual public student executions and a tragic symbol of the demise of Libyan civil society.

Although civil society is showing promising signs of revival, it is still incredibly weak after decades of violence and oppression. Since Ghaddafi’s death, private media has been allowed to operate again, seeing a proliferation of services such as an English-only radio channel. Such services would have been unheard of under Ghaddafi’s rule and have helped move Libya’s press to be given the status “partly free” in the 2012 Freedom House Index. These tentative signs of progress, while positive, are exactly that: tentative. Only last year, the Freedom House Global Press Freedom Index placed Libya fourth to last, narrowly beating Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and North Korea.

Libya’s weak civil society is also threatened by a traditionally divided Libya. Libya has always been a country more divided, both regionally and tribally, than unified. One of Gaddafi’s political talents was to manipulate the rival sentiments between regions, cities and tribes in a classic divide-and-conquer or, more accurately, a divide-and-control maneuver. Today, these exacerbated natural divisions in society are compounded by the current ubiquitous presence of firearms. October 24 saw government aligned militias, finally, proclaiming victory over Gaddafi loyalist militias in Bani Walid, a Gaddafi loyalist hold out. It had taken them an entire year.

That Bani Walid was won by government-aligned militia, not by the government military force, is an important distinction, reflecting the weakness of the central government. Only two hours west of Bani Walid is the city of Misurata, transformed in the past year into a de facto city-state by all the violence. Visitors are greeted by a formidable wall of checkpoints and a ready view of armed militias guarding the city borders.

One year after Gaddafi, Libya has defied critics’ fears of a civil war. But with a weak civil society marred by tribal and regional factionalism, Zeidan and his government must focus strengthening the foundations of civil society and reconciliation. Calls a year ago to form various Truth and Reconciliation Committees, inspired by the South African focus on accuracy and healing, should not be forgotten. The process of reconciliation is just as important of an antidote to decreasing violence as law enforcement, both in the long and short term.

Recently the International Criminal Court has asked that Libya not grant amnesty to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, former heir-apparent. While Zeidan and his government might be tempted to grant amnesty to past perpetrators, the process of reconciliation requires thinly balancing the need for a country to forget and move on, and the need for a country to remember.

Reconciliation on a more national, or collective, level is essential for a country to come to terms with its past. The role of “TRCs” lies in their ability to introduce to society a respect for the rule of law. By creating peace and stability through the rule of law, reconciliation will be a key component to a successful transition to democracy for Libya.  Hence, it is important that Zeidan does not extend amnesty to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and that he allows the ICC to continue their inquiries.

The recent Libyan focus on individual trials as a way of reckoning with the past should be supplemented by a strategy to include all stakeholders of the conflict. Since Libya faces the danger of factionalism, TRCs should focus on “group sessions” where tribes come together in a safe space to have meaningful dialogue.

Four decades of repression and violence will not die overnight; it will be a long process, surely dented by a few setbacks here and there. But it is important to start the process now.

While covering one’s tracks is not the moral that should be taken away from the media frenzy that has followed the “Petrayal” incident that has likely caused much grief to multiple families, it is a side note that should be heeded.

The tip-off of the scandal has been identified as an email sent from a Tampa woman to the FBI. The depth of the scandal can be seen in the “harassing emails” that Paula Broadwell, Petraeus’ alleged mistress, sent to the Tampa woman, who Broadwell supposedly suspected was growing closer to Petraeus. The details of the scandal are all found in “intimate messages” within Petraeus’ private Gmail account — even though he reportedly used a dropbox-like system that allowed Broadwell to see the emails as drafts instead of actually transmitting them, in hopes of evading the ability to retrieve them. The Washington Post reported the tactic to be similar to tricks terrorists use when communicating in fear of espionage.

But the one thing that even the director of an agency that prides itself on secrecy cannot escape is the shield of privacy that the Internet — and public records laws — whisk away from all. This brief window into his personal email account could provide valuable information into other matters of national security and even allow hackers to access more classified information — a reason he was ultimately asked to resign.

But particularly in the state of Florida, where all government employees — including university employees — are, in the interest of open government and transparency, subject to having their email searched, it is
imperative one consider the merit of what is being put in written and electronic communication.

While the convenience of such communication has replaced note-passing and workplace whispering with emails to the person sitting next to you about the awful third person at a meeting or emails about non-work-related activities, email communication doesn’t offer much protection to those who are afraid of their dirty
laundry being accessible to all.

Even after deleting one’s browsing history, if one is logged into a Google account, any search is saved in the history and could potentially be accessible to all.

While the majority of people will never be swept into a media maelstrom and could likely safely get away with workplace wantonness, the importance of watching what one allows the Internet to know should not be forgotten.

Barack Obama was elected to a second term. Same-sex marriage was legalized in more states. But the vote that seems to maintain the highest amount of “hoorahs” and high fives was the legalization for recreational use of marijuana in Washington and Colorado.

Before any tokers out there pack your bags to move to the new havens of haze, keep in mind that marijuana legalization is not yet actually a reality.

But, this “trifling” detail is unlikely to prevent hundreds of thousands of those that enjoy that baked sensation from traveling to one of the American Amsterdams.

With the exodus of folks, and the likely immense bump in vacationing for a few days, there comes a great many challenges besides the already daunting decision of whether to smoke Canna Sutra, Nigerian, Purple Kush or any of the many other connoisseur marijuana strains.

Though increased tourism can be an excellent way to generate more funds for communities, weekend warriors from just across state lines, or anyone flying in to kiss the sky for a few days, can cause unanticipated troubles for maintaining the peace.

Denser traffic from deliveries or responsible stoners hailing cabs, to increased lines for purchases, to people with kine bud mindsets just chilling in the park or playing some tunes in public, crowding can become a safety issue.

Although there is little to no evidence to support the asinine claims concerning marijuana’s influence on individuals to make them violent or cause death, scores of stumbley folks searching for munchies or strolling along taking in the pleasant vibes of life in the city does not mean the criminals out there are giving a pass to those chiefin’ the reefer. There are oodles of individuals spoiling for fights or happy to rob tourists or others in a less than perfectly attentive state of mind of their possessions.

Operating vehicles, or merely meandering down the street under the influence presents a problem. Driving while high is like driving while drunk, you do not pass “GO” and collect $200. But that won’t stop people from trying anyway.

Marijuana traces can stay in your system weeks after smoking, even if you haven’t taken a bong rip for a few days. There is, as of now, no simple way for police to establish whether you are blazed, so when they suspect it, you likely head down to the station in cuffs.

Coming up next is drug testing for jobs. Public employees, and even a fair number of private, also have the wall of “random” urine tests to worry about. For residents of Colorado and Washington, despite the “legality” of your action, your job can still suspend or fire you for using an illegal substance.

The granddaddy of all woes for the 4/20 movement comes with the war on drugs. States can legalize weed all the live-long day, and it amounts to diddly-squat because Tetrahydrocannabinol remains a Schedule I hallucinogenic or psychedelic drug under the Controlled Substances Act, Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. And since federal law trumps state law, all this kine bud hype could go up in smoke.

But on the optimistic side, state-support for marijuana could lead to change for the idiotic regulation and spending wasted on combating cannabis consumption and incarceration of pleasant people wanting only to smoke a joint after a hard day of work and eat a Twinkie or two.

The legalization for therapeutic use — easing attention-deficit issues, regulating sleep difficulties, assuaging anxiety, dealing with mild to moderate depression, muscle relaxation or even relieving the suffering to some extent of the terminally ill — has been embraced more and more at the state level, with the overall goal in mind of ending the more-harm-than-good prohibition of pot.

The potential for trafficking from Washington and Colorado into other states could result in some serious legal attention by those unscrupulous entrepreneurs wanting to turn a profit illegally. The federal government’s war on drugs might see this as reason to sue to repeal the state’s legalization.

Myriad political and legal aspects surrounding recreational legalization play out positively and negatively, sometimes both at once, to the future of marijuana in the United States. The Obama administration has shown little sign of support so far for decriminalization, however given the fund potential from legalization for assisting economic recovery — due to taxing and decreased spending for enforcement — these might be the pebbles that start an avalanche.

If you want change, go to Petitions.WhiteHouse.gov and sign the various movements each month to get marijuana decriminalization brought often to the eye of the White House. Contact your state representatives with your support for change, to push for legalization in your own state. Tell your friends and family about the changes coming. Who knows, maybe this country is finally moving beyond the antiquated notions somehow still steering our country.

I’m usually skeptical of claims made by party faithfuls who, in the aftermath of losing an election, claim that no ideological adjustments are necessary to win the next election. When Kerry was defeated by Bush, I rolled my eyes as the surviving liberal rump of the Democratic Party blamed their loss on a lack of partisan purity. Similarly, I rolled my eyes when 2009 Republicans said the path forward was a return to conservative principles. To me, in both instances, the remedy for electoral losses was a simple application of median voter politics: moving toward the middle yields more victories than retreating to extremes. A bitter medicine for those who belong to those extremes, perhaps, but Hippocrates would recommend no other.

Of 63 justices who have left the bench since 1900, only 10 stayed past age 80.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will turn 80 in March, and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy will hit the age in 2016.

This number of potential outgoing justices could offer Obama the opportunity to shift the court’s ideological makeup to a liberal lean, or at least maintain its status quo, according to U. Minnesota political science professor Tim Johnson.

“Three will get into their eighties, and that’s when I think, in terms of age and health, all bets are probably off,” said Johnson, who studies the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently made up of five justices selected by conservative presidents and four by liberals, including two women appointed by Obama in 2009 and 2010.

Depending on how retiring justices lean, this 5-4 ideological split could shift.

Johnson said with a left-leaning majority, the liberal court “would do all sorts of things,” such as overturn Citizens United or add stronger protection for women’s abortion rights.

President Ronald Reagan appointed both Kennedy and Scalia, while President Bill Clinton appointed Ginsburg. Kennedy has been known to side with both liberal and conservative justices.

Ginsburg has twice overcome bouts of cancer while serving on the court.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg is probably the most likely [to step down] but has said publicly she wants to hold on until 2015,” Johnson said.

Under Obama, the professor said Ginsburg’s seat would remain liberal if she were to step down.

The retirement of swing-voter Kennedy, however, would mean a “wholesale change of the ideological makeup of the court,” Johnson said, depending on how liberal a person Congress would approve.

On the other end, Johnson said Scalia, a conservative, would likely hang on for the next four years.

“He clearly doesn’t want to have a Democrat replace him,” Johnson said, “but the balance is, when you turn 80 years old, it’s hard to tell how long you can hang on.”

Barack Obama will serve another term as president. Supporters rejoice, detractors mourn. The American people made a choice Tuesday that will dictate the direction of public policy for at least the next four years. But that doesn’t mean our job is over.

During each of their campaigns, neither Obama nor Mitt Romney adequately addressed the most pressing problem facing our country today: the national debt. Whether this issue is addressed in the coming years will determine the United States’ viability as a world power in the 21st century and, with it, the legacy of our generation.

It’s perfectly understandable why the candidates wouldn’t suggest serious reform during the campaign season — to do so would have been electoral suicide. But as of Tuesday, Obama has secured his position in the Oval Office. It’s time to let him hear our voices.

For far too long, Congress has kicked its $16 trillion can down the road, running up a dizzying tab for future generations — yeah, that’s us — to pay off.

Both Democrats and Republicans will have to commit to entitlement program reform, tax reform and a leaner, more efficient military. If the debt is allowed to continue growing at its current rate, it will cripple the ability of our proud nation to exercise its most basic roles: protecting and providing for its citizens. Sound frightening? That’s because it is.

These are the facts. Our national debt has surpassed $16 trillion, and every day it grows by an average of $4 billion. In 2011, the deficit exceeded the annual GDP level for the first time in U.S. history.

Some deficit spending is widely accepted by economists as a method of national economic recovery, especially during a recession. But with the working population shrinking every day and no effort on the part of politicians to scale back spending, this is quickly developing into a crisis.

If this crisis continues, we will not only lose the trust of other governments but also face a lack of funding for national programs that we now take for granted. Think about this: By 2033, the government will only be able to pay out 75 percent of promised Social Security benefits.

The choice future leaders will inevitably have to make is to either finance the debt or provide for the people. The fact that our generation’s future hangs in the balance clearly demonstrates that both parties will have to work together in order to find a solution that benefits the American public.

Now, this isn’t one of the hyperbolic hypotheticals thrown around by self-styled deficit hawks in campaign ads. The Chinese government isn’t going to call in all their loans tomorrow, and anyone who tells you otherwise is insulting your intelligence. However, that doesn’t mean our ballooning debt is in any way acceptable. The time will come when the United States is forced to look itself in the mirror and make some serious changes in order to remain a viable state. If things continue as they are right now, the moment will come when our generation is faced with challenges that will be unfathomably difficult, if not impossible.

So start the process now.

As young voters, we have seen the debt skyrocket in our lifetimes, and it is now our chance to make this transition. The Georgetown community has a long history of good will and leaving the world a little better than it was when we found it. So let us continue to pave a path that will improve the standing of our economy for generations to come. Let us not sit back and allow the debt to rise without limit; let us ask for the media, the people and the politicians to think with us to make our futures a priority.

This is a call to thoughtful action, a chance to amplify our voice. Call your representative. Write to your president. Sign the petition for The Can Kicks Back campaign, which seeks to highlight these concerns on Capitol Hill and create a long-term deficit reduction agreement in 2013. Force those who dug us into this $16 trillion hole to lay the foundations for a way out.

The legacy of our generation should involve lifting this country to greater heights than ever before, not flailing to keep the nation’s head above the rising tide of irresponsible spending. We deserve better than that. We’re capable of better than that. It’s time for the can to kick back.

But clearly some don’t quite understand that, as they expressed their dissatisfaction with the election in a unique way.

Twenty-one states, including some that have duplicates, have filed petitions with the White House to “peacefully … withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.”

Some states, like Texas, whose petition had 51,069 signatures at the time of print, cited the federal government’s “neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending” and “blatant abuse” of citizens’ rights as reasons to secede. Texas, petitioners stated, does after all have the 15th-largest economy in the world.

Florida, which eventually went Democrat in the election, had more than 15,000 signatures on its petition and stated the “Federal Government has not led our citizens justly and with honor.” Even solidly blue states such as New York and New Jersey have their own petitions.

The White House website states petitions that reach 25,000 signatures will be addressed, but it has also addressed past petitions with fewer signatures, such as one requesting the president’s honey ale recipe.

The real issue is not whether or not these states actually succeed with their desires to secede, for as Yahoo columnist Mike Krumboltz said, the likelihood of the government granting states permission to secede is “on par with winning the lottery while getting hit by a meteor while seeing Bigfoot while finding gluten-free pizza that tastes like the real thing.”

What these noble citizens who took to the Internet and very spiritedly utilized their First Amendment rights to petition haven’t quite realized is that they already had their chance to make a difference with their opinions — Nov. 6, at the polls. The people of the U.S. spoke, and the majority elected Barack Obama as president. If it’s Obama they don’t like, dissenters will have their chance in four years to voice their preference again. This is the way the system of democracy has worked in this country since its inception.

The petitions filed are basically petitions against democracy and mark the heightened levels of partisanship and non-cooperation that deeply divides the nation.

What has yet to be specified is what form of government the “country” of Texas or Florida would have to look forward to upon secession. Clearly, it can’t be democracy, because the next time a candidate with a
less-than-100-percent approval rating comes to office, a new country would have to be formed — and that would be a bit exhausting.

But if not for democracy, would the people have a right to petition this way?

Petraeus admitted to having an extramarital affair in a statement after submitting a letter of resignation to President Barack Obama.

Broadwell, who cowrote a biography of Petraeus entitled “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” became close to Petraeus while he led coalition forces as a four-star general in Afghanistan. Petraeus previously led coalition forces in Iraq and oversaw military operations throughout the Middle East as Commander of United States Central Command.

Broadwell mentions Petreaus’s 2006 visit to Harvard in the first sentence of the biography and recalls attending a dinner with the General and other students.

Broadwell, who, like Petraeus, attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, writes that Petreaus gave her his card, and she followed up with an email.

“I later discovered that he was famous for this type of mentoring and networking, especially with aspiring soldier-scholars,” Broadwell writes in the biography. “He immediately responded to the e-mail, inviting me to bounce ideas off him. I took full advantage of his open-door policy to seek insight and share perspectives.”

Broadwell’s work on the book followed her 2008 graduation from the Kennedy School with a Masters in Public Administration. Currently, she is listed as a research affiliate of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership and a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London.

Broadwell spoke about her book at an Institute of Politics event in September.

Broadwell did not respond to a request for comment, and her website, paulabroadwell.com, was taken offline Friday.

In a letter to colleagues at the CIA on Friday, Petraeus cited “personal reasons” for his resignation and said that he had used “extremely poor judgement” after being married for 37 years.

“Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours,” Petraeus wrote.

Obama, along with other national leaders, reflected on the career of someone that they described as an important military leader and public servant.

“By any measure, through his lifetime of service David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger,” Obama said in a statement. “Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus.”

According to both NBC News and Politico, Broadwell is now under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for trying to access Petraeus’s personal emails.

If it seems like a long time, it is – 1,460 days, to be exact. That’s 208 weeks to enact policy, 48 months to interact with foreign diplomats and 34, 944 hours to find the time to respond to asinine requests from idle billionaires.

In that time frame, however, is a much smaller one – approximately 53 days. That is the window of time before the Bush-era tax cuts expire, the Budget Control Act goes into effect, a number of tax cuts end, and taxes related to the Affordable Care Act begin. It’s what most political pundits, mainstream media organizations and doomsday prophesiers refer to as the “fiscal cliff.”

Almost makes you wish the Mayans were right, doesn’t it?

The results of the election don’t inspire much of a hope for change, either. The U.S. House of Representatives remains in Republican control, while the Senate is now very decidedly Democratic.

While this will ultimately make for more interesting inter-office softball games, it also means another potential gridlock on the nation’s most polarizing issue: the economy.

The fiscal cliff is fast approaching, and lawmakers must compromise quickly to avoid derailing the economy or launching the nation into another recession.

Simply put, we have a few options:

Congress could do nothing, allow the Bush tax cuts and the payroll tax holiday to expire while simultaneously enacting the health care tax and austerity measures. It would cut the current deficit by almost half. What’s not to love? Nothing, if you’re a fan of recessions and skyrocketing unemployment. There are two sides to every coin.

Washington could also opt to cancel most, if not all, of the scheduled tax increases while maintaining the cuts. This option will make absolutely no one on The Hill happy and will serve to further burden the national deficit. An attractive option if you’re an insatiable masochist.

The third option is, of course, the unthinkable: a compromise that would extend the Bush cuts and cancel the automatic spending cuts, resulting in a modest level of economic growth.

Or we could all move to Canada like we’ve been threatening to for years. That’ll show them.

Three and a half years later, and the economy is recovering. There have been 32 straight months of private job sector growth. The unemployment rate continues to hover just below 8 percent, as more people are looking for work again after giving up during the worst months of the recession.

Obama asked for four more years to complete the economic recovery. On Tuesday, America gave him just that.

Obama defeated opponent Mitt Romney in an election that most thought would be a lot closer. The president hauled in 332 electoral votes, compared to Romney’s 206. It was the youth vote that propelled Obama to the White House, as 19 percent of the electorate  was 18 to 29-year-olds in this election, even more than in 2008.

Throughout the campaign season, Romney attempted to paint Obama’s four years in office as a failure, as he contended that the president’s policies had restricted economic growth. In reality, the economy has grown under Obama and the jobs numbers over the past few months have been particularly encouraging.

But Obama’s four years in office have been marked by disappointment, as well. The president must improve in many areas in his second term.

Where Obama has failed most is in trimming the deficit, as he has only added to America’s debt since entering office. The United States is now $16 trillion in the red. Obama has said that he will cut the debt by $4 trillion over the next 10 years through a series of spending cuts and tax increases for the wealthy. He cannot afford to come up short on that pledge.

Obama’s foreign policy has been solid, for the most part. He has used diplomacy rather than force in many Middle Eastern countries, and that has succeeded in building goodwill toward America in some Arab regions. Islamic extremists still present a threat toward American sovereignty, however, as evidenced by the attack on Benghazi on Sept. 11. And Obama’s use of unmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists – and, in some cases, innocent bystanders – presents ethical questions that the president has not yet addressed. The most important question is how far does the president’s power go in deciding whether someone lives or dies? While his use of diplomacy and support of Arab Spring revolutions have gained America’s allies in some regions, Obama’s widespread use of drones has only fostered hate for America in other parts of the Middle East. He has to amend his policy on unmanned drones and be more transparent about it in the process.

Where Obama has excelled is connecting with the American people on important social issues. Whether it is his support of gay marriage, his repealing of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” or his stance as pro-choice, Obama has proven time and time again that he understands that all Americans deserve equal rights.

Obama has also done an excellent job of supporting higher education throughout his presidency. As states across the country slashed their funding to public universities, Obama helped keep college affordable by increasing funding for Pell Grants and keeping student loan interest rates low. Countless students have been able to afford a college education thanks to these reforms.

It was not anywhere close to a disastrous first term, as many opponents of Obama have said. But there are improvements that need to be made. He must work across party lines in building a budget, trimming the deficit and maintaining America’s private sector growth. If he can do that while continuing to advocate for important social issues and support higher education, Obama’s second term will be an exceptional one.

However, after the way Christie has behaved with regard to this upcoming election, I cannot help but to applaud him. First and foremost, Christie’s praise of President Barack Obama regarding his actions during the hurricane was interesting. What was incredible about this was the fact that many on the right criticized Christie for saying anything good about Obama, saying it amounted to an endorsement of him.

I realized the other truly admirable thing Christie did as I was waiting in line to vote early Monday. In a move rare for New Jersey, our governor ordered that County Clerk offices stay open to allow for people to vote early. I chose to do so because it worked much better for my schedule. However, for some, it was their only option because their polling locations could not open.

Christie decided to do this because even in the wake of a natural disaster he believes “there’s no reason why anybody shouldn’t vote. We’re going to have a full, fair, transparent, open voting process.” This is the type of mentality that should fuel our government. In a country where voter turnout is lower than it should be, and every year there is some sort of accusation of voter fraud, there is nothing more important than getting people to vote, and keeping elections fair.

So in the spirit of our governor, I am going to say nice things about him. He acted truly admirably lately. As he himself remarked, this does not amount to an endorsement of Christie in future elections. This does not amount to an endorsement of the Republican Party in this election. It just amounts to the simple truth that if someone does a good job — they deserve to have it acknowledged.

Obama stood out as the strongest candidate compared to Romney, despite Romney’s appeals to the American public’s wallets and desires of reduced unemployment. The public sided with Obama, arguably for his stance on social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, as well as for his foreign policies regarding negotiations in the Middle East. A number of Americans likely cast their ballots acknowledging that many circumstances regarding the recession were out of the president’s control and that, considering the intensity of the recession, recoveries sometimes take a painfully long time. However, the majority of those voters who re-elected Obama are doing so with the hope that he will revisit issues that he failed to address over the last four years such as Guantanamo Bay. The country is giving him another chance with the hope that he will revitalize the economy and provide new, good jobs for Americans. Now that he does not have to worry about re-election, perhaps he will be able to push harder for those changes.

That being said, it will still be interesting to see how he tackles healthcare, an area where he dedicated a lot of time in his first term.

After months of town halls and campaigning for healthcare reform, Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law in 2012, which marked the largest overhaul of the healthcare system since the 1960s. Over these next four years, Obama will not only be overseeing the Act, but will have an opportunity to tack on minor or major amendments to it.

However, it will be even more interesting to see how Obama addresses the economy. Student loan debt is mounting and 23 million Americans are still out of work, according to a statement on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s website. There have been some small improvements — in spite of the unemployment levels, new jobs have been created and federal loan repayment has been capped at 10 percent a year.

However, going into this next term, the question on our mind is, Can Obama be proven right in his potential to bring forth economic stability for Americans?

Hopefully, the Obama we see these next four years will surpass the Obama we’ve seen over these past four years. The new Obama will hopefully focus more on the issues to which he has given neglect, namely the economy.

Obama gave his victory speech after midnight in Chicago’s McCormick Place, where supporters had been waiting since 7 p.m. to hear him speak. While they awaited the results of the presidential election, onlookers cheered as other races across the nation were going their way.

When he took the stage, Obama told the country with a message that he will address the problems the country has and work to ensure the nation continues to grow.

“Whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you and you’ve made me a better president,” Obama said. “And with your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead.”

His message of hope reappeared in his speech tonight, although he noted the difference between “wishful idealism” and the hope inside people that encourages them to fight for a better future.

“I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests,” Obama said. “We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.”

Shortly before Obama spoke, former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., conceded in a speech to his supporters in Boston, thanking them for their hard work during the campaign.

He emphasized given the country’s problems, politicians cannot “risk partisan bickering and political posturing” and encouraged the country to stand with Obama in his effort to make the country stronger.

“I believe in America,” Romney said. “I believe in the people of America. And I ran for office because I’m concerned about America. … I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader. And so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation.”

The presidential election saw few surprises and went as the polls described it would, according to University of Wisconsin life sciences communications professor Dietram Scheufele.

The typically conservative states went to Romney, and Obama performed well in the reliably liberal states, he said. Obama had a strong showing in the Midwest and also took a number of swing states, not even needing Ohio and Florida to be called by the time he gave his speech.

The Democrats remained in control of the Senate, and the Republicans are still the majority in the House of Representatives.

UW journalism professor Michael Wagner said Obama would need to work with Republicans on issues like growing the economy tax and entitlement reform. He added like many second-term presidents, Obama may make a push for significant reforms early, but given the split in Congress, this may not be possible.

“Obama is going to be facing a divided government,” Wagner said. “He’s going to have to try to find a way to compromise in a very polarized environment to keep the fragile recovery going forward.”

In Wisconsin, Obama led Romney 52 percent to 47 percent, while in the Senate race, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., defeated her Republican opponent, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, by a similar margin, according to The Associated Press.

Both presidential campaigns spent a significant amount of time in the state, and Romney’s vice presidential pick, Rep. Paul Ryan, is from Wisconsin.

Ryan, one of the leading voices in the Republican Party, is known for his strong conservatism. The Republicans’ loss may lead to the party shifting back to the center, Scheufele said.

“If Paul Ryan couldn’t carry Wisconsin, I think that says a lot about the viability of that ticket,” Scheufele said. “He was brought on to be a very conservative voice and carry the Midwest and epitomize the concerns of the Midwest. … If Paul Ryan can’t deliver his own state, the Republicans really need to rethink their strategy. “

A big reason behind Obama’s win, Scheufele said, was his innovative campaign strategy of micro-targeting and giving distinct messages to different voters.

Given the country’s Electoral College system, he said Obama “very clinically and very surgically” went through every state and targeted different voters in a variety of ways.

“He has beaten a whole bunch of odds,” Scheufele said. “For a long time, no president has won with an unemployment rate so high and approval rating this low. He really beat them by surgically going through every state. He simply outplayed the Republicans at a game that ultimately comes down to mathematics.”

Rich Parker, a 29-year-old from Brooklyn who recently received a graduate school degree, was at McCormick Place and said Obama was “forward-looking” on many issues, especially job creation and training.

He also described Obama as somebody who could understand the average youth voter’s struggles, and more personally, talked about how Obama and him were raised in similar situations.

“His background is similar to mine,” Parker said. “I grew up in a single parent household. I had to struggle to get by. Things weren’t handed to me, and I had to work and pull myself up. Personally, his story is similar to mine. But he is relatable. He is somebody who really empathizes with us youth and wants us to move forward and be that next great generation.”

Of course, you know this. Everyone knows this. But I want to dwell on it, because although the election in 2008 was in many ways a more dramatic affair, the 2012 election might one day be considered more important. The election of 2008 was an election about hope. The election of 2012 will be about change.

For a law passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, Obamacare has had an awfully hard time sticking around. Obama’s lawyers had to pass it a second time in front of the Supreme Court. Mitt Romney, with the aid of a stubbornly Republican house, had promised to block its implementation. He was the last roadblock, the one man standing between every American’s access to affordable health care.

He has been swept aside.

If you are a college student, congratulations. Your America will join the rest of the world in having a modern health care system.

American tax policy has always been at the heart of America’s debt crisis. Obama was elected on a promise to lower taxes for most Americans. As president, he has passed tax cuts for middle and low income Americans. But he has also resisted giving those same cuts to the rich — a clear difference from not only Bush-era tax policy but also Gov. Romney’s promise to reduce the tax burden even further for the wealthiest among us.

Thus far, Obama’s quest to raise rates on the rich has been thwarted. But no longer — at the beginning of next year, the Bush-era tax cuts will expire.

Rates assessed on income above $250,000 will rise from 35 percent to Clinton’s 39.6 percent. Will this tax hike impede our economy? Will our “job creators” just pack up and go home? Or will new revenue prove at last a viable path to ending our government’s gaping deficit? For now, answers to these questions will be shaded by speculation and self-interest. Because of Obama’s victory, we will soon know for sure.

Another thing known for sure is that this nation’s Supreme Court will soon change. Currently dominated by a 5-4 conservative bloc, the liberals of the court have suffered defeat after defeat on issue after issue, Obamacare being the (notable) exception.

In these next four years, three justices stand a real chance of resigning. From most likely to least: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer. Whereas Romney had promised to nominate justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Obama gives liberals their first chance in a generation at reclaiming our nation’s jurisprudence.

The importance of the Supreme Court nominations cannot be overstated. The desegregation of schools, the ability of women to have abortions, the right to sleep with whomever you love — so many rights viewed as fundamental now were at one point guaranteed, not because of the popular will, but only because the right people at the right time held in their hands the ability to shape the life of our Constitution.

Obstacles will present themselves. John Boehner will remain the implacable opponent of the president’s policies. The debt ceiling approaches as the House Republican Conference laments modern-day social welfare spending. The ocean inches ever upward as our politicians look ever elsewhere. The fight to restore civil liberties continues, independent of any victorious night or resurgent presidency.

On a cold day in February 2007, Obama began his first presidential campaign in Springfield, Ill. He told us people who love and work for their country can change it. More than five years later, our country remains besotted by problems. Yet his fundamental point was, and is, correct. His re-election gives Americans a chance to prove it. Let the work continue. Let the results begin.

The push for legalization is very real and now stronger than ever, as those continue to step forward to speak of its medicinal benefits and its role as a more or less benign modifier of consciousness. Public support for marijuana legalization has been steadily rising since 2002, breaking a record at 50 percent of Americans favoring legalization.  This added with the fact that more than 70 percent of Americans who believe weed should be made legal for medicinal reasons has the potential to significantly alter the social and cultural status of many Americans who do smoke marijuana. It also would have an incredible impact on our infamous war on drugs.

Anyone familiar with U.S. history might know that marijuana was once both legal and endorsed by the American government. Our Founding Fathers had their own hemp crops where they sowed the harvest for multiple purposes, smoking being one of them. It wasn’t until the 1930s that marijuana was nationally prohibited. Since then, fear, ignorance and demonization of the plant have made it one of the biggest players in the drug war. Almost an eighth of drug prisoners are being held for crimes related to pot, meaning that Americans pay more than a billion dollars per year to hold such offenders.

While these measures up for debate in Oregon, Colorado and Washington will have a real effect on America’s prison systems, economy and pharmacy, they may more directly change the power and activity of Mexico’s most popular drug cartels. The Mexican states Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa are expected to be most impacted by legalization, as they are home to the biggest drug cartels in Mexico. Sinaloa may be the most affected, perhaps losing up to 50 percent of its revenue.

Right now, the U.S. gets between 40 and 70 percent of its marijuana from Mexico. The Mexican drug trade makes about $11 billion a year and has resulted in more than 60,000 deaths of government officials, reporters, activists and civilians over the last six years. Legalization of recreational marijuana use would considerably lower violence and revenue in these cartels. In Washington alone, a projected $1.9 billion in state revenue would be generated in a five-year period. With a proposed 25 percent tax on marijuana, the drug would still be sold for cheaper than if it was brought from Mexico. This home-growing idea would provide less expensive, better quality cannabis for people in the U.S. If these measures are passed, the cumulative revenues would lead to a loss of almost $5 billion a year to cartels.

It seems that the American people are relearning what our Founding Fathers and these drug cartels have already known — that marijuana is a cash crop. We also seem to be learning that, contrary to the 1930s idea of “Reefer Madness,” weed has been shown to be less harmful than alcohol and less addictive than nicotine. Aside from this issue, the distribution and sale of marijuana in these states will remove income that would otherwise go to organized crime and instead use the money for the state. This simply means state offices, small businesses and individuals would yield higher profits.

Clearly, legalization would not end cartel violence in Mexico, but there is no doubt that cartels would lose a significant amount of power. If any of these states pass their legalizing amendments, it will give both the U.S. and Mexico the chance to redefine drug policy when it comes to marijuana. The time has come.

The first and foremost misconception is this idea that Iran is building a nuclear missile and will launch it on Israel upon completion. There are two major discrepancies with this idea. The first is that Iran most likely desires nuclear weapons for the same reason every other country aims to have them. It gives the country leverage on an international stage where everyone else also has nuclear weapons. The second point to consider is that while Ahmadinejad and the Iranian government aren’t the most reasonable voices in the international political sphere, they aren’t fanatics. Over the past decades, Iran has had a self preservationist streak. They are more than aware that a preemptive nuclear strike would be disastrous for the rest of the world and for their own country considering how many nations would oppose it.

From a foreign policy perspective I would consider Pakistan an equal if not greater threat. Unlike Iran which has yet to develop a nuclear weapon, Pakistan currently has over 100 and is free to produce more. Pakistan’s history hasn’t been spotless. They came very close to nuclear conflict with India a little over a decade ago. The 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks had links to Pakistani intelligence. Pakistan has also been involved in giving nuclear technology to other countries and potentially having terrorist ties within its own government. Questions have also been raised when terrorist groups set up shop in Pakistan and most notably Osama bin Laden who resided surprisingly close to a Pakistani military base.

The threat however doesn’t necessarily come directly from Pakistan. I believe they also realize the stakes of a nuclear strike in today’s age. However, the main threat falls in terrorist groups getting their hands on nuclear weapons or Pakistan’s government providing technology to other countries or groups as they have done in the past. These groups are much more fanatical and likely don’t see the rippling consequences of nuclear warfare, and are an even bigger threat if they have links in the Pakistani government.

However, there is a reason that the issue of Pakistan is often brushed over. We tend to consider them as an ally. The United States sends foreign aid to Pakistan, their military has supported us on occasion and they have leaders that the United States associates with. With these factors we tend to turn a blind eye when Pakistan does something shady, or something happens that isn’t in our best interest.

There is also a lingering sense of hypocrisy here. As Israel is allowed to stockpile its nuclear weapons, Iran is called into question for simply following what has been natural protocol for any country. The underlying purpose of the nuclear arms race is that countries have nuclear weapons so as to protect themselves from other countries with the same capabilities. In the same way, no one brings a knife to a gun fight, countries can’t bring a traditional military to a table of nukes.

This isn’t to say Iran isn’t a priority in foreign affairs. There is a chance that Iran could provide nuclear technology to terrorist groups as well. The difference is that Iran has yet to reach the stage where it can do that, whereas Pakistan has been in that situation for years now. This in no way warrants Iran as the largest international threat or justifies the drums of war and military action that some politicians have been beating as of late. Frankly you need to ask yourself which would currently pose a bigger threat: Iran acquiring a single nuclear weapon while being heavily sanctioned and opposed by the international community; or a country that already has over 100 nuclear weapons, has acted as a base for extremist groups and has been called into question multiple times for having intelligence tied to terrorist groups.

During his 25-minute appearance, Obama encouraged supporters to remain vigilant for the last lap of the presidential race.

“We have come too far to turn back now,” Obama said. “We’ve come too far to let our hearts grow weary, to let our hearts grow faint. Now is the time to keep pushing forward.”

In his speech, Obama criticized GOP challenger Mitt Romney for “repackaging the same old ideas that don’t work” and defended himself against the notion that he has not made a big enough difference during the four years of his presidency. Obama said he has fought hard against gridlock in Congress, which he blamed on “big money and lobbyists.”

“I know what real change looks like because I’ve fought for it,” Obama said. “I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

The president also talked about his vision for the economy and the importance of job creation, telling the audience that he would be willing to “work with anybody of any party to move the country forward.”

“I don’t want a tax code that rewards companies for shipping jobs overseas,” Obama said. “I want to reward companies that are investing right here in Milwaukee.”

Emma Gotter, a sophomore in the College of Communication, was excited to have the president in the area and see the president drive into Milwaukee with the Secret Service before the rally.

“The experience of watching the president of the United States come in and knowing that this was going to be huge and a big deciding factor for the election was so cool,” Gotter said. “I just thought it was hysterical how people who disliked (the president) and people who were rooting for him all had their video cameras out to capture the moment, regardless of what party they supported.”

President Obama took the stage after Perry’s performance, commending her for “working so hard these past few weeks.”

“I am grateful to her,” Obama said to the cheering crowd.

Perry wore a dress with Obama’s “Forward” slogan on it. Like Obama, she urged people to get out and vote.

Perry also asked attendees to donate to the American Red Cross to support hurricane relief.

“As we rally our support here today, we can’t forget our friends on the East Coast,” Perry said. “Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy has left a lot of people hurt and homeless.”

Obama encouraged the crowd to look back at his time in office critically when thinking about the Tuesday election. He told the crowd  he followed through on his promises to pull the troops out of Iraq, kill Osama bin Laden and end the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Obama’s talk  followed an appearance in Milwaukee by Republican candidate Mitt Romney on Friday morning at State Fair Park. In addition to Perry, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Stevie Wonder, Marc Anthony, John Mellencamp, Jay-Z and will.i.am have also made appearances in the swing states in support of Obama.

In what turned out to be an emotional and nostalgic campaign stop, President Barack Obama came to the East Village in Des Moines, Iowa on Monday night to campaign for the last time this election. Adding a touch of sentimentality to it, Obama’s visit to Des Moines was the same place where his launch for the presidency began back in 2007, only this time he was speaking to a crowd of 20,000 supporters.

The night started off as Des Moines police, in conjunction with the Secret Service, herded thousands of attendees down Grand Avenue and into the East Village to hear Obama speak.

Speaking in front of his 2008 caucus headquarters, Obama was energized and confident in his delivery to the crowd.

“I came back to ask you to help us finish what we started because this is where our movement for change began,” Obama said. “When the cynics said we couldn’t, you said: ‘Yes, we can’.”

Occasionally speaking with a slight quiver in his voice and fighting back a tear or two, Obama sought to stand his ground on the eve of election night and thanked his supporters for their dedication over the years.

“You took this campaign and you made it your own and you organized yourselves block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, county by county, starting a movement that spread across the country,” Obama said. “In Iowa, in 2008, your voice changed the world.”

Obama did not take too much time out of his speech to talk about his opponent, Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Instead, he used his time at the podium to highlight his what he had accomplished in his first term and reinforce his idea that the country was on the right track, and he would get the country completely back on its feet in his second term.

“We’ve made real progress these last four years,” he said. “But Iowa, we’re here tonight because we’ve got more work to do. We’re not done yet on this journey; we’ve got more road to travel.”

Obama ended his speech with another push for everyone to vote in Tuesday’s elections

Obama currently leads Romney by down five points in Iowa, according to the latest poll from The Des Moines Register.

“I got a lot more fight left in me, but to wage that fight on behalf of American families, I need you to still have some fight left in you too,” Obama said. “It’s out of my hands now, it’s up to you.”

Obama was also joined by his wife, Michelle Obama, and musician Bruce Springsteen earlier in the night both of whom riled up the crowd prior to Obama’s arrival to the stage. While Springsteen performed for the crowd, often intertwining pro-Obama lyrics into his songs, Michelle gave a heart-felt and sentimental speech about her husband.

“This is a pretty emotional time for us because this is the final event of my husband’s final campaign. This is where it all began, right here,” she said. “Tomorrow we have a chance to finish what we started here in Iowa.”

Prior to Obama’s speech, singer Katy Perry performed a concert in front of an Obama campaign video. She wore a shiny blue dress with white letters that spelled out “forward,” the word Obama’s campaign placed on his podium and on the rally signs the crowd held.

Obama, speaking with a somewhat hoarse voice, told the crowd his policies have been effective and are similar to what former President Bill Clinton implemented when he was in office.

On the other hand, Obama said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney seeks to give tax breaks to the wealthiest and give insurance companies and Wall Street “free rein to do whatever they please.” These ideas, Obama added, were already tried by his predecessor and resulted in deficits, inequality, low job growth and the 2008 financial crisis.

“We know what works, and we know what doesn’t,” Obama said. “Gov. Romney… is a very talented salesman. So in this campaign, he’s trying as hard as he can to repackage the same old ideas that didn’t work and offer them up as change. … Here’s the thing, though: We know what change looks like.”

Part of this change, Obama said, is his record on higher education, including his doubling of funding for Pell Grants and his work on reducing tuition growth by half over the next decade.

He said he would never increase college costs in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy and gave his vision for education as one that can be accessed by students of all backgrounds.

“Kids dreaming of becoming scientists and doctors, engineers or entrepreneurs, diplomats — maybe a president, they need a champion because the future will never have lobbyists like the status quo does,” Obama said. “The dreams of those kids will be our saving grace. That’s what we’re fighting for. That’s what this election’s about. That’s why I need you, Wisconsin.”

The president visited Green Bay Thursday and scheduled a speech in Madison for Monday, the day before Election Day.

Obama’s frequent visits to Wisconsin have been an attempt to stop Romney’s “growing momentum” in the state, according to Ryan Hughes, spokesperson for the University of Wisconsin College Republicans.

He said students know better than to trust Obama’s “broken promises,” and students should vote for Romney because he seeks to grow the economy and create more jobs.

“No matter how many times he visits the state, we as students realize the economy his presidency has produced — high unemployment, especially among college graduates, growing national debt to be paid for by the next generation and rising costs of education,” Hughes said in an email to The Badger Herald.

Cade Clark, a senior at Loda High School, said he appreciates Obama’s work of making college more affordable, as he said his family cannot afford paying for his college, and he will need to take out loans.

Marquette University sophomore Tyler Tucky said he also supports Obama in part because of Obama’s record on higher education, adding he is also focused on improving K-12 education.

“I think he’s committed to education at the higher end but also at the lower end,” Tucky said. “Barack talked about that today. He talked about hiring more teachers and also slashing the costs of higher education.”

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan campaigned in Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon for a “victory rally” the same day President Barack Obama sent surrogate Bill Clinton to speak at St. Cloud State University.

Ryan spoke for 20 minutes to an eager crowd of about 8,000 — 2,000 more than expected — at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport as thousands more, who were denied because of fire code regulations, waited outside.

While endorsing his and presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s policies, Ryan spoke about creating jobs, the economic deficit and Minnesota’s stake in the presidential election.

“This is not your ordinary election,” Ryan said. “This is the most important election in our generation, and, Minnesota, we could use your help.”

University of Minnesota accounting sophomore and College Republicans Treasurer Matthew Stetler attended and said he liked hearing about “Romney’s plans to bring America back on track.”

He said the visit from Ryan would generate enthusiasm and affect poll results on Election Day.

“I think it really shows that Minnesota is in play for a Romney victory,” Stetler said. “It’s not a guarantee win by the Democrats like it has been before.”

Other students agreed. Alexandra Blake, an accounting junior at South Central College made the trip from Faribault, Minn., for the day to hear the candidate speak.

She said the visit from Ryan is important because it “raises awareness that Minnesota is not an automatic win by the Democrats.”

“Minnesota is typically a blue state, but I think it would be cool if all our electoral votes went to Romney-Ryan,” Blake said.

For nearly 40 years, Minnesota has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate.

Ryan, a Wisconsin native, addressed the state’s left-leaning history and said he and Romney plan to “work with people on both sides of the aisle, like the people of Minnesota and Wisconsin are used to doing.”

Polls vary on how tight the presidential race is in Minnesota.

“This morning we found out that Minnesota could prove to be a pivotal state in this election,” said U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann from Minnesota’s 6th District, who spoke at the rally.

Conservative PAC America’s Future Fund released a poll Saturday that found Romney led Obama in Minnesota 46 to 45.

Public Policy Polling, which also released its final poll numbers Saturday, found Obama leading Romney 53-45.

Last month, a Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll found that Obama had a 3 percentage point advantage over Romney.

“The Ryan visit might make the Obama campaign put more resources into Minnesota, which would be good [for Republicans],” said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

“The visit — a strategy on the offense for Romney — might put Obama on the defense,” he said.

Jacobs said the last-minute campaign stop from Ryan is “unusual” as Minnesota has been mostly ignored by the Romney campaign.

Obama has several field offices in Minnesota while the Romney campaign has none.

“One of the challenges for the Romney-Ryan ticket is how well they can do with advertising dollars without having troops on the ground,” Jacobs said.

Compared to his opponent, Romney’s campaign has not spent as much funding and attention on Minnesota.

Jacobs said Ryan’s visit is like “doing an invasion of a country without worrying about supply lines.”

“He’s trying to rally some of the troops behind the ticket,” Jacobs said. “The Republicans would like the Obama campaign to have to fight for Minnesota.”

The visit from Ryan could help the congressional and senate Republican candidates in Minnesota as well, Jacobs said.

“He’s got political friends in the state and may be partly trying to pitch in and help out those candidates,” Jacobs said.

Ryan was in St. Paul last Tuesday for a private dinner at O’Gara’s after holding a campaign event in Hudson, Wis.

Kelly Fenton, deputy chair for the Republican Party of Minnesota, expressed the importance of Ryan’s visit at the airport.

“This stop is huge,” Fenton said. “It means Minnesota is actually at play, and we are working hard to get the wind at our back.”

After Minneapolis, Ryan is planning to stop in Milwaukee, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada in the final 48 hours before the election.

The speeches were part of a larger rally that also featured Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and democratic New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch. All speakers stressed the need for New Hampshire residents to vote on Tuesday. With many polls indicating that the race is close, New Hampshire’s four electoral votes could make the difference in the election.

Clinton reminded the crowd that New Hampshire was crucial state in his own bid to become president. His wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also won the state in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

“Twenty years and nine months ago, New Hampshire began the chance for me to become president,” Clinton said.

Clinton turned the attention to Obama, noting that he campaigned for him in 40 events in his 2008 campaign, but is “much more enthusiastic now” than he was then.

Clinton enumerated the reasons for his support of Obama, praising his foreign policy, the auto bailout and his work to help the economy thus far. In the past two years, Obama has created 5.5 million private sector jobs compared to the 2.6 million created over eight years under the Bush administration, according to Clinton.

“I am telling you, I have spent years studying the economy, and I know what creates jobs,” Clinton said. “I hope I have some credibility with you on balanced budgets. No U.S. president or anyone living within the borders of the U.S. could have fixed all the damage that was done from the financial crisis in just four years. That’s not possible.”

Clinton lauded the president for passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and for his support of Planned Parenthood.

Romney, who opposed the auto bailout, has been trying to undo his previous statements now that the automobile industry has been improving, Clinton said.

“I expect he’ll be offered a job as chief contortionist of Cirque du Soleil,” he joked.

Obama began his speech by somberly reflecting on the past week dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

“I think I speak for the entire country when I say we will not stop until those folks’ lives have been upended and their lives have been rebuilt,” Obama said. “We will be with them every step of the way. That’s what we do as Americans. Despite the heartbreak, we’ve been inspired these past few days.” Obama chastised Romney for his adoption of the president’s 2008 slogan, “Change,” to define his own run for president in 2012. Obama said that Romney cannot endorse himself as the candidate of change if he continues to embrace the status quo, especially through his plans to “rubber stamp” the Tea Party agenda, roll back regulations on Wall Street and return to the policies of the Bush era.

“He’s a very talented salesman, and he has tried to repackage the same ideas and pretend they’re new,” Obama said of Romney. “We know what change looks like, and what he’s selling ain’t it.”

By contrast, Obama said that he wants to keep America moving forward by supporting policies similar to those that Clinton implemented during the 1990s, such as increasing tax rates on the nation’s top earners. He added that he wants compromise in Washington but is unwilling to cast aside his views on social issues such as health care, entitlement benefits and college financial aid.

“I’ve fought alongside you,” Obama said. “I’ve got the gray hair to show for it.”

The speeches emphasized the need to vote on Tuesday and focused on promoting Obama’s reelection.

“It is a very good thing that in the closing days of this campaign you have the chance to send the president back to where he belongs — to four more years in the White House,” Clinton said.

Both Clinton and Obama said that Obama needs another term to complete what he set out to do in 2008, stressing that although America has not made a full recovery from the economic downturn, it is on its way back.

“As long as there’s a single American who wants a job but can’t find one, our work is not yet done,” Obama said.

Shaheen and Lynch provided a more local context for the decisions faced in this election cycle, campaigning for Democratic congressional candidates Ann McLane Kuster ’78 and former Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., as well as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan.

“Here in New Hampshire, we don’t need ‘binders full of women,’” Shaheen said. “We have ballots full of women.”

The Dartmouth Aires performed three songs, including “The Star-Spangled Banner,” in the hour preceding the rally. Several Dartmouth students such as Justin Maffett ’16 volunteered for the Obama campaign at the rally, helping to direct the crowds.

“I’m really looking forward to Clinton, and I know this is an Obama rally, but I’m really interested in hearing what he has to say,” Moffit said before the rally. “I also want to hear what Obama has to say on issues that deal with college students.”

Samantha Deluca, a crowd member from Tilden, N.H., said she has been a supporter of the president for a year. This is the first election in which she is able to vote.

“I really believe this candidate supports the social issues that are important to me,” Deluca said. “My mother is supported by Medicare and Medicaid — she is totally disabled. It’s very important to me that she’s able to live a comfortable life.”

Obama and Clinton finished their day with trips to Florida, Ohio and Colorado. Romney campaigned in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and tonight he heads to New Hampshire for a rally in Manchester.

Just two days before the most important night of his political career, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a stop in Des Moines to rally a crowd of more than 4,000 supporters.

Crammed into Hy-Vee Hall at the Iowa Events Center, the flock of supporters were greeted Sunday, Nov. 4, by U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, U.S. Rep. Tom Latham and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who gave Romney’s introduction.

Branstad, known for his criticism of President Barack Obama, pulled out all the stops in his support of Romney’s credentials and his undercutting of the president.

“If Obama wants to take credit for the economy, let him take credit for it in Illinois, but not in Iowa, not in Wisconsin, not in Michigan and not in Indiana,” Branstad said.

Branstad was referring to those states because of their Republican governors and legislatures, all of whom have pushed for right-to-work laws, voter IDs and resistance to Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Branstad went on to tout the bipartisan attitude of Romney in contrast to Obama’s “liberal agenda.”

“Iowa’s message for Obama is ‘It’s time for a change. It’s time for you to go back to Chicago,’” Branstad said. “Gov. Romney will work with Democrats and Republicans. … Help us deliver Iowa and send Mitt Romney to the White House.”

Entering the hall to thundering applause from the supporters, Romney quickly took the helm after Branstad’s introduction and wasted no time in pumping up the crowd.

“Your voices are being heard all over the country this morning,” Romney said. “And let’s make sure we get everyone out to vote on Tuesday. … We’ve promised to build the economy and restore the principles that made America the greatest country on earth.”

Romney didn’t hold back as every mention of the president and his policies drew jeers from the enthused crowd.

“Obama focused on Obamacare, which killed jobs,” Romney said. “Unemployment is higher today than when he took office. … The middle class is being squeezed with lower take-home pay. The president thinks more government is the answer. No. More good jobs is the answer.”

Romney highlighted his business experience and outlined five core principles he would accomplish if elected: more domestic energy drilling and completion of controversial Keystone Pipeline, increased trade with Latin America and the labeling of China as a currency manipulator, worker training, passage of what he called the “Down Payment on Fiscal Sanity Act,” and state waivers for Obamacare, as well as a “sweeping review” of all Obama-era regulations.

Additionally, as Branstad promoted, Romney drew upon his willingness to reach across the aisle and work with Congressional Democrats in a bipartisan manner.

“When I’m elected, I’ll work with Democrats and Republicans,” Romney said. “I won’t just represent one party, I’ll represent one nation.”

The final part of Romney’s speech was aimed at sending a “get out the vote” message to his supporters. With Iowa being such an important swing state for both Romney and Obama, both campaigns have gone to great lengths to establish themselves as the right candidate for the job.

“President Obama is trying to convince you the last four years were a success: He calls the plan ‘forward’ — I call it ‘forewarned,’” Romney said. “With the right leadership, America is going to come roaring back. We’re Americans; we can do anything.”

Romney finished his speech with one last call to the state of Iowa.

“I need Iowa — I need Iowa so we can win the White House and take back America, keep it strong, make sure we always remain the hope of the earth,” Romney said.

Romney concluded his final event in Iowa with the usual hand shaking and waving at the eccentric crowd, many of whom loudly chanted “USA” throughout the closing of the event.

With elections fast approaching on Tuesday Nov. 6, both campaigns are making their final push to wrap up swing states in order to gain the upper hand in the electoral count.

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal nationwide poll shows a deadlocked race between the two, with Obama pulling 48 percent and Romney at 47 percent. However, in Iowa, a statewide poll by The Des Moines Register released Saturday night showed Obama leading Romney 47 to 42 percent.

Obama will make his final campaign appearance in Iowa on Monday, Nov. 5 in Des Moines, while Romney will spend his final day in New Hampshire.

The facts are damning, even considering the economic mess the president inherited in 2009. Today, over 23 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. The unemployment rate is now 7.9 percent, higher than when he took office. After calling former President George W. Bush “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” for piling up $4.9 trillion in debt in eight years, Obama has added over $5.3 trillion in just four. If reelected, the national debt will skyrocket to a whopping $20 trillion by 2016, with yet another likely downgrade to the U.S. credit rating.

The unemployment rate among youths (aged 18 to 29) is worse than the national average, at 12 percent. This does not include those who have given up looking for work. More than 5 million women are unemployed, and more women are in poverty — 25.7 million — than at any other time in our history. I find this frightening. To mask the facts, the president has diverted attention by creating a fictional case for a “War on Women” by the Republican Party, citing access to birth control as a top campaign issue. This is a ruse to mask the real problem: abysmal economic conditions for women and men of all ages. Who’s waging the real war on women? How do these seemingly abstract numbers impact college students? It’s simple. High debt slows economic growth that, in turn, negatively impacts the job market. Can’t find a job after graduation? Stuck with educational loans? Without a job, or without a well-paying job, it will be painful to meet these obligations. Every Dartmouth student is subject to the economic effects of our government’s actions and policies. Four years is enough. The president tried, yet a record 47 million Americans are on food stamps and nearly 50 million are in poverty. “Trust me, things are getting better” is not a strategy. Hope, however sincere, is not sufficient for our success.

Instead, we have an opportunity to elect a man who has the proven experience to get our country back on the right course.

Mitt Romney knows we can’t borrow and spend our way out of this mess. Unlike the incumbent, Romney has a clear plan to rein in government spending, expand trade, increase access to energy, rationalize our tax system and reform outdated entitlement programs so that our generation will not be punished for the fiscal blunders of previous generations. In short, Romney has a verifiable track record of success in precisely the things that matter the most right now.

How likely is it that real change will occur in Washington? According to Dartmouth’s own Andrew Samwick, director of the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, Romney is a “results-oriented” person who can work effectively with Republicans and Democrats to get 60 votes for legislation in the Senate.

This results-driven approach enabled him to build Bain Capital, one of the nation’s best private equity firms, from the ground up. Romney’s penchant for results was evident at the 2002 Winter Olympics, which he saved from massive debt and possible relocation and transformed into one of the most successful and profitable Olympics in recent history. It was evident when, as governor of Massachusetts, he negotiated with decisive Democratic legislative majorities in both houses to pass legislation that moved the state forward. It will also be evident as president of the United States.

Against Romney’s record of accomplishment, President Obama can only offer four years of failed economic policies, legislative gridlock, continued government spending and acute economic pain that show no sign of subsiding.

America needs a leader who intuitively understands the private sector and will implement common sense policies that will create private sector growth, not growth in government. This will lead to job creation. Mitt Romney has the experience and vision to make this happen. So when you go to the polls and vote, think about what you want the next four years to be like. When I cast my ballot, the choice is clear: Mitt Romney.

Melanie Wilcox  is the vice president of the Dartmouth College Republicans.

What’s important in this election? Former President Bill Clinton is famous for saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Well, President Barack Obama took a stumbling economy and immediately worked to stop further job loss. He introduced a stimulus bill, which not only helped to bring our economy back to life but also gave tax relief to millions of Americans and began the process of modernizing our crumbling infrastructure. When Mitt Romney said that we should let Detroit go bankrupt, Obama decided to make an investment in the auto industry that is paying off. When circumstances called for bailing out the banks, Obama not only made sure that the money was paid back but also that struggling homeowners would be helped. Have a student loan? By taking out banks as the middlemen, Obama has already cut the cost of student loans. We all benefit from Obamacare, which allows students to stay on our parent’s insurance until we turn 26 while creating exchanges that leverage the power of competition.

Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan are nowhere near the financial experts that they claim to be. Although they present themselves as concerned about the deficit and middle America, they propose a tax cut for the wealthy that can only be balanced by increasing taxes on the middle class. They have abandoned the idea of completely replacing Medicare with a voucher system, but the system they propose would still cannibalize Medicare and would bankrupt the system sooner. Why should we trust these people with our economy when they can’t even get their numbers to add up? Want more details on their plan? Wait until after the election.

And this election is about more than just the economy. Reproductive freedom, LGBT equality, our environment and immigration reform are all at stake.

What’s tragic is that Romney used to be somewhat moderate. He used to support a woman’s right to choose. Before he mocked global warming at the Republican National Convention, he advocated for research in renewable energy. And before he started pandering to the gun lobby, he supported sensible gun control that made the streets of Massachusetts safer. While my vote in this election would likely be the same, the old Romney would have been a formidable challenger for Obama. He would have shown that moderate Republicans still exist. But this isn’t the man running for president.

There is only one candidate in this race who supports an “equal pay for equal work” bill. There is only one candidate in this race who stands on the side of marriage equality and has worked to protect the right of LGBT Americans to serve in the military and receive federal benefits. There is only one candidate in this race who embraces a woman’s right to choose. There is only one candidate in this race who has fully embraced the DREAM Act.

I was not always such an enthusiastic Obama supporter. I supported him after he won the Democratic primary, but his goals still seemed lofty to me, and I was unsure if he would bring about real change or whether “real change” could even be defined. But looking back, I know that America made the right choice. Are we better off than we were four years ago? If you look at job growth: yes. If you believe that women, gays and children who are “illegal” through no fault of their own deserve the same shot at the American dream: yes. And if you agree with Vice President Joe Biden that we are better off when “bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive:” yes.

We still have work to do. No one thinks that our health care problem is completely solved. Our economy is not fully back on track and we need to find a way to fix it without further increasing our deficit. Immigration reform needs to happen. But there is only one candidate who has shown a willingness to face these issues head on and doesn’t change his positions for political expediency. Obama has already taken the first steps to solve the tough problems from which many of his predecessors have run. I’m voting for Obama so he can finish the job.

Mason Cole is the president of the Dartmouth College Democrats.

Romney addressed the crowd in a state where the race, according to a report published in the Washington Post, is still close.  Still, according to an article reported by The Miami Herald, the Republican presidential candidate holds a narrow lead in the state of Florida.  With six days left before Election Day, his stop at the swing state could garner sufficient votes he needs to carry Florida.

His tour with Rubio, Bush and Mack, titled the “Victory Rally,” also included stops in Jacksonville and Tampa.

Marilyn Caserta, a senior at local high school Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the first speaker, Florida Representative Carlos Lopez-Cantera, took the stage.

Caserta has known Rubio since she was 9, and has sung before many of his events, including his inauguration as senator in Washington, D.C.

“I was absolutely ecstatic when I found out I was asked to sing,” she said. “It was such an honor to be given the opportunity to sing the national anthem for Governor Romney and for everyone that came out to support the campaign.”

After Lopez-Cantera spoke, local congresswoman Anitere Flores, and later Congressmen Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart addressed the crowd alongside Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Mack, Bush and Rubio later fueled the crowd. Rubio introduced Romney to the stage.

Senior Alex Hurtado appreciated Rubio’s portion of the speech. She was able to speak to him after the event, and shake his and Romney’s hands.

“I thought all speakers were fantastic,” Hurtado said. “I thought Marco Rubio was incredible along with Romney. This is my second time hearing Romney speak; overall I think the rally was a success. They definitely energized the crowd and motivated everyone to vote.”

Romney spoke about the need for college students to find jobs after they graduate, and touched upon the relief efforts needed to help the victims in the Northeast suffering from the aftermath from Hurricane Sandy.

Though many criticized Romney’s decision to continue campaigning, UM political science professor Casey Klofstad believes everyone’s opinion is “driven by politics.”

“If you’re generally supportive of Romney you’ll say he needs to campaign, if you’re supportive of the president you’ll say he’s taking respect of the gravity of the situation,” he said. “But, on the other hand, the president really can’t be campaigning right now; he has to govern, whereas Romney is freer in a sense to go and campaign. At the end of the day, it’s a combination of what they can and cannot do, plus political reception.”

Romney also outlined his five-point plan to improve the economy by creating jobs.

He motivated the crowd with statements on the American character.

“It’s part of the American character to live for something bigger than ourselves,” Romney said.

The event marked the second time the presidential candidate visits campus. Romney was last at UM on Sept. 19, when Univision reporters Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas Romney and Obama for a broadcast on the Spanish station. Romney’s session with the journalists lasted 35 minutes, while Obama’s lasted one hour. The president has visited the University of Miami three times in the past eight months.

Though the speakers motivated students who attended the event, some students do not have such a positive outlook. Jordan Lewis, president of UM Young and College Democrats, believes that UM will lean toward the left side on Tuesday. He does not think the Republican rally was helpful for Romney’s campaign.

“Most students have already decided their vote,” he said. “This campus belongs to President Obama.”

Still, UM College Republicans member Lohena Cabrera believes the event helped stir enthusiasm.

“I think it went really well,” said Cabrera, who volunteered at the rally. “Everyone seemed really motivated and extremely moved by all the speaker’s words especially Senator Rubio and Governor Romney’s speech.”

Rudy Fernandez, vice president for government affairs at UM, believes that this helps enhance the University of Miami student experience.

“We feel that this adds a lot to being a University of Miami student, and hopefully it sends a very strong message that whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, it is very important to get involved in the democratic process, to vote, to learn about the issues and to get involved,” Fernandez said. “It is very unique that in a 10-month period, we have been able to host President Obama three times and Gov. Romney twice. I know no other institution in Florida can claim that they’ve been able to do that. It’s a very special experience for the whole university, especially for students.”

After depositing their keys, phones, and jewelry with security guards upstairs, the group descended into a monitored, basement room to face off against a team of inmates.

One imposing Walpole inmate sauntered across the room toward a skinny student who stood at the front of the group—current president Barack Obama.

Obama leaned in for a traditional handshake and hug, nonchalantly asking the inmate why he had been incarcerated.

“Double murder,” the inmate replied.

Yet, according to Charles J. Ogletree Jr., an Obama mentor and Harvard Law School professor, Obama maintained his aggressive playing style—a fearlessness and aggressiveness that many critics have argued Obama has lost since his election in 2008.

“He’s competitive and that was reflected on the basketball court,” classmate Jason B. Adkins said.

Today, Obama remains locked in an intense struggle for the White House as election season hurdles toward its finish next Tuesday.

Although Obama generally refrains from discussing his time at Harvard Law School, the president blossomed into a leader and teacher during his three years in Cambridge.

“Harvard was, for Barack, a place to reflect, to learn and to reinforce his already very considerable skills and insights,” Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe said during the presidential campaign four years ago.

While at the Law School, Obama pioneered a new brand of activism for students who hoped to ensure that Harvard adhered to a standard of diversity and equality.

“He was definitely one of the leaders and shining lights in our year,” Adkins said.

“He knew exactly what he wanted and went about getting it done,” Law School professor David B. Wilkins said during Obama’s first campaign for president. “He was the kind of person who you knew was destined for greatness.”

THE ACTIVIST

When Barack Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988, he had already spent three years working as a community organizer in inner-city Chicago, and at age 27, he was relatively older than his peers.

“He was a little older, seasoned,” Adkins said. “People looked up to him.”

Obama emerged as an activist during his second year at Harvard after controversy broke out surrounding the new dean, Robert C. Clark.

Clark had proposed to eliminate a branch of the advising program designed to help students find careers as public interest lawyers after graduation. Clark’s comments about these “guilt alleviating” programs drew national media attention.

Students, Obama among them, protested, organizing rallies and initiating a letter writing campaign to garner support from students and faculty members.

Obama gave several inspirational speeches that effectively galvanized students, according to Adkins.

He spoke with a distinctive style that reverberates in his speeches today. “He had a similar cadence, similar passion,” Adkins said. “It’s both passionate and analytical.”

After a period of student protests, Clark finally caved to student demands, reinstating public interest advising in 1990.

Although the controversy had died down, Obama remained active in the movement to improve the diversity of Harvard’s faculty.

“He was obviously attuned to the public issues of the day,” Adkins said.

THE SECOND TEACHER

Adkins describes Obama as a bright, engaged student with impressive intellectual ability.

During an introductory constitutional law class taught by professor Kathleen M. Sullivan, who now teaches at Stanford, Obama would consistently engage Sullivan with clear, pointed questions that challenged her interpretations.

Students, therefore, dubbed the course “the Obama-Sullivan Debate Class,” Adkins said.

“He was a dominating feature in the classroom,” Ogletree said.

Yet, Judson H. Miner, a Chicago civil rights lawyer who hired Obama immediately after he graduated, describes Obama as “self-assured but not at all cocky.”

“He was clearly an enormously bright fellow, who wasn’t arrogant,” Miner said.

In fact, Obama was eager to share recognition with his fellow students and strove to include his fellow students in dialogue, instead of merely showing off his superior knowledge.

Obama “wanted faculty and other students to see that other people in the classroom had good and interesting and provocative ideas,” Ogletree said.

Obama felt that other students contributed to a collective answer, formulated from the layered input of all the class members.

“He was as much a teaching assistant as he was a student,” Ogletree said.

Obama could have pursued an career in academia had he not chosen to dive into politics, Olgetree said.

Although Ogletree describes Obama as a “terrific teacher,” pundits have said that Obama has struggled to effectively harness his ability to translate his platform to the American public in a simple and relatable form during the last four years.

“There’s no better salesman than Barack, but there was a period when somehow his voice got muffled,” Miner said of Obama’s first term. “He followed bad advice and lost his voice.”

THE MEDIATOR

In 1990, Obama became the first African-American to pass through the grueling election process and win the much-coveted position of Harvard Law Review president.

According to Ogletree, Obama expressed some “reluctance and anxiety” about running.

“He had to be chosen by a cross-section of people who all were smart and gifted and who were different races, genders, political persuasions and even classes,” Ogletree said.

Obama “was pleasantly surprised to see the wealth of support and enthusiastic endorsement of him as the president,” Ogletree said.

At the time, Randall Kennedy, a professor of law, told the Crimson that Obama’s selection proved that “talent can be recognized regardless of race.”

According to Ogletree, Obama wanted to open doors for future students who would follow in his footsteps as leaders of the Law Review. Soon after his election, Obama said that he was happy to be the first African-American elected, but did not want to be the last.

Although people on the Law Review held diametrically opposed political views, Obama managed to reconcile their differences because his peers respected his judgment and his fairness.

Ogletree said that Obama crafted a team of strong writers from across the political spectrum, refusing to discriminate against those who held political views that ran couner to his own.

Instead of relying on tired partisan arguments, Obama consistently approached any problem with the same thoughtfulness and precision that he applies to work in the Oval Office, Miner said.

Obama’s experience reconciling differences may have aided his navigating of the Washington poliical scene, but pundits have virulently criticized the president for the increasingly partisan tenor of Washington during the last four years.

Despite what some critics have said, Ogletree believes that Obama has successfully reached across the aisle time and again on issues that are important to the American people—particularly health care and the economic stimulus package.

And, if elected to office again, Obama—who shaped and was shaped, like many Harvard students, by his experience in Cambridge—will continue to draw upon his years at HLS, Olgetree said.

With Election Day looming, Biden crossed Florida, visiting Ocala on Wednesday afternoon to rally a crowd of about 2,500 supporters.

He stopped in a town where neighborhood lawns are spotted with both Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama signs, where the cars that sail down county roads are almost as likely to have a Democratic sticker as a Republican sticker. In Marion County, there are about 82,000 registered Democrats and about 95,000 registered Republicans, according to the Marion County Supervisor of Elections office.

“We win Florida, we win this election,” Biden told the cheering crowd.

He focused on women’s issues and job growth under the Obama administration and spent most of his about 40-minute speech bashing Romney.

Democratic supporters held “Forward!” signs and cheered as Biden wove in his oft-publicized personal anecdotes and emphasized his doubts about Romney’s proposed budget and policies.

“His plans aren’t sketchy,” he said. “They’re Etch A Sketch-y.”

Biden bashed Romney for his comments about women’s equality in the workplace, criticizing his recent “binders full of women” comment that exploded across the Internet after the second presidential debate.

“I hope he kept that binder,” he said.

He said Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan believe their plans will help people, but their vision of the American dream is distorted.

“We’ve seen that movie and how it ends,” Biden said. “And on Halloween, it’s a horror movie is what it is.”

Biden mentioned the victims of Hurricane Sandy during his speech, praising Northeastern mayors for working together to get affected residents the help they need, despite political affiliation.

“We’re always, always better off as a nation when we pull together,” he said.

Leslie Wengler, a 26-year-old Ocala resident, said Biden’s points on medical care resonated with her because she has a form of muscular dystrophy. She said Obama’s health care law has made it possible to get help.

“Without that, I would just be out of luck,” she said.

She said she supports Obama and Biden and they’ve done a great job during their time in office.

“It takes a while for change to cause an effect,” she said. “Change doesn’t happen overnight.”

Mitt Romney has checked off the basic points of a presidential persona.

But behind the pristine grooming lies a unique political figure—a man whose time at Harvard exemplifies how his presidential credentials are at once typical and unprecedented.

So far, Romney has distanced himself from the University as he campaigns for president. He has even derided his opponent Barrack Obama, who attended the Law School, for spending too much time in the “Harvard faculty lounge.”

But in fact, Romney spent four years at Harvard to Obama’s three. And he has the diplomas to prove it—one from the Law School in 1975, and another from the Business School in 1974.

DUAL THREAT

“It’s obvious that anyone who gets into both the Business School and the Law School is pretty special,” says Malcom S. Salter, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School. Salter, along with law professor Detlev Vagts, co-chaired and helped design Harvard’s joint J.D./M.B.A program from its launch in 1969.

The dual degree program typically accepts fewer than 20 candidates each year—a cadre of super-achievers, who take classes at the Law School and the Business School to obtain both degrees in four years.

“Nearly all of them made a lot of money,” says Vagts, who chaired the program for decades and watched many of his former students succeed wildly in business and academia.

Willard Mitt Romney began this rigorous program in 1971, fresh from Brigham Young University with his wife Ann and infant son Taggart in tow. The infamous student riots of 1969 were still fresh in Harvard memory, and while Romney took classes, Richard M. Nixon was ousted from the White House—after Romney’s father had resigned from his Cabinet—and the United States began its withdrawal from the war in Vietnam.

“Everybody was filled with the political ferment that was going on in the country,” recalls Howard Brownstein, another J.D./M.B.A candidate at the time whose roommate was in Romney’s study group. “The vast majority of people going to law school at that time were some brand of liberal activist.”

“Mitt was kind of a throwback,” adds Brownstein. “He just wasn’t a part of all that.”

Professors and classmates alike remember Romney’s engaged attitude in classes at both schools. Always ready to speak when called upon, Romney brought a sports coat and his trademark clean-cut grooming to class.

“My recollection of Mitt was that his hair looked pretty much the way it does it now,” says Law School classmate Robert C. Brown with a chuckle, recalling that many law students at the time wore their hair long and attended lectures in combat fatigues.

But Romney was not the typical law student—he seemed to gravitate toward the Business School from the beginning. Across the river in Boston, the Business School remained something of a conservative enclave in a University that had been dramatically radicalized in the late 1960s. “The Charles River might as well be a moat,” Brownstein says.

According to friends, Romney had always wanted to attend business school, but his father George—longtime governor of Michigan, then Secretary of Housing—wanted him to go law school.

“He compromised—and did both,” laughs Howard Serkin, who sat next to Romney in several first-year business classes.

PREP SCHOOL ‘COUNTRY BOY’

While juggling two distinct academic fields, Romney straddled two social worlds as well—the life of the driven graduate student and that of the Mormon father.

Romney’s graduate school colleagues consistently remember him as “hard working,” “mature,” “nose to the grindstone”— a portrait that contrasts with recent accounts of his pranks and slapstick antics as a prep schooler and then as a Stanford freshman.

“Mitt was always prepared; he was really always prepared,” emphasizes Serkin, a member of Romney’s study group. “He was very demanding. He said, ‘Look, we’re a team, and we want to be number one.’”

Although he was not an intellectual standout, Romney worked hard. He graduated with honors from the Law School and finished in the top 5 percent of his Business School class. “He knows how to do his own homework, let’s put it that way,” says Salter.

Friends and acquaintances say he seemed warm and personable, contradicting his current perception as “cold” or “robotic” on television.

“I didn’t ever think of him as mechanical. He was more of country boy,” recalls Rasmussen. “And it wasn’t phony. It was really the way he was.”

Brownstein remembers that Romney would sometimes make small jokes about his abstention from caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco because of his religion. But his distinct lifestyle and young family separated him from most graduate students. Dinner with other married couples, an occasional game of pick-up basketball, and church functions filled most of his spare time.

“He was always friendly, always cheerful, but he never really opened up to a lot of people,” says Garret G. Rasmussen, a classmate in Romney’s Law School section.

Indeed, as Brown puts it, his time at Harvard was closer to an “office job” than the typical all-encompassing student schedule.

“His life was divided into work with school, work with his family, and work with his church,” says Law School classmate Mark E. Mazo.

Still, Romney interacted with classmates, often inviting friends to his suburban home in Belmont. Outside the Church, he kept his Mormonism low-key—though he attended services regularly, he never proselytzed, according to classmates. Charles Ed Haldeman, a J.D./M.B.A. classmate, says he is not even sure that he knew that Romney was Mormon at the time.

PRAGMATIST TURNED POLITICIAN

Classmates remember Romney as a man driven by pragmatic, analytical concerns mostly disconnected from the tumultous politics that defined the Watergate era.

“We had many conversations over lunch every day. Very few of them were about politics,” says Serkin. “It was very clear he just wanted to be a businessman. He loved business.”

Several remember Romney as a pragmatist, less interested in the theory taught at the Law School than the hands-on case studies essential to the Business School curriculum.

“I didn’t get the sense that he liked ideas for their own sake—only instrumentally,” says Vagts, who taught Romney in a seminar class on law and business and advised him during his time in the joint program.

Some students, like future Senator Charles E. Schumer, who was one of Romney’s Law School classmates, were noted as markedly political. Romney was not, in spite of his widely known political pedigree. “I think he was just a guy who wanted to make a ton of money,” says Brown.

Like many graduates of the J.D./M.B.A. program, Romney never practiced law, and several of his peers remark on traces of his Business School training in his political style.

Haldeman, who served as CEO of Freddie Mac, says he sees the hallmarks of a Harvard-trained private equity manager in Romney’s record of political negotiation. Attending two institutions as politically different as the Law and Business Schools can have a moderating influence on a J.D./M.B.A.’s outlook, he adds.

“Some political balance comes to someone who’s gone through these two schools at a such a unique time,” says Haldeman.

Given his data-driven, adaptable approach, perhaps it is not surprising that some old classmates see a different Mitt when they turn on the television.

“When I see him on the TV attacking President Obama or taking extreme positions, he doesn’t seem like he’s being natural,” says Brownstein. “It’s an adopted persona.”

The investigation found Milwaukee’s Einhorn Family Foundation rented the billboards, which the foundation confirmed in a statement prepared by public relations firm Culloton Strategies.

“Stephen and Nancy Einhorn placed these billboards as a public service because voter fraud — whether by Republicans or Democrats — undermines our democratic process,” the foundation said in the statement. “By reminding people of the possible consequences of illegal voting, we hope to help the upcoming election be decided by legally registered voters.”

The billboards read, “Voter fraud is a felony,” which was criticized by various groups as discouraging Milwaukee voters, especially minorities, from voting.

In a statement announcing its findings, OWN Executive Director Scot Ross echoed such criticisms and warned “anyone who would attack the sacred right” to vote would see similar pushback from his and other progressive groups.

“This was not an act of free speech, but an expression of racism as despicable as the ‘whites only’ signs of the Jim Crow South,” Ross said in the statement. “We said we’d find out who was behind this, and we have.”

In 2010, there were similar ads placed in the Milwaukee area by what Clear Channel Outdoors Advertising described at the time as a private family foundation in Milwaukee. Ross said several groups at the time tried convincing Clear Channel Outdoors to take them down, but they were unsuccessful.

The OWN and The Grio investigations also found that in 2010, the Bradley Foundation, a Milwaukee-area conservative group, gave the Einhorn Family Foundation $10,000 “to support a public education project,” according to a OWN statement.

The Einhorm Family Foundation had kept its anonymity prior to Monday’s finding. Clear Channel took down the billboards last week after complaints it heard from groups like OWN.

Mike Mikalsen, spokesperson for Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, said Clear Channel erred in taking down billboards that “simply stated the law.”

He also called the criticism of the billboards part of the Democratic Party’s “race agenda” and said he was happy to see conservatives criticizing Clear Channel for its decision.

“Anything with a more conservative message is something that does not receive the same kind of free speech protection that we see with the radicals who are in the Capitol,” Mikalsen said. “That free speech everybody rallies to protect. This free speech is not.”

In an interview with The Badger Herald, Ross said the billboards were clearly not aimed at informing voters. He said the billboards were made to intimidate voters, and the reason why his group, and other progressive groups, fought for this issue is that the billboards were the “very essence of voter suppression.”

Ross also said if the billboards were an attempt to inform voters, then it would not have been anonymous.

“If this was the Einhorns and the Bradley Foundation attempting to do a civic good, then why didn’t they put their name on it?” Ross said.

At around 7 a.m. news spread that Obama had canceled his appearance at the rally after hearing that Hurricane Sandy would be making landfall in the northeast that afternoon. The 7,600 spectators that remained seemed just as “fired up” about hearing the former president speak on campus.

“The president is doing what he needed to do, as the commander-in-chief he’s taking charge,” Gov. Charlie Crist said. “They’re [northern states] not too accustomed to hurricanes and when you add that to high tide and add that to cold weather and you add that to the loss of electricity that’s a major problem. He needed to go back to be the chief in the command center.”

Aubrey Marks, president of College Democrats, was first to the podium and the tone of her speech was one of enthusiasm and excitement. As she discussed all of the accomplishments of the past four years including repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the healthcare reform.

“There’s so much running on this election, so much at stake, we need a proven leader and this leader is President Barack Obama,” Marks said. “President Obama has done so much for his first term in office but there’s so much more to be done.”

Marks was followed by speeches from two volunteers from Organizing for America, Crist and Sen. Bill Nelson before Clinton was introduced.

Clinton’s 33-minute speech discussed topics relevant to the college-based audience – student loans and healthcare.

“The most important thing that President Obama has done that nobody knows about is he reformed the student loan program and launched an initiative to help universities and colleges cut the rate of inflation in half in college costs,” Clinton said.

He went on to describe the loan reform saying that student loans won’t be as burdensome to pay back because payments will be fixed rates based upon income. Sumayya Dalal, a senior biology major, came to the rally as an undecided voter.

“I especially liked when he [Clinton] talked about education and loans. It’s so stressful applying for graduate school and worrying about my loan debt and it’s comforting to hear that there’s a different plan,” Dalal said.

Clinton described Romney’s vision to repeal Obamacare and the detriment he said it would be to students and the community. Currently, Obama’s health care reform requires young adults up to the age of 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance and bans health insurance companies from denying insurance to children because of pre-existing conditions.

Ken Bruder, a 17-year-old high school senior, attended the event in hopes of getting a clear vision for the president’s position on education. With plans to attend UCF to get a degree in secondary education, Bruder said he was interested in seeing what route the nation would take and how that would affect his future career.

“I have a deep concern for the future of this nation,” Bruder said. “I thought the speech was great. They approached it from a realistic perspective and made the future seem less scary for me. I feel secure for my future career.”

His sister, Michelle Bruder, was also in attendance.

“I already voted but I wanted to know what they had to say,” she said. “As a young adult being able to stay on my parent’s health insurance is a big deal. It is unrealistic to think we could do that all on our own.”

Although the crowd was made up mostly of students wearing “Knights for Obama” shirts and community members holding “Forward” signs representing the Obama campaign, there were many Republicans in the audience who had come to see what the opposition would be talking about.

A UCF alumna who requested not to be named said she could understand why people were so engaged in what was being said but it didn’t change her mind that Romney was the right candidate for her. She stated that this election is about how individuals believe the new president will support them and hopes people will focus on the facts more than the political party hype that surrounded the rally.

“This is not about the candidates; this is about you and your future. It’s about two very different approaches,” Clinton said. “Which one is going to build the 21st century dream?”

Beyond the obvious pro-Obama message, the speakers urged students to go out and take advantage of the early voting opportunities available to them.

The College Democrats at UCF are providing shuttles to the Alafaya Library, the UCF area early voting site. The early voting polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and registered voters must bring a photo ID with their signature in order to receive a ballot. If the ID is not signed, voters will be required to show proof of identification with a second source such as a student photo ID or a debit card with signature.

Early voting sites will remain open until Saturday and Election Day is Nov. 6.

With just a week left before the national election, Obama had planned a campaign stop in Green Bay and Romney had planned to speak in West Allis, Wis. this week, both of which were canceled in response to Sandy.

Obama made a televised statement about the storm on Monday afternoon, requesting those citizens in the path of the storm take the situation very seriously and to listen to local and state government officials.

He said he has spoken to the governors in all the states that are expected to be impacted, and Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel are working with state and local governments to makes sure everyone is prepared.

“The key is making sure everyone is ready,” Obama said in his statement. “My conversations with the governors indicate that there are no unmet needs, and we are taking this seriously and have pre-positioned all the resources needed.”

Obama said the National Guard and the Department of Defense are positioned to provide aid, and citizens should anticipate transportation back-up caused by flooding and delays in getting the power back on.

When asked about how he thinks the storm will affect the upcoming election, the president said he is not concerned with it at this point.

“I am not worried about the impact on the election. I am worried about the impact on families, the impact on first responders and the impact on the economy and transportation. The election will take care of itself next week,” Obama said. “Right now the number one priority is saving lives.”

Common Cause in Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck said this is an interesting and unusual thing to happen right before a big election because it suspends everything. He said the timing of the storm might affect the momentum of the election, and whichever candidate is ahead might lose their edge.

The main effect on Wisconsin, Heck said, is the change in travel schedules of the candidates being changed. When the worst of the storm is over, Heck said he predicts an influx of campaign visits in Wisconsin to win last minute votes.

Heck said hopes that this disaster might make the campaign less nasty, because candidates will be less likely to take jabs at one another now that there is a much bigger crisis to focus on.

“We haven’t had a national disaster like this right before an election in a long time — or possibly ever. It might make the campaign even more trivial in light of the damaging effects of the storm,” Heck said. “The country ought to be on the same side during a natural disaster.”

Heck added the candidates are doing the right thing by suspending their campaigns.

Mike McCabe, executive director for One Wisconsin Now said he does not think the natural disaster will have much of an effect on the campaign, unless the Obama Administration mishandles it.

“If there were to be a poor response to the disaster, the bad press about the Obama Administration could have an effect on the outcome of the election,” McCabe said.

McCabe said he thinks since the campaign has to get out of coastal battle ground states such as Virginia and North Carolina, the candidates will wind up spending more time in Midwestern battleground states like Ohio and Wisconsin after the immediate dangers and impact of the storm subsides.

As Obama and Romney’s presidential campaigns have halted because of the weather out east, the Midwest is also experiencing the effects of the storm, according to the Associated Press, which reported that The National Weather Service issued a warning for the Great Lakes region.

The Port of Milwaukee is taking precautions because of the 15 foot waves expected to hit the coast.

Pleasant Prairie, a village in the southeastern part of Wisconsin also had a voluntary evacuation Monday night because of potential high waves from Lake Michigan.

Gov. Scott Walker also said the Wisconsin National Guard is standing by and can provide aid to other states if necessary.

The University of Wisconsin also has resources on standby to aid students who have been affected by Sandy. UW released a statement saying the university will provide assistance with academic and “student life issues” to students impacted by the storm.

“As the storm prepares to make landfall, we’re concerned for all of our East Coast students here in Wisconsin as well as their families and friends back home,” Dean of Students Lori Berquam said in the statement.

Berquam is contacting students with families on the east coast and telling them to keep in touch with their families, according to the statement.

Students that want access to counseling are urged to call the University Health Services Counseling and Consultation Services at (608) 265-5600, the statement said, and drop-in hours are held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday through Friday.

-The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Since the polls opened Oct. 18 for early voting, North Carolina voters have turned out in droves. On the first day, 28 percent more ballots were cast in the state than on the opening day in 2008, The Charlotte Observer reported. Across the state, early voting is up 20 percent from this time four years ago, according to an Oct. 28 Obama for America press release. Duke’s on-campus one-stop early voting site has had 5,529 votes cast as of Monday night.

“One-stop voting is convenient voting—it’s more convenient than the traditional way,” said Landon Warward, a one-stop supervisor for the Durham County Board of Elections.

The total count across the state is 1.3 million votes cast—227,000 more than four years ago—according to the Obama for America press release. Of these voters, Democrats make up 50 percent, and Republicans make up 31 percent, a margin of 240,000 voters.

The increase in early voting reflects the efforts of both campaigns to draw voters to the polls as soon as possible, said Kerry Haynie, associate professor of political science. He noted that the Obama campaign has been particularly active and well-organized in rallying voters.

“The campaigns want to make sure that they get those voters to the polls as soon as they can to make sure the votes are actually cast,” Haynie said.

Voters have 16 days to cast their votes during early voting, as well as register on site if they missed the registration deadline, which closed earlier this month. Candidates are focused on urging voters to cast their ballots before Nov. 6, when an emergency or forgetfulness may prevent them from voting, Haynie said.

Duke’s one-stop voting site has similarly increased since 2008, said sophomore Adrienne Harreveld, co-president of Duke Democrats. She attributed the increased early voting activity in part to the organization’s new strategy on campus.

“This year the Democrat strategy has been very involved,” she said. “We have had a big presence on campus since school started, more people have registered to vote and we have events every day to make sure that students go to vote.”

Such events include phone banks, dorm storming, leaflets and distributing general information about the races.

Votes cast at the Duke site comprise 8.1 percent of Durham County’s votes as of Oct. 29, according to the Durham County Board of Elections. When early voting ended in the 2008 general election, 9,361 people had voted at the Duke site, The Chronicle previously reported. In order to pass that total, more than 3,832 additional votes will need to be cast on campus in the remaining five days of early voting.

Although the proportion of non-Duke voters remains relatively low compared to students, faculty and medical center staff at the campus site, the number has increased over the years following efforts to make the site more accessible, Warward said. Curbside parking in front of the chapel is now reserved for voters, attracting voters who were deterred by the parking situation on campus before.

Although early voting is important, Haynie cautioned that the numbers cannot accurately predict who will take the state. He added, however, that the numbers thus far reflect how competitive the battle for North Carolina will be—the droves of Duke students and community members heading to the polls will influence that race.

“It looks pretty impressive,” Haynie said. “It’s a good sign for the Obama campaign, seeing as they tend to lead this demographic of students.”

Harreveld stressed how important it is that Duke students take advantage of these last few days of early voting and encouraged students to not forget about the other races on the ballot.

“Duke students need to realize that they have a responsibility to vote and a responsibility to know about the other races on the ballot because it will affect them whether they realize it or not,” she said.

This isn’t to say that Obama has done a poor job. In fact, I think the strides he has taken toward keeping the Internet free and supporting transparency in government have actually been fairly positive steps. I think that his historic Aug. 29 Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit, in which the president answered questions on the social media site, showed, if nothing else, that he treats Internet policy as a serious issue even if the dialogue of the two campaigns hasn’t emphasized it enough.

There is still a significant amount of work to be done. The freedom of the Internet is precarious, and we must be vigilant in protecting it.

A great deal of focus in the presidential campaign has been on the economy, as is probably necessary, yet, in my opinion, not enough of the dialogue has been about the role that the Internet plays in the economy. If it’s not a huge campaign issue, it probably won’t be a huge governing issue. That’s a problem, because it has to be.

A significant portion of the much-touted economic success during the Clinton years came as a direct result of the Internet boom. Some have suggested that we may be on the verge of a second great wave of Internet development, one that could carry our economy into the next decade or two. With Web 2.0, a more modern update in the way the Internet is designed and used, finally finding a real place in the business world and showing viable revenue structures, the Internet is more important to the economy than ever.

However, this importance is not shown in speeches from Romney and Obama. So much of the discussion is on manufacturing jobs or education, and while both of these are important topics, issues of technology have been cast too far to the side.

Since Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have found their place as some of the biggest companies in the world, the economy could be significantly hurt or helped depending on how we shape our Internet policy. These companies have business models that rely on relative freedom on the Internet. Any regulations surrounding these models need to be implemented with great care or, better yet, not put into place at all.

Yet, it is the Internet itself — the very nature of how we connect to each other in the modern world — that is frequently under attack from interest groups in Washington under the guise of fighting piracy. Piracy is a serious problem, and it’s one that I take very seriously, but that’s no excuse to push through poorly-constructed policy.

Our legislators have shown themselves to be woefully inept in terms of understanding how the Internet works and the role that it plays in the economy, and the dialogue in this year’s presidential election so far has done very little to convince me that this going to change in the future.

Believe it or not, the Internet is actually more than a series of tubes, no matter what former members of the Senate might say. It’s time that our representatives start acting like it. Let’s start with the most important issue and demand that the next president, whoever it may be, come up with a coherent and intelligent policy.

And now, a just-released report compiled by Stanford and NYU students reveals how our country’s drone campaign, which has been expanded fivefold under Obama, is responsible for mass-suffering and civilian death in the northwest region of Pakistan.

The evidence offered in this new report, along with what we knew before, makes it clear that the US needs to significantly reform its use of drones in the region, if not completely abolish it.

The report exposes that, far from being the “surgically precise and effective tool[s]” most Americans believe them to be, drones are actually incredibly violent and messy. It points out that, “while civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians.”

The United States, in its Pakistani drone campaign (along with parallel campaigns elsewhere) has targeted a range of public establishments, from village squares to schools, in the pursuit of eliminating accused terrorists. This wide scope of targeted structures has, understandably, created a sense of fear and helplessness within the communities living under drones. As one villager interviewed in the report explains, “Everyone is scared all the time. When we’re sitting together to have a meeting, we’re scared there might be a strike. When you can hear the drone circling in the sky, you think it might strike you. We’re always scared.”

The terror experienced by these Pakistani citizens, a terror documented through the many interviews and polls within the report, is far from surprising. All one must do to understand it, in fact, is look at just who and what our government has attacked using drone missiles in the past.

Time and again, the US has claimed to have successfully eliminated multiple military targets in a strike, only to have it later revealed that there were heavy civilian casualties and few, if any, real militant deaths. Three such instances of this pattern are documented in detail by the Stanford-NYU report, and they serve to show just how unreliable the “official” accounts of drone attacks can be, while also highlighting the attacks’ innately devastating nature.

Add to this the fact that the Obama administration now officially records any military-age males killed in drone strikes as “militants”, and it’s not hard to see why these Pakistanis are so afraid for their lives.

The Obama administration has also approved the use of “signature strikes”, drone attacks that target individuals whose identities are unknown yet who seem to exhibit behavior in line with that of an active militant. The broad power this grants our government—to kill people we haven’t even identified living thousands of miles away—is frightening in its own right. Couple that power, though, with our track record for mistakenly killing civilians in the place of actual militants, and the terror felt by each person forced to live under our drones is made even more tangible.

Apart from engaging in signature strikes, the US has also seems to be willing to attack both the rescuers and mourners of drone victims. This practice is, on its face, morally grotesque, as it literally means we are targeting people who seek only to save others’ lives or honor their deaths, those first-responders at the strike zone and those family and friends gathered at the funeral. Yet our government continues to commit these “follow-up” strikes in the hopes that they will kill further suspected terrorists, no matter the cost.

Such clearly unjust and destructive drone practices don’t just fill the affected Pakistani populations with terror, either. They also fill them with rage, and in doing so help foster the very anti-American sentiment that our foreign enemies thrive off of. In the report, an affected mental health professional notes “the impact [the drone program] has on personality development,” stating that “people who have experienced such things, they don’t trust people; they have anger, desire for revenge.”

So now, amongst all the collateral deaths and destroyed properties, we find that the policy we have instated to fight terrorism may very well be fueling it.

Consider that for a moment.

Not only does it turn out that our drones terrorize entire Pakistani villages, but they might not even achieve their intended goal of combating terrorism. We simply cannot continue a policy that so indiscriminately and insensitively kills innocent civilians, especially when its efficacy is so called into question.

In fact, because of its bloody record, our drone campaign has now come to embody the very terror it originally sought to vanquish.

Targeting emergency first-responders, or those gathered at funerals, or those attending village meetings, or those who’s identities we don’t know, or even those who are simply in the area and over eighteen—these are not the policies of a nation defending its freedom; these are the policies of a nation terrorizing another’s populace.

America now has the responsibility to either change or end its drone program. That’s it.

If we continue on like this we are embracing the very terrorism we claim to despise, and in doing so are abandoning the very values we claim to defend.

This would mean that CO2 emissions would be capped, and any company wanting to exceed the cap could buy credit from companies below it. It is this kind of split that separates the party line.

Obama wants to continue drilling but understands such production needs regulation to be carried out on a sustainable level. He rejects the Republican mentality, warning that they would “let oil companies write the country’s energy plan” and opts for a cleaner plan for American energy production.

Where we source energy is becoming increasingly political, with civil unrest in the Arab world and rising prices. Obama understands that America needs to address the issue from a point of national security. This means we have to look at protecting ourselves through three angles: securing American energy independence, climate change and our environment.

Obama’s term has already seen a reduction in America’s dependence on foreign oil, and American production has increased.

But he has also paved a more responsible path to the production.

After disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama has learned that oil production can have huge repercussions if not handled carefully. By carefully managing oil production, he has also allowed for increased investment in alternative resources.

He has supported wind farms, solar energy and geothermal projects. Not only are these necessary complements to America’s oil and gas usage, but they are innovative. By investing time and research in these processes, America is leading the way in the world of technological development.

Out of these, we have not just made energy; we have created a field of greener advances. From the big to the small, projects such as the plug-in, hybrid electric car will change the way we live. This is the forward mentality of an America that is constantly progressing.

President Obama has also sought to increase the energy resources we have available by decreasing the amount of energy we need to use to run our cars. His administration has set in place a policy that will double the fuel efficiency of new cars by Model Year 2025 by raising standards for cars and light-duty trucks to over 54 miles per gallon. Getting more energy from the fuel we already produce is a guaranteed strategy for reducing consumption and costs in the future.

With cleaner ways of making the energy we use, we are also addressing the bigger issue of climate change. If America is seen by the international community as moving toward a more sustainable environmental policy, others will follow, and the global effort to fight climate change will increase.

It’s leading by example. That brings it back to our environment. This will benefit directly from Obama’s attention to cleaner energy production, but he has already made many positive changes in detail. The president’s record speaks for itself.

He has dramatically increased protections for air quality and has been committed to protecting green spaces. One of his most attractive policies has been the conservation of wild spaces. In 2009, he launched a program to protect over 2 million acres of federal wilderness, trails and rivers. It is not only morally important to coexist with the climate we inhabit, but it is also of economic benefit. By protecting our land, we can use the resources it offers at a more sustainable rate that will, in turn, increase economic activity.

President Obama clearly understands how best to balance our competing national security, economic and environmental interests so that we can develop a sustainable and forward-looking energy policy. The alternative could very well be an irresponsible and potentially damaging development that wouldn’t meet any of America’s vital interests and could actually undermine them.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised “big” things for Iowans if they elect him for president.

In Iowa, a state that was called the “epicenter of politics” by Congressman Steve King and a “battleground state” by Sen. Chuck Grassley, Romney sought voter support by visiting Ames.

Romney gave his speech Friday, Oct. 26, at Kinzler Construction Services, a site on West Lincoln Way.

According to a GOP source, Romney’s appearance drew a crowd of approximately 3,500 people, despite the windy weather that hovered in the 40s.

“This is an election of consequence,” Romney said. “Our campaign is about big things. … America faces a big challenge. … the American people want to see big changes.”

Romney’s speech presented his five point plan of achieving energy independence, providing citizens training they needed from state run programs, tailoring America’s trading partnerships, cutting down on the nation’s debt and encouraging small businesses.

Included in Romney’s economic speech were promises to raise the economy by 4 percent — an increase of 2 percent from last quarter, achieve North American energy independence by 2020, build better trade relations with Latin America, create 12 million new jobs, eliminate unnecessary government programs and put America “back on the path to prosperity” in order to enable it to remain a strong, responsible leader of the free world.

Romney also expressed a desire to find common ground between Democrats and Republicans.

“I know it because I’ve seen it,” Romney said. “Good Democrats can come together with good Republicans to solve big problems. What we need is leadership to make that happen.”

In addition to his economic plan, Romney brought up President Barack Obama several times.

“The president’s campaign slogan is this: ‘Forward,’” Romney said. “But to 23 million Americans struggling to find a good job these last four years it feels… a lot more like backwards.”

His comments aimed at his opponent did not go unnoticed.

“He went a little bit more on the attack than he has been recently,” said Kyle Etzel, president of the College Republicans at Iowa State. ”He called out the president on his economic policies and foreign policy, which has been in the news a lot recently; so I think that was good.”

Democrats were also present to listen to Romney’s proposals.

“Gov. Romney’s plan is in the same vain that a lot of the policies prior to the Obama administration, and those are policies that don’t really get the job done,” said Abhishek Vemuri, president of the ISU Democrats on campus.

Across the street from the event, Progress Iowa hosted a protest in which participants wore Romney masks and said Romney had flip-flopped sides on several issues throughout the course of his campaign.

Romney’s speech lasted approximately 20 minutes.

At the conclusion of his speech, Romney said his belief that Iowa would be the place that would choose the next president: “I’m counting on Iowa.”

The Democratic majority in the current Senate is slim, with just 51 seats to the Republican’s 47. Notre Dame political science professor Geoffrey Layman predicted the fight for the Senate majority would be closer than originally anticipated this year.

“I do expect the Republicans to challenge the Democratic majority, but I think it will be very close,” Layman said. “I think six months or a year ago, there was sort of an expectation that the Republicans would almost certainly gain the majority because of the big seat gains in 2010 in the House, less so in the Senate.”

Compared to 2010, when Republican candidates — especially those from the Tea Party — enjoyed sweeping success in the House of Representatives, Layman said 2012 is more favorable for the Democratic Party. In the past two years, the nation has seen slow improvements in the economy and a more positive national attitude toward the Affordable Care Act than when it was first proposed.

“I think it is certainly a better year than 2010, which was an awful year for Democrats,” he said.

However, more of the seats up for reelection have traditionally been held by Democrats and, with only a few states to swing for a Senate majority, the GOP has been fighting hard in election season. Twenty-three Democratic seats are on the ballot, as opposed to 10 Republican.

Layman cited Missouri, Virginia and Florida as examples of states where Democrats are trying to cling to a Senate seat despite tough opposition from Republican candidates. Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri and Sen. Bill Nelson in Florida are both Democratic incumbents trying to keep their jobs, while the Virginia seat is open to new challengers from both parties after the retirement of incumbent Sen. Jim Webb.

“A lot of those seats that the Democrats have to defend, a fair number of them are in red states or at least states where the Republicans are very competitive,” Layman said.

Political science professor Peri Arnold also pointed to close races in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Even Indiana, traditionally a Republican state, has become a more spirited battle this year.

“The fact that Indiana is contentious is a signal that the Republicans are doing less well than they expected to do originally,” Arnold said.

As they make their decisions, voters’ concerns in the Senate races mirror the most important issues in the presidential race, Arnold said.

“They’re worried about the economy and economic growth and jobs … so that’s a major pitch, saying, ‘Vote for me, I’ll contribute to a better economy,’” he said. “It isn’t like elections are rifle shots, one issue, one concern. But certainly the economy creates a climate.”

Layman also said the economy was the most important issue for voters in 2012. However, he said some states have seen other significant conversations come up in debate.

“The feasibility of national health care and sort of the size and role of the federal government have been the big issues,” he said. “Then in a couple of key races like Missouri and Indiana, abortion has unexpectedly reared its ugly head.”

Dr. Jill Biden, Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards talked to student reporters and laid out the reasons Obama should be reelected.

Biden, who teaches English and writing at a community college in northern Virginia, began by telling students Obama is committed to making higher education affordable.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last few years,” Biden said. “Thanks to President Obama’s investment in higher education, the price families and students pay for college is actually lower today than it was five years ago.”

Cutter said Obama has ensured there is a stronger economy waiting for students when they graduate, one that has created more than five million jobs in the last 30 months.

Biden also highlighted Obama’s other accomplishments while in office. She reminded the students Obama ended the Iraq War, repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, passed health care reform and brought the unemployment rate to its lowest level since the 2008 election.

Biden said this shows Obama “has kept his promise to the American people.”

Jeff Snow, chair of the U. Wisconsin College Republicans, said he disagreed with Biden’s comments.

He said he believes her statement is too vague to be accurate, and he also questioned whether some of Obama’s promises were actually kept, as the nation still has a high unemployment rate.

He also contrasted Obama’s record and jobs plan with his Republican opponent’s, former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.

“It’s clear Obama has no idea how to create jobs,” Snow said. “Mitt Romney has been in the private sector. He knows what to do. He has a five-point plan which will create 12 million jobs in his first term.”

Cutter also criticized Romney’s comments on the 47 percent of Americans and said Romney has had to be dishonest because of his real plan to favor the wealthy over the middle class. She said the public is aware of that, which has led to Romney being lower in the polls.

Snow countered that criticism by saying the Democrats are trying to divide the nation for political gain and are not focused on the country’s growth.

“Mitt Romney cares about 100 percent of America; his policies will help everybody,” Snow said. “They [the Democrats] are just engaged in class warfare, which makes for good politics, but not a good economy.”

Richards, the Planned Parenthood president, said Romney would work to cut funding for her group and opposes Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

She added Romney would repeal Obama’s health care reform law, which she said would get rid of a law’s provision that allows students to stay on their parents’ health care insurance until age 26.

Biden concluded by encouraging students to vote for Obama and her husband so the nation can continue to grow.

“We’ve come so far, and we need to keep moving forward,” Biden said. “We will keep fighting so everyone has a fair shot at building a better life for themselves, no matter who they are.”

As the world watches and waits for the results of the 2012 presidential election, Proposition 37 in California, which would mandate the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), has been largely ignored.

A quick rundown of statistics is startling: 88 percent of U.S. corn, 90 percent of canola, 90 percent of cotton and 94 percent of soy are genetically modified. This results in a supermarket where over 70 percent of the products contain GMOs.

That statistic is worth repeating: more than 70 percent of foods in the United States are genetically modified. The future has arrived, and it is all around us.

The science fiction began at Calgene, a biotech firm now owned by Monsanto, whose scientists opened the door to a new food and agricultural revolution. The Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s increased crop yields and expanded the industrialized the food system, fundamentally changing food at the molecular level.

Calgene created the Flavr Savr tomato, the first commercial GMO. This tomato unleashed a wave of genetic modification that has resulted in a food system dominated by GMOs.

GMOs have been designed to resist pesticides sprayed on fields, ironically allowing more to be sprayed, have longer shelf lives, be more tolerant to stress and even contain pesticides within the plant itself.

The benefits have been unparalleled food production in the U.S. The costs are an uncertain future of food and unintended consequences for both humans and the environment.

While there must be a separate argument about the effects of GMOs in relation to intellectual property, seed prices, health and the potential to form superweeds (which has already occurred), the discussion facing voters is far simpler.

If we understand food as a fundamental right to all people, the right to know what is in our food must also be accepted.

Fifty countries around the world, including Japan, India and China, already require the labeling of GMOs, and many of these countries restrict their use. The development of GMOs has the potential to be one of the greatest technological advances in food and agriculture in the 21st century.

However, the greatest problem regarding GMOs has been transparency. Monsanto and other large companies conduct their own studies on GMOs, limit the distribution of their data and results (because it is “proprietary”) and are ultimately left to regulate themselves. Large companies such as Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgroSciences, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kellogg and General Mills have combined to raise $47 million to fight Proposition 37.

The adage “you are what you eat” has taken on an entirely new meaning in the age of GMOs, and it is essential that products be labeled so that consumers know what exactly is in them. It is their right.

The billionaire casino mogul and host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” who explored a presidential run of his own earlier this year, spent the past several days teasing a revelation he implied would shake up the presidential election.

Wednesday, Trump finally let the cat out of the bag. In a video Trump posted on his Twitter and Facebook pages, he announced a “deal” he was offering President Barack Obama.

In exchange for President Obama releasing his college transcripts, college applications and passport application, Trump vowed to donate $5 million to any charity of Obama’s choosing.

This cheap publicity stunt was Trump’s big, earth-shattering surprise. That his announcement wasn’t a game-changer for the election is hardly shocking. Trump has made similar bombastic claims on numerous occasions, such as his recent teasing of something “huge” he had in store for the Republican National Convention. Unfortunately, Trump’s big surprise was scrapped when the RNC was shortened due to the weather. It turns out we were all going to be treated to a video of him telling an Obama impersonator that Obama was “fired.”

Trump was roundly mocked for his most recent announcement, which he hopes will vindicate his conspiratorial views that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and was a bad student who only attended elite universities because of Affirmative Action.

Of course, the birther claims have been refuted time and time again, and the notion that someone who became the president of the Harvard Law Review didn’t deserve to be admitted to Columbia and Harvard is laughable. But what else should we really be expecting from “The Donald”?

In light of this latest charade, The Daily Beast proposed a fantastic idea: Everyone should just ignore Trump.

This man is very obviously a delusional egomaniac who thrives on the attention he gets when he employs these ridiculous publicity stunts.

The Daily Beast is right. It’s time we all ignore him in the hopes that he’ll just go away.

This contradiction isn’t our fault—democracy just doesn’t always reward anticipation. Politicians are accountable to voters whose main concerns generally include how to feed their families and keep their jobs and houses. And it is this combination of preoccupied voters and cowardly lawmakers that has kept the U.S. from tackling climate change in any sort of comprehensive way.

It’s no surprise that a recent Gallup poll showed 72 percent of Americans thought the economy was today’s most important problem. A mere two percent saw pollution and the environment as the most important problem. Yet, the two problems are undoubtedly connected. MIT economist Henry Jacoby predicts, “People will pay…[for inaction on climate change] in taxes, energy prices, insurance premiums, disaster relief, food prices, water bills and changes to our environment that are hard to put a price tag on.”

We’re constantly flooded with startling facts about rising ocean levels and shrinking rainforests. To those who pay attention, climate change is clearly imminent, and it’s approaching the brink of irreversibility. Scientists predict a nearly complete lack of wild fish in oceans by 2050. At the beginning of his numerical rundown of the current state of the climate, activist and writer William E. McKibben grimly states, “I can say with some confidence that we’re losing the fight, badly and quickly—losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.”

Denial isn’t the only reason that the situation is stagnant—for those who are thinking short-term, there is a valid economic argument against cutting emissions. The fossil fuel sector certainly isn’t a small deal, and the world economy is invested in the future of drilling. Construction of the southern part of Keystone XL is already underway.

While economic hurdles block a smooth transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy, the carbon tax represents a potent economic solution. The Kennedy School’s Joseph Aldy showed his support for the carbon tax in his talk at Harvard Thinks Green 2 last week. A tax on carbon would de-incentivize the purchase of carbon and naturally force investment in alternative energies. It would provide the economic impetus currently lacking from the green movement.

Even conservative economist and policy advisor Greg Mankiw expressed his support of a world carbon tax in a 2007 New York Times op-ed, but he doubted that a carbon tax would make it through Washington. Mankiw wrote, “Republican consultants advise using the word ‘tax’ only if followed immediately by the word ‘cut.’ Democratic consultants recommend the word ‘tax’ be followed by ‘on the rich.’”

It would simply be political suicide for a Republican to support a new tax of any kind, and Democrats are too busy trying to get rid of tax breaks for the rich that suggesting a carbon tax right now might very well be too much. Yet, logical thinking would demand that our lawmakers push aside all of those political fears for the sake of doing something that makes pure and total sense.

China’s Communist Party recently released its new five-year plan, a strategic move that will end up investing $315 billion in measures for energy efficiency. And because of the one-party system, China can afford to be aggressive in the way it pursues its alternative energy goals. The National Energy Commission has asked each province in China to provide a plan for increased solar energy use by October 15. China remains the world’s largest coal consumer, but these steps represent a significant effort to reduce emissions. The United States is the world’s largest consumer of oil, but political polarization and corporate influence would block any clean energy initiatives of a similar scale.

So while China’s alternative energy plans charge forward, the US is stuck with little to no political or economic push for sustainability.

This problem is not unique to the U.S., and it’s why very little has been done in the way of large international agreements. Recent climate discussions have all failed miserably—it’s as if every time someone mentions the words Kyoto, Cop10, or Rio+20, the environmental community emits a collective sigh of frustration.

Our markets are so interdependent that changes in energy consumption have global effects, and therefore countries must tackle the issue through a combination of domestic policies and international cooperation. The U.S. could help shape the international debate on climate change, but it chooses not to because U.S. citizens have yet to demand the discussion.

Our government spends billions of dollars each year on defense. We stockpile more weapons than we will ever use. But the prospect of entire countries being submerged under water as a result of large scale flooding is in many ways equally as scary as a nuclear Iran. And just like our founding fathers were worried about the political freedoms of every generation to come, should we not be intensely concerned about the safety and welfare of our future generations? And should we not demand from our representatives that same view?

There is no question that Ohio, and Toledo in particular, could decide the election, and both campaigns are well aware of the stakes. Both campaigns, as well as allied interest groups, have spent or reserved around $950 million on television ads in the state.

Though the Romney groups have accumulated an approximately $100 million advantage over Obama’s groups, Obama looks to have a slight edge in the state, with an average lead of 1.9 points, according to Real Clear Politics.

Obama visited Ohio on Tuesday, making it his 17th trip to the state this year. The president has visited Ohio more than any other state this election cycle, and Romney has a number of planned trips to the state in the coming two weeks.

The economy remains a paramount issue in the state, and has remained a theme in campaign appearances by all candidates.

In his speech, Biden delineated the clear vision of the Obama administration for alleviating social issues and aiding the middle class before a crowd of about 1,500 attendees.

Biden talked about job outsourcing, and distinguished between the two presidential candidates on the issue, noting that while Romney emphasizes a difference between “off-shoring” and “outsourcing,” he and Obama see both as taking jobs away from Americans.

“The president’s job is to bring jobs home; the president’s job is to create jobs here,” Biden said.

He emphasized the need for Americans to stand for what they believe in and vote in a way that reflects what they want, adding that there should be a heavier focus on the middle class and a concerted effort to continue creating jobs.

Biden said Romney and Ryan have not publicly addressed their thoughts on how to ensure economic success for the middle class well enough.

“Instead of signing a pledge … promising that they’ll cut taxes for the very wealthy, they should be signing a pledge to you, the middle class, saying that they’ll level the playing field,” he said. “That’s the pledge we wrote — that’s why we’re running.”

He noted that he and Obama have already started develop a plan to create new manufacturing jobs and double the country’s exports.

“We’re going to give tax breaks to companies who stay here and come here — not those who go abroad,” Biden said. “We’re going to develop home-grown energy.”

If re-elected, he explained that he and Obama foresee an increase in coal, oil and natural gas generated domestically, as well as solar power energy and biofuel. Noting that the administration plans to create 600,000 jobs solely in natural gas production.

Guyton Mathews, a U. Toledo junior studying political science and communications, was chosen to address the audience before Biden took the stage. In an interview after the event, he said he was glad to see that the vice president addressed some of his primary concerns — affordable education and women’s rights.

Mathews added that with the help of supporters like Biden, the Obama administration can secure Ohio’s support.

“If they just keep at it the way they’re doing it now, (Obama will) definitely get Ohio,” he said.

Mathews was one of many Ohioans to take advantage of early voting, which began in late September.

“It’s a lot more convenient,” he said. “We have classes so sometimes it’s not as easy to get out to the polls.”

Deonte Howard, a U. Toledo junior studying social work, also voted early. Howard explained that because he has cerebral palsy, it is hard for him to stand in line or walk long distances.

“Early voting gives me the opportunity to (vote) at a slower pace so I won’t be tired on Election Day,” he said.

Howard added he thinks Biden’s speech “hit home” for the college students in attendance.

“I feel like Biden coming down … is showing that they do care about us,” Howard said. “We are willing to put in our vote and I appreciate the fact that they acknowledge that.”

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and vice presidential candidate Cheri Honkala were arrested Oct. 16, the night of the second presidential debate.

Complying peacefully, they were charged with disorderly conduct after they were refused entry into Hofstra U., the location of the debate.

Stein and Honkala are the predominate Green Party candidates who show up on 85 percent of the nation’s ballot, including Iowa. After the Commission on Presidential Debates disallowed them from participating in the events, Stein and Honkala protested by sitting outside the debate hall with an American flag, surrounded by police officers preventing them from entering the facility.

Jailed for more than eight hours, the candidate’s campaign manager Ben Manski said: “The arrest was outrageous and shouldn’t be tolerated in a country that is a leading proponent of democracy. … They knew that there was the possibility that they would be arrested. Their intention was to enter the premises and bear witness to the mockery of democracy that is tonight’s debate.”

Many might argue that Stein’s behavior, especially as a presidential candidate, was of slightly too high intensity. Fair enough. That same kind of pacifistic mentality strips everything it means to be a democracy. I would like to note that when Stein debated Romney in Massachusetts in 2002, the Boston Globe claimed “[Stein] was the only adult in the room”.

Larry King has decided to be a moderator for a live-stream debate in Chicago for minor-party presidential candidates at 7 p.m. CT this Tuesday on Ora.tv/ora2012/thirdparty. The debate includes: Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson; Green Party, Jill Stein; Constitution Party, Virgil Goode; Justice Party, Rocky Anderson.

Larry King made it clear none of them will win, going on to say: “They have a story to tell. It’s a valid story. It’s a two-party system, but not a two-party system by law.” The debate is organized by the Free and Equal Elections Foundation.

To go back to Manski’s remark about “mockery of democracy,” there seems to be a very legal but very shady way our debates are organized. Here’s a not so well known secret: The Commission on Presidential Debates is actually a private corporation.

You heard that right. All the presidential elections you’ve seen televised since 1987 are formed and run by the Democratic Party and Republican Party. The commission is technically “nonprofit,” but the money comes from contributions of various foundations and corporations. And when a corporation has money flow and is under the control of the Republican and Democratic national committees, it becomes quite apparent nobody is going to devote attention or resources to a third party of any kind.

In 2000, Ralph Nader filed a lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates, which cited a monetary favor to the Republican and Democratic national committees and stated that was against the Federal Election Campaign Act. He lost the lawsuit on the basis he failed to provide enough evidence the commission was favoring or denying any party.

The commission has drawn outlash over the years, leading to protests at its headquarters and demanding of contact information being posted on its website. The list of allegations is endless.

In 2004, Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik were arrested for civil disobedience after ignoring the police request to not enter the presidential debate.

In 2008, the Center for Public Integrity found 93 percent of commission’s money came from just six donors, all of which were kept secret.

Just a month ago, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson filed a lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates for denying competition by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, a century old act that denies business from restraining competition in the market. Johnson asked the court to put a hold on all presidential debates until the lawsuit was completed or until all presidential candidates were allowed debate time by the commission and had the 270 electoral votes to win an election. That request was denied.

Do you notice a trend here?

Two active presidential candidates and three former presidential candidates in recent times have all protested both formally and informally for the right to a fair election process, and all have lost and/or been arrested.

Regardless of what the court finds in Johnson’s lawsuit and regardless of the likelihood of a third party getting elected, all parties that have a spot on an American presidential ballot should have the right to an equal and fair election process — what is this, a democracy?

As Romney spoke of the U.S. purpose in making “the world more peaceful,” and Obama spoke of “spreading our values,” both alluded to concepts of American diplomacy rooted in the zenith of the nation’s Golden Age.

While the U.S. is still largely considered the most powerful leader of the free world and does have a responsibility as a member of the global community to further peace and stability, the candidates seemed oblivious of the U.S. bearing in light of the economic recession that has plagued the nation in recent years.

The primary focus of the candidates’ thoughts in terms of international policy placed the U.S. as the standard-setter for international nation building, bringing “gender equality” and “civility” to the lump sum region of the Middle East and alluding to setting up puppet leaders in place of leaders deemed in opposition of U.S. values and democracy.

But gender equality remains an issue in the contiguous 50 states, with women earning between 55 cents and 87 cents per dollar that men earn, according to Slate. These issues must be addressed at home as well as abroad, and cannot be handled with credibility outside the U.S. until the standards in our own country are upped.

As Romney spoke of Russia and Obama expressed support for Israel, a point of hot-cold contention for him, the candidates did acknowledge the need for nation-building in the U.S. But they failed to address the weaknesses within the U.S. that they were quick to point out overseas.

While these values may have been ones all followed while the U.S. was at the peak of its economic height, it is no longer so, and building ties with countries and governments around the world and proving American credibility should be prioritized by each candidate as opposed to finding ways to expand the nation’s overseas defense presence.

As countries like China gain stronger economic footholds, the global power that is attached to diplomacy values will follow the money. Showing respect to our foreign allies and working in partnerships with them will go further than imposing our beliefs and values upon them and attempting to help create “civil societies.”

For the U.S. to maintain its status, it must focus on building credible, lasting and peaceful partnerships with allies rather than imposing values onothers.

The foreign policy debate focused on the Middle East, though both candidates managed to squeeze in rhetoric on some domestic issues and the strength of the American military.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News moderated the Monday night debate at Lynn U. in Florida, and it was broadcast on WHDH in Boston.

The first question from Schieffer focused on the death of an American ambassador in Libya after an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, a topic that has put Obama in the spotlight in previous debates.

Romney said the country is seeing a “pretty dramatic reversal” of the hopes the U.S. had for that region.

“We’ve seen in nation after nation a number of disturbing events,” Romney said, referring to the death of the Libyan ambassador as well as the killing of Syrian civilians by their own government.

Obama countered by defending his record as commander-in-chief.

“We ended the war in Iraq,” Obama said. “[We] refocused our attention on those who actually killed us on 9/11. And, as a consequence, al-Qaeda’s core leadership has been decimated.”

Obama said Romney’s foreign policy plan is “all over the map,” and lacks consistency, which is crucial on the world stage.

“You’ve got to be clear, both to our allies and our enemies, about where you stand and what you mean,” Obama said.

Throughout the debate, Romney made the point that the world needs more peace and it is America’s purpose to help make that happen.

“We want a peaceful planet,” Romney said. “We want people to be able to enjoy their lives and know they’re going to have a bright and prosperous future, not be at war. That’s our purpose.”

Romney attacked the Obama administration by saying the country needs a stronger economy to make this happen, and Romney could do that.

Romney said the former joint chief of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, agreed with him about the importance of a vibrant economy.

“Mullen said our debt is the biggest national security threat we face,” Romney said. “We have weakened our economy. We need a strong economy.”

Obama countered by saying that America is stronger now than when he entered office.

“Because we ended the war in Iraq, we were able to refocus our attention on not only the terrorist threat, but also beginning a transition process in Afghanistan,” he said.

Obama later attacked Romney, saying his policies are “wrong and reckless.”

When Schieffer asked about Romney’s military spending policies, Romney answered with the broader assertion that Obama has not been able to balance the budget and that he has experience that would allow him to do so.

“I went to the Olympics. That was out of balance,” Romney said. “And we got it on balance and made a success there.”

Romney said the Navy needs more ships and that the current Navy is the smallest the U.S. has had since 1917.

Obama said military spending has increased every year he has been in office, and said there are fewer ships than in 1916 because the nature of the military has changed.

“We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them,” Obama said. “We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

Both Obama and Romney agreed of the topic of Israeli relations, and said they would stand behind them if Israel were attacked.

“Israel is a true friend,” Obama said. “It is our greatest ally in the region. And if Israel is attacked, America will stand with Israel. I’ve made that clear throughout my presidency.”

The comment that Israel is “our greatest ally” represents a slight shift for the president, who said in September on “60 Minutes” that Israel was “one of our closet allies in the region.”

Romney agreed with the president, and espoused support for Israel.

“We need to make sure as well that we coordinate this effort with our allies and particularly with Israel,” he said.

Romney pledged that by the end of 2014, troops would be home from Afghanistan if he were elected president, a policy shift from his previous view to consult with military leaders on the timetable out of the war.

“We’ve seen progress over the past several years,” he said. “The surge has been successful and the training program is proceeding at pace.”

Both candidates ended the debate with their closing statements, and Schieffer ended the debate with a quote from his mother.

“Go vote,” he said. “It’ll make you feel big and strong.”

A little over a year into his presidency, though, Barack Obama signed just such a mandate into law. That mandate became the center of his signature health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act.

The mandate was upheld by the Supreme Court, but Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that, while the Court found the mandate constitutional, it did not and cannot decide whether the mandate is good public policy.

As American citizens, it is our job to consider the consequences that come from the choices we make in elections. One consequence of the choice we make this presidential election year will be the impending enforcement of the ACA, which takes effect in 2014.

The ACA aims to increase health insurance coverage in the United States primarily by shifting health care costs from older Americans to younger Americans and from willing insurance purchasers to taxpayers. It does this by requiring all Americans to purchase a government-approved health plan, regardless of their age or health status, and by raising taxes on everything from medical devices to tanning beds.

To the extent that the health law reduces costs for some, it increases them for others, while rerouting a substantial amount of money through government programs. The law will increase government spending by more than a trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

That cost will be covered by the government, already sinking under the weight of existing entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

President Obama should have stuck to his original position on the health insurance mandate and pursued reforms to make health care more affordable. As the president went on to say in that same 2008 interview, “The reason they don’t have a house is they don’t have the money. And so our focus has been on reducing costs.”

Mitt Romney has a health care plan that really would focus on reducing costs. He has promised to start by repealing the ACA and then working on smarter reforms to spur choice and competition in the health care market. Those reforms include equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance benefits, creating a national market for health insurance by allowing plans to be sold across state lines, and finally reigning in frivolous lawsuits that are raising costs for every patient.

Romney’s goal is to give power back to states and individuals so they can decide on their needs instead of creating comprehensive universal health care without individual considerations. This will allow both state governments and consumers to have more flexibility with their plans.

This election gives voters a distinct choice between the government-driven approach President Obama has taken toward health care reform, embodied by the costly and intrusive ACA, and the patient-centered choice Gov. Romney has proposed.

The results of Romney’s health care reform plan will be a system with more choice, more competition and lower cost.

In the evening before the final presidential debate, Karl Rove—political analyst and former senior advisor to former President George W. Bush—debated Howard Dean—former governor of Vermont and former Democratic National Committee Chairman—on the effects of the 2012 Presidential Election on America’s role in global politics in a fully packed Page Auditorium.

Rove had originally been slated to debate Robert Gibbs, President Barack Obama’s campaign advisor and former White House Press Secretary, but because Gibbs was unable to attend, Dean replaced him.

Moderating the debate was political science professor Peter Feaver, director of the American Grand Strategy program, which sponsored the event. Feaver joked that, had they not gotten Dean to fill in last minute, he would have had to “pull a Clint Eastwood” and have Rove debate an empty chair.

Unlike the night’s more pugnacious presidential debate, Rove and Dean’s camaraderie and banter caused their debate to resemble a conversation between friends with opposing political viewpoints. When Feaver asked Rove and Dean to introduce each other, for example, both debaters plied one another with backhanded compliments.

During Rove’s introduction, he poked fun about various moments throughout Dean’s political career. Rove described how Dean supported Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 “and then went downhill from there.” He also joked about a later Democratic Convention in which Dean “drank with Kennedy people but voted with the Carter people.”

Despite these comments, Rove sincerely commended Dean for being a “fervent advocate for the things he believes in” and for his long service as governor of Vermont.

Keeping with the friendly tone of the conversation, Dean praised Rove as the “leading political mind” of the Republican party.

“I know, because I’ve been fighting them for my entire life,” he said. Dean also mocked a recent loss by the University of Texas football team, from Rove’s long-time home state.

“In Vermont, we’re fiscal conservatives, we don’t have a football program,” Dean said.

Following this exchange, Rove whipped out an electric screwdriver, revved it and made a pun about “drilling into the issues.”

The two men then went on to tackle more substantive matters of foreign policy and national politics. They offered nuanced personal positions on issues abroad, each point backed with specific examples and did not always follow their party’s ideologies—they both praised and admonished Obama’s foreign policy record to varying degrees.

One hotly debated issue involved American military involvement abroad. Rove advocated the value of “boots on the ground,” whereas Dean argued that troops should be pulled out of countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan because “the new version of war is different.”

For instance, Dean noted how the current battle against jihadists was fought largely by drones in northwest Pakistan. Rove volleyed back that if the United States did not maintain bases around the world, it would not be able to launch such drone attacks where needed. The two continued to discuss specific policy topics, including relations with China, U.S. interventionism and political divisiveness.

Freshman Tyler Fredricks liked that Rove and Dean talked about topics of foreign policy that are not part of the usual political discussion.

“Usually they focus on Iraq, Iran or the E.U, but they talked about other countries such as Somalia and Kenya,” he said.

He also added that he wished they had talked about Israel, citing his Jewish heritage.

On the topic of national politics, the two men supported their political parties but were not belligerent. When Rove and Dean were asked about bipartisanship, Rove joked about his reputation as a Republican partisan.

“I’m Satan. I’m responsible for all the bad things,” Rove said to audience laughter.

Dean criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for changing positions too much and said that the “ace in the hole” of the Obama campaign was its grassroots voter turnout organization. Rove critiqued Obama for lacking a coherent message and strategy.

Although both Dean and Rove agreed that the race will be extremely close, each made the case that their party’s candidate would win. Both candidates rattled off the names of swing states with ease and Rove produced a little sheet that he wrote up every morning detailing new poll numbers and recited them.

Senior Erin Sweeney, an American Grand Strategy student coordinator who helped advertise the event, was happy with the debate’s turnout and the course of the conversation.

“It was really interesting how Karl Rove was very pro-Romney and Dean was less pro-Obama,” she said.

The debate ended with Rove revving his screwdriver and a standing ovation for the two men from the crowd.

This debate provided the candidates with the opportunity to finally discuss issues, such as the ongoing war in Afghanistan, which have not been extensively debated this election season.

It was also the last chance for the two candidates to attack one another in person, and both President Obama and Gov. Romney attempted to make the most of this opportunity.

Despite the fact the partisan pundit-led discussion on the broadcast networks will undoubtedly focus its attention on these rhetorical jabs for the coming days, it is important to note that there were, in fact, some important takeaways from this debate.

The most compelling of these is that, despite what the candidates and their surrogates claim, the differences between President Obama’s policies and Gov. Romney’s proposals on most foreign policy issues are very hard to discern, if not altogether nonexistent.

On Syria, where a brutal dictatorship headed by Bashar Al-Assad continues to massacre its own people, both candidates expressed their support for the opposition without committing to getting involved in the conflict militarily.

On Iran, both candidates stressed that they will do everything they can, presumably including taking military action, to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Both candidates endorsed Obama’s surge of troops into Afghanistan, which cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars without substantially improving the situation on the ground.

Both Obama and Romney also seemed to be on the same page concerning the U.S. response to the Arab Spring, with Romney agreeing that turning against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and joining the NATO coalition to oust the late Libyan strongman Moammar Ghadafi were both the right courses of action.

Of course, neither candidate or political party will acknowledge these similarities, and the two argued over subtle rhetorical differences, such as Romney’s designation of Russia as our greatest geopolitical foe and Obama’s so-called “apology tour.” But the reality is, the two candidates do not differ substantially when it comes to most foreign policy issues.

What this means for voters is that they should make an extra effort to understand the two different visions Obama and Romney have when it comes to domestic policy, as this is an area where there are substantial differences.

With only two weeks until Election Day and early voting underway in many states, it’s time for America to finally make its decision. Based on this debate, it doesn’t seem to have much of a choice when it comes to foreign policy.

Much press and controversy has surrounded the rise of shale gas drilling, particularly in Pennsylvania and New York. Nevertheless, natural gas as an energy source provides substantial benefits, both geopolitical and environmental, that cannot be ignored. As the United States seeks to move towards a more sustainable and stable energy future, the crucial role of shale gas development has become readily apparent. Still, much of the critical discourse necessary to formulate sound policy has been obscured by partisan inertia on the national level and deep division on the local level, as well as substantial yet hyperbolic media coverage.

The Argument for Natural Gas

Carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have dropped off precipitously in the past few years, an unpredicted new development largely attributed to the availability of inexpensive natural gas—the exponential growth of drilling in the Marcellus and other shale formations has more than halved its cost.

Natural gas is often touted as a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional fossil fuels such as oil and coal. John Hanger, the former secretary of PADEP, told the HPR in a recent interview, “Over fifty-five percent of our energy comes from coal and oil, both of which cause infinitely more harmful environmental impacts that [natural] gas ever could or ever will.” According to the EPA, natural gas-fired power plants emit half the carbon dioxide, a third of the nitrogen oxides, and 1 percent of the sulfur oxides produced by coal-fired plants, while also avoiding the heavy metal-laden waste associated with coal.

As the cost of natural gas extraction has fallen drastically in the past few years, it has become the fuel of choice for many industries. Many are optimistic about the role natural gas has to play in shaping a cleaner energy future; among them is Seamus McGraw, author of The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone, who noted in a recent interview with the HPR, “[T]he risks associated with natural gas are profound and it is still a fossil fuel and a source of carbon and other pollution… but [shale gas drilling] has reduced as a result our dependency on the single dirtiest, deadliest form of energy there is.” 

Shale formations span the length of the Eastern seaboard, covering most of upstate New York, western and central Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, extending as far south as Mississippi and Alabama. Other shale formations include the Barnett Shale in Texas and the Antrim in Michigan. The Marcellus shale formation alone contains gas reservoirs that Penn State University geosciences professor Terry Engelder has conservatively estimated to contain 168 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas—five and a half times what the United States currently produces in a year. Shale gas drilling has already almost singlehandedly reduced the cost of natural gas by fifty percent, making it an increasingly attractive energy option.

As the United States tries to reduce its carbon emissions to curb global warming, many proponents of shale gas drilling have touted natural gas as a cost-effective bridge fuel to a renewable energy economy. Estimates of recoverable natural gas in shale formations predict no more than a century’s worth of natural gas, at current usage rates. Even supporters of shale gas development acknowledge that it can only be a temporary fix. “We don’t have a hundred years,” McGraw asserts. “If we’re still burning [natural gas] in thirty years, we’re screwed.”

Frack No: The Shale Gas Story in New York and Pennsylvania

The past five years have seen the rise of shale gas drilling from novel application to industry bulwark. According to the Energy Information Administration, shale gas’s share of the domestic natural gas market has risen from 1 percent in the year 2000 to almost 20 percent in 2010. Along with its meteoric rise has come a vociferous and diverse public response.

Towns like Dimock in northeastern Pennsylvania have become a flashpoint for the shale gas controversy. Tensions between neighbors run high, with Dimock resident Anne Teel telling NPR’s StateImpact, “I don’t like to go to the grocery store and have neighbors who won’t say hello to me. That’s not the way I live. But that’s unfortunately what’s happened because of this.” Virulent anti-fracking sentiment has led to enormous pressure on local and state governments to respond quickly to new developments in drilling technology, but regulation has by its nature remained several steps behind each new advancement.

Hundreds of townships, however, have taken legal action in the courts and through zoning restrictions to block the construction of drill sites and recoup damages from contaminated water and air. “Since the oil and gas industries are largely exempt from any uniform federal level of regulation … and it’s largely up to the states to regulate oil and gas activity,” Tony Ingraffea, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, told the HPR, “the people of New York have seen what’s happened in Pennsylvania, and [townships are] not confident that the New York DEC can do any better of a job at this point than the Pennsylvania DEP.”

Shale gas drilling in New York and Pennsylvania has developed along radically different lines—whereas the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to finish what has become a five-year long review of shale gas drilling in the state, Pennsylvania has almost 9000 unconventional gas wells on the books as of this June and approves dozens more drill sites on a monthly basis.

With almost one-third of land in the state of Pennsylvania under lease to drilling companies, the potential impacts of drilling in the state are astronomical. “Over the next few decades, there will be hundreds of thousands of wells, tens of thousands of miles of pipelines, tens of thousands of miles of roads, that will spin like a spider web across the state…and we don’t know what the cumulative impacts of that will be,” John Quigley, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, told the HPR.

The Road Forward

The EPA, for all of its efforts, has been hobbled by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempted oil and gas companies from many provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thus from EPA jurisdiction. Legislation at the federal level to mandate the disclosure of lists of fracking chemicals was first introduced in both the House and Senate in 2009, but has yet to move out of committee. Both presidential candidates appear to have given fracking a pass in this election cycle: while Romney lambasted Obama in an April campaign stop in Tunkhannock, Pa. for delaying natural gas development with overregulation, the Obama campaign has touted the increase in natural gas development as an integral part of the President’s “all-of-the-above” energy strategy.

Environmental groups remain hopeful that the citizen outcry will result in action on a national level. Some have compared the current debate over shale gas drilling to the debate over pesticides in the 1970s. “There wasn’t action at the federal level, so communities started taking action for themselves—they created buffer zones, they outright banned certain pesticides … and we eventually saw action at the federal level,” Kathleen Sutcliffe, a campaign manager at Earthjustice, told the HPR.

PADEP has introduced a whole host of new regulations on water usage and water waste disposal in the past few years, and the New York State DEC is currently considering the public health effects of shale gas drilling before releasing an environmental impact statement, but the regulatory process remains slow. Longitudinal studies on long-term impacts of shale gas drilling are scarce, and Geisinger Health System, a healthcare provider in Pennsylvania, is beginning one of the first of such studies this year. “We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of the past,” Quigley said. “The way forward is with good regulation, good industry practice, and good science.”

The shale gas narrative has unfolded along the traditional paths of industry and environment, citizens and corporations. From media to policy, the debate over fracking is a microcosm of the paralysis and polarization plaguing our politics writ large. Whatever the best path forward may be, what is certain is that our action—or inaction—on shale gas will define the world’s energy and environmental future for decades to come.

This is Obama’s sixth visit since being a presidential candidate in 2008 and his second visit within two weeks at Mason. Obama has frequently visited the swing state of Virginia and is heavily focusing on the Commonwealth voters because of new polls that put Romney and Obama neck and neck.

Friday’s speech was advertised by the Obama campaign to be a rally focusing on women’s rights. While this issue was very prevalent, Obama spent a large portion of his speech criticizing some of the comments made by Romney in Tuesday’s presidential debate.

“Virginia, you have heard of the New Deal, you have heard of the Square Deal, the Fair Deal; Mitt Romney’s trying to give you a sketchy deal,” said Obama as he referred to Romney’s economic plan. Obama called the plan a “one-point plan” instead of a five-point plan, because people in the upper class would be allowed to play by a “different set of rules.”

Obama also introduced a new attack line on his opponent, calling Romney’s change of stances a case of “Romnesia.”

“He’s changing up so much…we gotta name this condition that he’s going through. I think it’s called ‘Romnesia,’” Obama said. “Now, I’m not a medical doctor, but I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you, because I want to make sure nobody else catches it.”

Some of the areas of concern that Obama saw as symptoms of “Romnesia” included Romney’s change of stance on equal pay for equal work, contraceptive availability, employer ability to deny care and tax cuts for the top one percent.

“If you come down with a case of ‘Romnesia’ and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website or the promises that you have made over the six years you’ve been running for president, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions! We can fix you up! We’ve got a cure! We can make you well, Virginia!” Obama said.

The rally, which was attended by an estimated 9,000 people, transformed the RAC Field. People stood on the field as they watched Obama speak from a podium flanked by signs that read “women’s health security.”

Prior to Obama’s speech, Democrat Congressman Gerry Connolly spoke about why he was supporting Obama. “Remember, when you talk to your neighbors about why you’re campaigning for Obama…we’re doing it for our daughters,” Connolly said.

Others to take the stage before the president’s speech include Terri Riley, a member of Obama For America; Nan Johnson, a retired school counselor; and Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Obama spent some of his time speaking about women’s rights, as a crowd of women stood in the risers behind him and served as the backdrop to his speech.

In his discussion of women’s rights, Obama emphasized a woman’s right to decide how to take care of her body, specifically mentioning how Obamacare allows for this freedom.

“This law [the Affordable Care Act] has secured new access to preventive care like mammograms and other cancer screenings for more than 20 million women with no co-pay, no deductible, no out-of-pocket cost,” said Obama, “because I do not believe a working mother should have to put off a mammogram because money’s tight.”

Obama mentioned the point in Tuesday’s primary debate when Romney spoke about hiring women to his cabinet as governor of Massachusetts.

“When the next president and Congress could tip the balance of the highest court in the land in a way that turns back the clock for women and families for decades to come, you don’t want someone who needs to ask for ‘binders of women,’” Obama said.

The president concluded his speech at Mason by rallying the crowd and emphasizing the importance of equality and hard work, attempting to drive his message home with 18 days remaining before Election Day.

“We are a country in which everybody has a place,” Obama said. “A country where no matter where you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, gay, straight, abled, disabled, we have a place for everybody. Everybody’s got a chance to make it if you try!”

This Monday in Florida, Obama and Romney will face off for the last time before November 6 in the third presidential debate, which will air at 9 p.m.

No, it is not the wording of Romney’s comments that offends, but the fact that he and Obama feel the need to pander to women.

Whether the topic is jobs or contraception, what makes a group of bureaucratic men, largely removed from public life, qualified to preach about issues they perceive to be important to women?

The answer is simple — nothing. No matter how many qualified female advisers, found in binders or otherwise, they have doing policy analysis and advising them, they can’t really know.

Which is why politicians should campaign on principal-driven policies, rather than pigeonhole the American electorate into neat little subgroups based on race, gender and income level. In short, your desire to court my vote should be driven by the areas where my individual ideals and principles coincide with yours. To do otherwise is inherently sexist and fails to take into account the diversity of women’s interests. News flash, politicians — women as a voting block do not possess a collective brain. We have different priorities, influenced by our individual thoughts and experiences.

Most Americans, and women in particular, are intelligent enough to extrapolate the impact the goals of federal policy will have on their lives. If they like what they perceive to be the implications toward them personally, they’ll vote for a candidate. If not, they’ll apply the same rational process to the stated goals of the other candidate.

It’s the only way to end this ridiculous “malarkey,” to borrow a phrase from Vice President Joe Biden, about one party wanting to take away women’s health care choices. This fear mongering is not only downright asinine, but ought to be extremely offensive to any self-sufficient woman.

Excuse me if I don’t define myself by whether or not I have access to “free” contraception, or go running to the federal government to solve my problems. Are we really going to allow others to dictate how we should act or feel about these personal issues? And what exactly about this follows the “feminist” doctrine of strength and independence?

And the same principle applies to subdividing voters by race or income level. Are we really going to let anyone besides ourselves frame how we should think about issues that affect us? That’s not individualism. It’s some bizarre form of collectivism, and it’s a perversion of the underlying foundation of American government — personal sovereignty.

Essentially, this means that because we’re individuals with unique experiences and viewpoints, no one but us can know what’s in our best interests. That’s why government is limited and ultimately answerable to the people.

This is precisely why candidates for public office should run on ideals, not this degrading groveling toward the perceived priorities of narrowly defined groups of voters. As individuals, we can’t truly understand the thought processes of others because we do not share the same experiences or influences. But we can all understand overarching ideas, and their applicability to our own lives. In the end, that’s what America boils down to — principles. So, when we perform our greatest civic duty, voting, shouldn’t it be based on this, not the divisiveness of political pandering?

As Election Day nears, don’t worry about trying to understand every issue the candidates discuss. Instead, look at the effects of those ideas. There are so many issues that come up in the presidential race and it is next to impossible for voters to be knowledgeable about all of them.

It is possible for voters to look at the candidates’ stance about the appropriate size of government and from there make a reasonable decision of who to vote for. For example, the debate about clean coal actually boils down to a debate about the size of government.

But what actually is clean coal and why are we hearing about it?

I watched the first presidential debate Oct. 3, with my roommates who major in chemistry and environmental science. At a comment made about clean coal, they burst out laughing, saying there was no such thing. Also, this term has made its way into political ads. So I decided to look into it a little more.

In the presidential race, we have seen two distinct opinions develop.

President Barack Obama believes in the investment in green energy. In the past four years, Obama has won more than $10 billion in private investments toward green energy. He plans to promote research and investment in green energy, including clean coal technology, and regulations on harmful energy production.

This belief calls for the federal government to take responsibility. This is consistent with his stances on other issues, such as healthcare, jobs and education.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney does not go into detail about clean coal on his website. But he believes that energy production should be able to control energy production, and it should be certified by federal agencies, but led by individual states. This means that each state could decide how clean its energy is.

This side calls for the federal government to play a more limited role, and for the states to play a larger role. This is consistent with his stances on Medicare and education.

Regardless of who you believe should be responsible for the future of this technology, the federal or state government, clean coal could be a very important technology to the future of the production of energy in America. It is something that people should be aware of, especially in a state that promotes their interest in green energy.

The term “clean coal” was created by R&R Partners. These are the people who brought us the popular “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” slogan. Big companies, such as Duke Power, Peabody Energy and BHP Billiton, latched onto this term by producing a multi-million dollar campaign. They spent $35 million in 2008 alone.

The term “clean coal” refers to the technology used to limit the environmental effects of coal.

Coal as an energy source is very important. The International Energy Agency estimated that 70 percent of the energy used between now and 2050 will come from fossil fuels, such as coal. It is also known as the dirtiest form of fossil fuel energy.

When burning coal for energy, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are released into the atmosphere. These chemicals can cause acid rain, water pollution and human health problems.

There are five types of clean coal technology that stand out: coal washing, wet scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, gasification, and carbon capture and storage. These technologies use a variety of methods, but one common factor is that each of these technologies is very expensive. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that carbon capture and storage could add between 50 to 100 percent to coal energy costs, an increase that many companies and Americans are uncomfortable with.

This presents a valid business concern, but it is also a valid demand. If we know the source of multiple problems, shouldn’t a solution be demanded? The use of coal is causing serious harm to our health and environment; therefore it is not out of line for the government (or anybody) to demand an alternative or at least a reduction.

Also, data from demonstration storage projects will not be available until 2013. This means construction on the first carbon capture and storage  plants will not start until at least 2020, which means there is plenty of time to debate about which type of technology will be the most practical and create an effective plan.

As Election Day draws near, look at the stances each candidate takes and then think about what the implications of those stances will look like for our nation. Then you will make an informed decision.

Dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service Carol Lancaster introduced Clinton, calling her a “Hoya by marriage” and lauding her years of work in government.

“Secretary Clinton has come to embody the Georgetown spirit of public service,” Lancaster said.

Clinton began her talk by outlining the impact of energy concerns on international affairs, saying that the issue is at the core of geopolitics, economic growth and global development.

“Fundamentally, energy is a source of wealth and power, which means it can be both a source of conflict and cooperation,” she said. “Energy cuts across the entirety of U.S. foreign policy.”

She also detailed the Obama administration’s recent initiatives to develop a more progressive and independent energy policy.

“Many Americans don’t yet realize the gains that the United States has made,” she said, citing increased use of wind, solar and natural gas and the implementation of new automobile fuel efficiency standards.

“We are less reliant on imported energy, which strengthens our global economic and political standing,” she said. “The important thing to keep in mind is our country is not and cannot be an island when it comes to energy markets.”

Under Clinton’s leadership, the Department of State created a new Bureau of Energy Resources that orchestrates the department’s diplomatic efforts on energy.

“We did not have a team of experts dedicated full time to thinking creatively about how we can solve challenges and seize opportunities, and now we do,” Clinton said. “That … is a signal of a broader commitment on the part of the United States to lead in shaping the global energy future.”

Here, Clinton turned and pointed to the front row, where six Georgetown alumni who work in the bureau were sitting.

“That’s a shameless pitch for the Foreign Service and the State Department,” she said.

Clinton went on to explain the three pillars of the Department of State’s policies on energy: energy diplomacy, energy transformation and energy poverty. She cited the department’s efforts in Iran, Sudan and South Sudan, Iraq and the Arctic and said that the United States must play a role in preventing conflict over energy resources.

Clinton also spoke of the necessity of transitioning to cleaner energy sources, arguing that the United States has the knowledge and resources to promote green energy in other countries. She talked about a new initiative, “Connecting the Americas 2022,” that aims to provide universal access to electricity in the Americas within 10 years.

“Interconnection will help us get the most out of our region’s resources,” she said. “It really is a win-win-win in our opinion.”

In terms of energy poverty, Clinton detailed her administration’s efforts to promote transparency and equal access to energy in developing countries.

“Poor governance … is a key factor in energy poverty and political instability,” she said. “We need to ensure that energy resources don’t cause more suffering than good.”

Overall, Clinton promoted an active role for the United States in global energy issues.

“We have no choice. … We have to be involved,” she said. “The challenges I’ve outlined will only become more urgent in the years ahead … and all of us have a stake in the outcome.”

Matthew McManus, deputy director of public diplomacy and policy analysis in the Bureau of Energy Resources, shared how Georgetown should get involved in the conversation about sustainability.

“It is important for us to engage the next generation and to really have a debate about the best path forward for energy security, our planet and the environment,” he said.

Obama, who won handily among young voters in 2008 but has seen enthusiasm for his campaign wane this time around, leads former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney 55 percent to 36 percent among young people, the survey showed.

Obama’s lead among likely college voters, is significantly smaller, however, at 10 percentage points.

Even as the president remains popular among young people, excitement about the election among that group continues to dip. Though 67 percent of those surveyed said they were registered to vote, only 48 percent said they “definitely” plan to vote on Nov. 6. Among college students, only 63 percent of those surveyed said they are registered, compared to 79 percent in 2008. Only 48 percent said the “definitely” plan to cast a ballot on election day.

“Unfortunately I think we’re headed for a serious step back in participation and turnout,” said John Della Volpe, the IOP’s director of polling, who oversaw the survey. “We’re looking at 4-5 million fewer voters under 30 years old,” he added.

The reason, IOP Director C. M. Trey Grayson said, is that a growing number of young people are disillusioned by the stalemate in Congress and persistent weakness in the economy.

Forty-three percent of those surveyed agreed it does not matter who is elected in November, Washington is broken. Additionally, 31 percent agreed that neither of the candidates represent their views.

The IOP pollsters said this trend should be particularly troubling for Obama, who relied heavily on young people in 2008. While 52 percent of those surveyed said they think Obama will win re-election, Romney voters seem more committed to showing their support with 65 percent saying they will “definitely” vote compared to only 55 percent of Obama supporters who say they will “definitely” vote.

Despite their disillusionment with Washington, most in the survey still favor Obama’s policy stances.

The survey, which overlapped with the first presidential debate, showed young voters still trust Obama more than Romney on a number of issues from health care to foreign policy. Forty-seven percent of young voters also said they trust Obama more than they trust Romney to deal with the ailing economy, the area where Romney is generally perceived to be the strongest. Only 28 percent said they trust Romney more.

In evaluating the job Obama has done as president, 62 percent agreed that the problems he faced upon entering office are “so complex it takes more than 4 years to do the job.” Thirty-three percent disagreed, responding that “despite his best efforts, Obama has failed.”

The IOP survey, taken between Sept. 19 and Oct. 3, asked 2,123 18- to 29-year old U.S, citizens a range of questions about November’s presidential election and their political mood more generally. The survey has a 2.1-point margin of error.

A similar survey taken by the IOP in March, showed Obama leading Romney 51 percent to 34 percent overall.

In a phone call aired on state-run television around mid-evening during voting day, Chávez said these elections “will be a triumph for democracy” and asked that there be no violence.

However, all those familiar with Chávez and Venezuela know that there was nothing democratic about these elections; instead, they were riddled with corruption.

“Half of Venezuela is speechless,” engineer Alejandro Colmenarez, 32, told USA Today of the re-election of Chávez to a fourth term as president. “We were looking for something better after 14 years.”

Although there is no concrete evidence that corruption took place, there are indicators of Chávez’s unfair advantage.

Chávez’s opponent, Henrique Capriles, spoke against the re-elected president’s use of the country’s oil money as bribes to gain supporters in the form of “vote-buying” through giveaway programs targeted at the poor.

“The use of state oil funds for this kind of electioneering is driving Venezuela’s budget deficit for the year to the astounding level of 20 percent of GDP, an incredible figure for an oil-exporting economy at a time of very high oil prices,” Capriles said.

Chávez and his regime also control and manipulate the mass media in Venezuela, specifically the television system. Broadcasters covered hours of Chávez’s campaign trail but devoted limited coverage to Capriles’ campaign and events.

The Venezuelan government under Chávez also relies on a constant atmosphere of threats. Under Chávez, there have been high crime rates, and the police often do not provide protection but instead aid criminals.

Venezuela sits on the largest oil reserves in the world and is a major petroleum exporter to the United States. Despite this, Chávez’s problems with the U.S. are plentiful. Chávez is not only a supporter and admirer of Fidel Castro but is also allied with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He also often rails against the U.S. and its “imperialist allies.”

Other countries in South America are following his lead, promoting corruption, socialist democracy and an anti-U.S. sentiment.  In September, thousands of Argentines protested against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner due to corruption scandals, violent crime and her ever-tightening controls over the economy. Many Argentines fear the female populist president will do away with term limits and extend her rule due to her control of Congress.

As Americans, we have to pay attention to the lack of democracy and increased corruption in South America. While our relationship with Venezuela is rocky, our economic ties with them are important. With other South American powers following in Chávez’s footsteps, we can see possible long-term problems economically and in regards to foreign policy.

While South America is no Middle East, it cannot be ignored. We may find that our interest in the region is too little, too late.

The Marquette Law School Poll revealed President Barack Obama leads former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., 49 to 48 percent. In the Senate race, former Gov. Tommy Thompson is up 46 to 45 percent in his race against Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison. The margin of error is +/- 3.4 percentage points.

Interviews for the poll took place between Oct. 11 and 14, prior to the second presidential debate Thursday night.

The poll showed voters likely changed their minds after the first presidential debate, which was regarded by some as a loss for Obama. The 73 percent of likely voters who watched the debate supported Romney 50 to 48 percent, while the rest supported Obama 50 to 42 percent.

“Rarely has a debate produced such large movement in the polls,” poll director Charles Franklin said in a statement. “In September, President Obama held a steady lead, but now the race is a pure tossup, in large measure because of the first debate.”

The poll asked whether voters agreed with the statement that the candidate “cares about people like [them].” Obama’s numbers on that stayed about the same, with 59 percent saying he does care and 38 percent saying he does not. Romney saw “considerable improvement” with a 47-49 percent rating, up from the 39-56 rating he had two weeks ago.

Dietram Scheufele, U. Wisconsin life sciences communication professor, said perceptions of which candidate would win the elections are now shifting.

“Romney was able to build a lot of momentum among his followers and perceptions of momentum,” Scheufele said. “In [this] poll, Wisconsin is all of a sudden in play. This will be a hard-fought battle and among very clear fault lines.”

He said Tuesday’s debate, the second between both candidates, was a “very different” debate, noting the first was characterized by pundits on both sides as a loss by Obama.

In an email to The Badger Herald, Obama campaign spokesperson Gillian Morris said Obama’s “clear [and] balanced” solutions would ensure the president prevails over Romney in November.

“Wisconsin voters will support President Obama in November because they know he’s standing up for Wisconsin’s middle- class families, students and seniors,” Morris said.

UW College Republicans spokesperson Ryan Hughes said voters saw the “stark” contrast between Obama’s “failed policies” and Romney’s economic plan. He added the middle class is currently being “crushed” by Obama’s economic policies.

Obama’s favorable rating is 52 percent and Romney’s is 46 percent. However, neither candidate in the Senate race broke 40 percent. Baldwin’s rating is 32 percent favorable and 47 percent unfavorable, while Thompson’s is 37 percent favorable and 50 percent unfavorable.

Scheufele said the presidential race would likely decide who wins the Senate race, as undecided voters would probably vote for the same party in both races.

“We’ve already seen Senate debates between the two, and they have clearly established their profiles,” Schuefele said. “I think whoever is undecided at this point will be swayed by the presidential race and vote along party lines.”

There will be another debate between Senate candidates Thursday night.

Wages:

In 2008, President Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour. He planned to raise it to $9.50 an hour by 2011 and then raise it to compensate for inflation periodically. He has failed to take action on this promise since taking office and has not yet mentioned it in his 2012 campaign.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney originally favored raising the minimum wage as well and also favored adjusting it yearly for inflation. But Romney changed his mind after an outcry from supporters concerned about job losses and now has come out against raising the minimum wage at this time.

The president supported and signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gave women more freedom to sue over pay discrimination. Romney never has come out in support of equal pay and refuses to release his views on related legislation.

Wall Street regulation:

Obama signed the Dodd-Frank bill, an answer to the financial crisis designed to limit the risk in future recessions. This legislation provides for oversight on risks to the financial institutions most essential to the economy, consolidates regulatory organizations, creates a non-bankruptcy mechanism for the take-over of “too-big-to-fail” institutions and limits consumer financial fees, among other regulations.

Romney’s campaign website promises the candidate would “repeal Dodd-Frank and replace with streamlined, modern regulatory framework.” A more efficient regulatory system sounds nice, but Romney so far has offered few specifics on how this will be accomplished. No president should work to repeal a law before developing a workable replacement with some chance of passing Congress.

Outsourcing/foreign markets:

Romney has emphasized the need to go after China for currency manipulation, unfair trade practices and the violation of existing economic agreements. Obama largely agrees with this stance but has drawn criticism for not doing enough to protect America’s interests.

Obama’s website says he will eliminate tax breaks for companies that outsource and create incentives for businesses to bring jobs back to America.

His opponent has declared he would not support such an elimination of tax breaks. Romney also would eliminate taxes on profits American businesses earn on foreign soil. This could encourage business growth, as Romney claims, but it is just as likely to encourage businesses to favor foreign markets and move jobs overseas.

Other regulation:

The largest new set of regulations Obama has added fall under the unmbrella of health care reform. The Affordable Care Act forces insurance companies to provide more fair coverage to all Americans. Insurance companies no longer will be able to deny citizens policies on the basis of pre-existing conditions, charge exorbitant fees for medical services or cap the amount of coverage available to a person in the course of a year or in the course of his or her lifetime, among other restrictions.

Romney has vowed to repeal this law as quickly as possible, allowing states to waive its requirements in the meantime, though he has said he would keep some unspecified measures of the law.

The Republican candidate also has expressed support for a “regulatory cap of zero dollars on all federal agencies,” meaning federal agencies would not be able to pass any new regulations that have associated costs. This would indeed keep additional costs from being passed down to the consumer — Romney’s stated inspiration for the cap — but it also would tie the hands of agencies responsible for ensuring the educational quality, consumer safety and environmental health of this nation.

As Romney’s website puts it, this would restrict new regulations “no matter what the social benefits.”

The grades

Based on the candidates’ tax and spending plans and their views on these other economic issues, we have assigned each a letter grade for how well their position fulfill the goal of economic recovery.

Obama: B-

Though the president has weathered a difficult economic recession and done much to help soften the impact on citizens, he could stand to be more aggressive in his tax and spending reforms. And he has failed to give proper focus to some important issues connected to the economy.

Romney: I

We would give him a solid C for tax and spending plans that would achieve the desired result, but do so at too high a cost to consumers. However, considering the lack of specifics in his other stances related to the economy, we have to give him an incomplete until he does his homework.

While both President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney have given a few talking points about the need to reform and improve our education system, neither candidate has provided much substance or leadership on the issue. Education did come up in the first presidential debate; however, neither candidate said anything that indicated a willingness to make education reform a top priority of their administration. While Obama rightly supports more federal funding for schools, the nation’s education problems are much more complex than a simple financial shortfall. Real change and reform are needed in the way the U.S. delivers education.

Romney, unsurprisingly, has been equally silent on how he would make real reforms in order to get American education back on track. Outside of a jab at Big Bird and proposing to cut federal funding to PBS, it’s hard to tell how he differs from Obama on the role of the federal government in education. Should college students and school administrators expect less or perhaps more federal aid under a Romney administration? It’s almost impossible to know.

What is well-known is that neither presidential candidate is making education a focal point in their campaign, and neither is willing to provide much leadership on the issue. As Election Day draws near, voters should demand more clarity and substance from the candidates on what they plan to do to rebuild and improve America’s broken education system.

According to the Nobel Committee, the EU deserved the honor for having “over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Essentially, the committee deemed it appropriate to reward most of the members of an entire continent for behaving exactly as they should — for not attacking one another. Of course, many EU member states have engaged in some sort of armed conflict in the past six decades. But an undistinguished history of participation in international military operations is not enough to discredit the EU alone; after all, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and not the EU serves as the military coordinator for much of the continent. No, the Nobel Committee’s decision is flawed for two main reasons: It affords the shared ideals of the EU too much credit for the continuing peace on the continent, and it completely ignores the present-day quagmire in which the EU finds itself.

The idea that the European peace is a direct result of the liberal values shared throughout the continent is a nice one. This type of thinking appeals to our idealism as good Westerners and to our senses of democracy, freedom and fairness. But solely concentrating on the proliferation of liberalism as the cause for peace, as the Nobel Committee does, leaves a much more visceral factor out of the equation — the rather large United States military presence in Europe. From the end of World War II to the modern day, the United States has maintained significant amounts of personnel and equipment across the European continent. The explicit purpose of such an expensive and large force — approximately 90,000 men and women — is not to prevent, for example, France and Germany from attacking one another again. Rather, the preservation of such a presence grants the United States easier access to the Middle East and offers the military a better position from which to respond to emergency situations.

Regardless of U.S. intention, however, European states are the beneficiaries of such a security blanket. They have to worry less about providing for their own defenses and can concentrate funds and efforts on welfare programs or other potentially stabilizing projects. And of course, a large and capable American military presence is likely to deter an unfavorable balance of power from materializing in Europe — just in case, say, Germany started wondering about exactly how much it could flex its ever-growing muscles. So perhaps the Nobel Committee should have awarded the prize to the U.S. Army as a joint declaration for having “over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”

And of course, the EU as it exists now is in rather poor shape. Anyone not living under a rock is aware that the EU is still in the midst of a fiscal crisis that has been ongoing for several years. Less wealthy and less financially competent countries, such as Greece and Spain, have been forced by more wealthy and more financially competent countries, mainly Germany, to impose strict austerity measures on irate populaces, which have responded with protests that have at times devolved into violent riots. At this point, it is not unreasonable to state that the only glue holding the EU’s fiscal union together is German willingness to act as a bailout fund; nor is it unreasonable to assume that German tolerance and patience will eventually evaporate. If this happens and chaos results, the financial pact between EU nations will be abandoned, and the entire ideal of European unity will have been dealt a death blow.

The Nobel Committee is obviously well aware of the fragile state of the EU. Perhaps it felt that a Nobel Prize would do something for morale on the continent. But there were other, more deserving candidates. And how such an esteemed body could so blatantly ignore the harsh status quo of its chosen winner, in the form of current unrest and possibly impending pandemonium, is inexplicable.

Amidst the important issues discussed, the debate was characterized by a back-and-forth yet unseen in the 2012 Presidential Campaign. The jabs were promoted by the format used in Hempstead, N.Y., allowing both President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney to move about the space provided, and turn and face one another.

The debate opened with a question from 20-year-old Jeremy Epstein, a college student, who asked what the two candidates would do to help him land a job upon graduation. Romney said one of his goals as president would be to help young people — who have been struggling over the last four years — find jobs.

“The key thing is to make sure you can get a job when you get out of school,” Romney said. “And what’s happened over the last four years has been very, very hard for America’s young people.”

Obama said creating jobs for all Americans are one of many things he can do to ensure those like Epstein have a bright future.

“What I want to do, is build on the five million jobs that we’ve created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone,” Obama said. “And there are a bunch of things we can do to make sure your future is bright.”

From there, the debate spanned issues ranging from increasing gas prices, the economy, immigration, gun control and even the recent attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

The issues and questions asked by undecided voters in the audience gave a plethora of opportunities for the two candidates to turn and attack one another, whether it was Romney criticizing Obama’s administration or Obama questioning Romney’s proposed policies.

“He’s great as a speaker and describing his plans and his vision,” Romney said in reference to Obama. “[The record] shows he just hasn’t been able to cut the deficit, to put in place reforms for Medicare and Social Security to preserve them, to get us the rising incomes we need.”

Obama — such as others have done — questioned Romney on his plans to fix the economy. He referred to Romney’s responses during the last debate about cutting funding to “Big Bird and Planned Parenthood,” and included that Romney has yet to present a solid plan.

“If somebody came to you Governor, with a plan that said, ‘Here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, be we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it,’ you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal, and neither should you — the American people — because the math doesn’t add up,” Obama said.

The debate reached an emotional apex when audience member Kerry Ladka brought the focus on the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya, asking who was it that denied security that had been requested. It was here that Romney, attempting to inflict damage on his opponent, accused the President of dismissing the attack as not being a terrorist attack as he travelled to different charity functions. Obama responded out of personal offense.

“The suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. Ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive,” Obama said. “That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president, that’s not what I do as Commander-in-Chief.”

Students had the opportunity to watch the debate as the Wiley Lecture Series held another viewing party in Rev’s Diner. Sarah Armstrong, senior political science major and chair of Wiley, said it is one of the organization’s goals to make an event like this accessible to students because of the importance of their involvement.

“It’s up to our generation, and the students that are going through this election right now have the potential to either become very involved and knowledgeable,” Armstrong said. “Or they can continue going with that path of being the silent majority and not playing a crucial role in American politics.”

Students who watched the debate, such as Texas A&M U. freshman political science major Reid Geissen, said there was a noticeable change in Obama’s performance in response to a prepared Romney.

“Romney stayed on point with the same sharp attacks that he brought against Obama in the last debate,” Geissen said. “The only difference was that Obama did not take those attacks lying down as much.”

Joe Rodriguez, an A&M sophomore political science major, said that the winner of the debate — despite Obama’s improved performance — was Romney.

“I definitely think Obama was a better debater this time around,” Rodriguez said. “I would say Mitt Romney won the debate because if you look at his answers — though he interrupted a couple times — he knows what he is talking about.”

Candy Crowley of CNN’s “State of the Union” moderated the debate, which was held at Hofstra U.

The debate commenced with a question from Jeremy Epstein, a junior in college who asked what each candidate would do to make it possible for him to support himself after graduation.

“We have to make sure that we make it easier for kids to afford college,” Romney said. “and also make sure that when they get out of college, there’s a job.”

Obama echoed Romney’s rhetoric about making college affordable.

“We’ve got to make sure that we have the best education system in the world,” Obama said. “And the fact that you’re going to college is great, but I want everybody to get a great education, and we’ve worked hard to make sure that student loans are available for folks like you.”

Romney reminded viewers of the poor economy that still exists under Obama and said 23 million Americans are struggling to find jobs.

“The president’s policies have been exercised over the last four years, and they haven’t put Americans back to work,” Romney said. “We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office.”

Romney said that the recently released national unemployment rate of 7.8 percent, the first time it dipped below 8 percent in Obama’s presidency, did not account for all the people who have dropped out of the workforce.

But Obama attacked his opponent’s five-point job-creation plan, which Romney said would fix the unemployment issue.

“Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan,” Obama said. “And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector, that’s been his philosophy as governor, that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate.”

The candidates clashed on energy issues, specifically on oil production and prices. When the issue of gas prices came up, Romney said production of oil on federal land is down 14 percent because Obama has cut down on licenses and permits.

Although Obama claimed Romney was false and argued that production of oil is increasing, Romney continued his attack on energy and challenged Obama about the rise of gasoline prices. He said if Obama’s energy policies were working, then energy prices would not be so high.

“When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon,” Romney said. “Now, it’s $4 a gallon. The price of electricity is up.”

Obama said that gas prices were so low before he took office because the nation was on the verge of an economic recession.

“So, it’s conceivable that Governor Romney could bring down gas prices because with his policies, we might be back in that same mess,” Obama said.

In one question directed at Romney, the Republican nominee distanced himself from former President George W. Bush, saying that they were not the same person and this was not the same election.

Obama argued that Romney and Bush have similar economic polices, but differ in social policies.

Obama was also asked about what he had accomplished as president. He listed some of his accomplishments, including his healthcare legislation, the end of the war in Iraq and the orchestrated attack that killed Osama bin Laden.

“The point is the commitments I’ve made, I’ve kept,” Obama said. “And those that I haven’t been able to keep, it’s not for lack of trying, and we’re going to get it done in a second term.”

In response, Romney questioned Obama’s achievements while in office.

“I think you know that these last four years haven’t been so good as the president just described,” Romney said. “And that you don’t feel like your confident that the next four years are going to be much better either.”

Romney said Obama claimed he would lower the unemployment rate to 5.4 percent as president, and that it currently is not even close.

Although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed responsibility for American deaths in Libya on Oct. 15, Obama still took responsibility for the incident.

“She works for me,” he said. “I’m the president and I’m always responsible, and that’s why nobody’s more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do.”

While both candidates were aggressive in the town hall debate Tuesday night, some political scientists noted Obama’s performance, which improved significantly from the first debate.

“Obama came swinging back,” said Graham Wilson, department chair of political science at Boston University. “He made all the points he should have made during the first debate.”

Wilson said neither of the candidates performed poorly, but Obama did “fantastically better” than the first performance.

Douglas Kriner, associate professor of political science at BU, said Obama emerged as the victor.

“President Obama was quite passive in the first debate, but tonight, he made a much more forceful defense of his record and sharpened his attacks on Governor Romney’s proposals,” he said in an email.

Thomas Fiedler, dean of Boston U.’s College of Communication, said Obama and Romney had an equal performance.

“Each side is going to be able to come out of this feeling pretty good about the performance of their candidate,” he said in a phone interview.

Fiedler said this debate will not change poll numbers and that there was no clear winner.

“This is like a football game where both teams seem to just move from one 40-yard line to the other 40-yard line, with a lot of just one and two yard gains and pushing and shoving,” Fiedler said. “But no particular big breaks. And nothing that would really change the dynamic going forward.”

Just weeks after a similar campaign appearance at North Carolina Central U. in Durham, Obama drew a crowd of more than 5,000 to U. North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Carmichael Arena, where she emphasized issues important to young voters—Pell grants, student loans, jobs, education—and said the future of all of these is on the line in the 21 days between now and the Nov. 6 election.

In her speech, Obama numbered the beneficiaries of her husband’s presidency in the millions—he has created millions of jobs and helped millions of people through his health care plan, she said.

“Look, I could go on and on and on,” she said. “Barack Obama knows the American dream because he’s living it, and he is fighting every day so that every one of us in this country can have that same opportunity, no matter who we are, or where we’re from, or what we look like or who we love.”

Obama added that the president ended the war in Iraq, ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” and fought for benefits for veterans and military families as well as work permits for immigrants.

The progress the president has made is at stake if he loses in November, Obama said. Four years ago, the president won North Carolina by about 14,000 votes, which meant he won each precinct by five votes, she said. She warned that this year’s contest will be even closer.

“One person could swing an entire precinct,” she said.

Given the closeness of the race, Obama encouraged young people to vote and to tell their parents, grandparents and friends to vote as well, preferably during the next few weeks of early voting. She also urged supporters to take a day off work to campaign. Obama emphasized the importance of education to the crowd, which gathered on a college campus. Obama began her remarks by mentioning the “visionary leadership” of Bill Friday, the former president of the University of North Carolina system who died last week.

Former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt shared a similar sentiment in his opening remarks.

“[Businesses] don’t just come to North Carolina for our Southern hospitality,” Hunt said. “They come for our well-educated workforce. They come for you.”

Many attendees at the rally, which catered largely to supporters of the president, voiced approval for the first lady’s prowess as a speaker.

“I thought it was a good call to action,” said Samanthis Smalls, history graduate student at Duke and Obama phone bank volunteer. “With the reminder that there are only 21 days left, clearly this is a push toward the end.”

Smalls said she appreciated the time Obama spent after her speech shaking hands with the Organizing for America volunteers on the floor of the arena. Duke senior Chris Carroll thought Obama’s opening remarks could have had more substance. For instance, in the context of an anecdote recounting to the crowd why she married the president, she mentioned it was not just because her husband is handsome.

“The message when she said that was kind of, ‘Barack’s a really handsome and really good-looking person, so you should vote for him,’” Carroll said. “She’s an incredibly intelligent woman. I wish she would just stand on her own, rather than in the background promoting her husband.”

The personal anecdotes Obama offered were rich in detail, such as the look on her father’s face when she walked across the stage for college graduation. But when she discussed politics, she turned from details to more general statements, Carroll noted.

Carroll said he and his friends were struck when Obama mentioned “ending the war in Iraq” as an accomplishment of her husband’s.

“My friends and I just looked at each other like, ‘Oh, Michelle,’” he said. “It’s all politics.”

That behavior can be positive as it is a form of political activity. Those posts suggest that a person has been following the candidates and or the issues and is passionate about the outcome of the election. Americans should be civically engaged.

Political statuses might also inform Facebook users who have not followed the election as closely. Chances are, more Americans are tuned into their newsfeeds than the homepage of a major news publication. Election related material on the site may keep them informed.

However, that is not to say users should take every political post they see at face value. Rather, those posts should encourage them to learn more about the issues and the candidates.

Some users probably have hidden agendas and the material they post may not be all that accurate. Also worthy of discussion are the political statuses that come off as militant and overly aggressive. Who wants to log onto their Facebook page only to find material attacking them for thinking a certain way? No one.

Then again, users have the option of hiding more militant posters from their newsfeeds. Just because someone has a habit of posting hostile statuses doesn’t mean you have to subject yourself to them every time you log onto the site.

For better or for worse, people’s behavior on Facebook and other social media websites sometimes influences their interactions in the real world. Someone who attacks a political party online might find that they have fewer friends who are willing to carry on a conversation about the subject with them in person. Their friends may even steer clear of discussing any controversial topics with them in the future. In the end, these people will likely not refrain from posting political statuses, but it does not mean their Facebook friends will listen.

Most Americans support a progressive tax system — a system where the wealthier pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the poor. The Bush tax cuts actually made the system more progressive.

Wait, how is that possible?

Didn’t Democrats argue that the wealthier receive a higher proportion of the Bush tax cuts?

How could the cuts also have made the system more progressive?

Well, in the words of Aristotle, “There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied mathematics.”

Let’s look at a hypothetical example to see how this is mathematically possible, relying on statistics from Deloitte and Touche’s analysis as cited by David Rosenbaum of the New York Times in 2001.

Imagine there are two families in America. According to Deloitte, in 2001, one that currently made $20,000 paid $990 (4.95 percent) in taxes. The other family made $1,000,000 and paid $306,842 (30.7 percent) in taxes. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, the poor family saw their taxes reduced to $580, a reduction of $410 or 41 percent. The rich family saw their taxes reduced to $259,728, a change of $47,114 or 15 percent.

If we then added the two tax cut numbers together to find the total dollar amount cut, $580 + $47,114 = $47,694, we could see the statistic often cited by Democrats that the “rich received a higher percentage of the tax cut.”

In a large-scale society, there are obviously more than two families. However, not only did poor families see a higher tax cut than the rich in terms of percentage of income, but according to multiple calculations, the share of total taxes paid by the rich increased by a full percentage point, facts often cited by Republicans.

Both facts are true at the same time. Now the numbers are obviously going to be different today — but feel free to apply the same calculations.

My point is that, historically, the Bush tax cuts made the tax system more progressive. In addition, the law basically wiped away the tax bill for many low-income taxpayers.

Perhaps one of the biggest problems is that letting the cuts expire could cost trillions in lost revenues.

This is certainly distressing, considering the state of our national debt. The Obama administration has recently been arguing to extend the Bush tax cuts for all families making under $250,000 a year, while letting the other tax cuts expire. This “soak the rich” compromise may sound appealing to some, but it does not come close to eliminating the effect on the national debt. Additionally, raising taxes in this economy could cause even slower growth.

Peter J. Wallison, the Arthur F. Burns fellow in financial policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that tax cuts do not stimulate much growth without reducing regulation at the same time. He says:

“Tax cuts are powerful economic stimulants, as the Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush experiences show, but reducing regulation provides the space in which a private sector — incentivized by tax cuts — can find room to pursue the innovation and risk-taking that ultimately creates jobs.”

Instead what we’ll hear is a parade of poll-tested statements from each candidate, each meant to inflame the particular passions of whatever target demographic is the key in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Are you unemployed? You’ll love Romney’s five-step plan to restore America. Are you a student? Just wait until you hear how Obama’s saved student loans. Some of these statements are true; some are false. But the word “debate” is a misnomer — even during the remarkably rowdy vice-presidential scuffle last Thursday, actual dialogue between Biden and Ryan was rare.

It’s hard to blame the candidates. The risks in engaging in conversation with an opponent on national television are staggering. It’s much safer to stare the camera in the eye and talk to the voter than look at your opponent and argue about minutiae the median voter knows nothing about. Debating skill, after all, has precious little to do with whether you’re a good president or not. Courage, political skill, and intelligence — all the traits we associate with a successful presidency — are entirely unnecessary to be a talented debater. Jimmy Carter soundly thumped Gerald Ford in the 1974 debates on the way to a presidency that was alternately irrelevant and incompetent. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was so scared of the 1980 debates that he refused to take the stage alone against President Carter until two weeks before Election Day. Terrible policies aside, Reagan’s presidency was remarkably effective at shaping policy and controlling the agenda.

The irony of the debates is they’re only useful when the candidates aren’t debating. Debates have one, and only one, legitimate use for the American people: They give low-information voters an opportunity to discover the basic beliefs of the candidates. Fifty-eight million people watched the first presidential debate last week. Most of them had very little idea what, exactly, is going on in their government. They are scared by the phrase “death panel” and “fiscal cliff” but don’t fully understand what these things are. When the candidates are looking at 58 million people and saying what they think, a decent education is being given. When Obama and Romney haggle over the specific size of Romney’s tax cut or explore the fate of Big Bird, valuable time is being wasted. Wading into the policy weeds to convince already-educated voters of some relatively small point is hopeless. Educated voters are overwhelmingly partisan voters, and partisan voters are simply not going to be persuaded to vote for a different candidate in the course of a debate. Can you name anyone who changed their planned vote after Obama got walloped last week? I didn’t think so.

If you’re an uneducated voter, watch the debates. But if you consider yourself educated, if you consider yourself locked into an ideology or candidate, don’t bother. They’re not for you. Instead, I suggest you try to understand. Understand the candidate’s simple language reflects poorly not on the candidates, but on their audience. Understand awful debates are the result of a nation’s leaders coping with a perilously uninterested citizenry. Understand all of this and join me, not in celebrating our debates, but in hating them.

The first lady visited campus on the day of the first presidential debate, encouraging students and public attendees to get to the polls and make their voices known.

“All the hard work and progress we’ve made…it’s all at stake this November,” the first lady said in her speech at UNR.  “The only guarantee is that this election will be closer than the last one.”

The UNR media newsroom reported a crowd of about 3,800 attendees, all of whom erupted in cheers as Michelle Obama emphasized the importance of moving “forward,” the adopted slogan for Barack Obama’s campaign.

The first lady spoke to the crowd about knowing what the job of president is actually like because she has seen it first hand.  She said the decisions her husband makes aren’t just about the bottom line but rather laying the foundation for the next generation.

“As president, you must be driven by the struggles, hopes and dreams of all those you serve,” Michelle Obama said.

When Barack Obama entered the White House in 2008, the economy was on the brink of collapse and losing an average of $800,000 a month, the first lady said.

“He came into a mess and I think he’s done an outstanding job,” said Mary Randolph, a 56-year-old postal worker who traveled from Sacramento to see Michelle Obama speak. Randolph said that she is one person who can honestly say that President Obama changed her life.

“My daughter has a pre-existing illness and couldn’t get any health insurance,” Randolph said.  “Now, she receives treatments every six months and is cancer-free.”

President Obama’s recent health reform policy is one of the many topics the first lady addressed during her speech, where she said her husband didn’t care that health reform was the easy thing to do politically, but rather, it was the right thing to do.

Other platforms on the Obama campaign include women’s rights, in which the first lady preached to the women of the audience that “my husband will always have our backs.”  The first lady also stressed the importance of education in their campaign, for not only did she choose to hold the rally on the university campus rather than elsewhere, but said that President Obama can relate to students on a personal level.

“Neither Barack, nor myself, could have ever attended college if it weren’t for financial aid and our combined student loan bills were higher than our mortgage,” Michelle Obama said.  “Barack and I, we’ve been there … this is not a hypothetical.”

Former Nevada Attorney General and UNR alumna Frankie Sue Del Papa also spoke on behalf of the Obama campaign, endorsing education and health care as key strategies in ensuring that President Obama gets four more years in the White House.

With Election Day approaching on Nov. 6, the first lady stressed the importance of how every vote matters, particularly in Nevada, a state whose democratic bid for Barack Obama was won by 121,000 votes in 2008, which breaks down to 69 per precinct, according to Michelle Obama.

Urging people to take advantage of early voting, which begins Oct. 20 in Nevada, she then encouraged people to spend Election Day helping others get to the polls and reminded the audience that change takes time, patience and tenacity.

“My husband is nowhere near satisfied,” the first lady said. “He knows there are too many people struggling still. We’ve come so far but we have so much more work to do.”

Sitting around a small table at Centre College in Danville, Ky. Thursday night, Vice President Joseph Biden and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) faced off in the first and only vice presidential debate of the election season.

The debate, which focused on both foreign and domestic policy, was the second installment in a series of debates scattered throughout the election season, the first of which was held between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney last week.

Sporting red and blue ties and American flag pins, Biden, 69, and Ryan, 42, established their partisan agendas early on, with Biden criticizing Romney’s proposed policies and Ryan pointing out shortfalls in the Obama administration in the past four years.

Martha Raddatz, an ABC news reporter and moderator of the debate, guided the night’s discussion, which began with the discussion of foreign policy – specifically the death of a U.S ambassador following an attack on the U.S. Embassy last month.

The debate then proceeded to issues in domestic policy, including the state of the American economy, and the Medicare and Social Security programs.

UCLA professor of psychology and political science David Sears anticipated that the Romney-Ryan economic recovery plan, which centers around job growth and decreased federal spending, would play a key role in the debate.

“Ryan needs to make the case that the numbers add up in his economic plan,” Sears said before the debate. “Biden needs to make the case that they don’t.”

When prompted by Raddatz to “level” with Americans about the state of the economy, Biden and Ryan elaborated on their differing views of the United States government.

Biden cited statistics from the past four years as evidence of economic recovery, pledged his allegiance to the middle class, and pointed out Romney’s 2008 column in The New York Times calling to “let Detroit go bankrupt” when the automobile industry crashed that year.

Ryan, on the other hand, criticized the Obama administration for its handling of the recession and stimulus package, and advocated his party’s devotion to small businesses as job creators.

“Both (Biden and Ryan) have been in Congress long enough consciously talking about these things,” said Thomas Schwartz, a professor of political science with a focus in American politics. “They are both reasonably competent and are deserving statesmen.”

Still, there is no evidence of vice presidential debates – or any debates – having an actual impact on the outcome of the election, Schwartz said. Historically, debates hold little bearing on peoples’ perceptions of candidates, he added.

“The last time I remember people making comments about (a VP debate) is Cheney versus Lieberman in 2000,” he said.

The position of the vice presidency itself also holds little meaning, logistically, he added.

“Unless the president dies, the vice president has no job,” Schwartz said.

Apart from the actual debate, Sears said the media’s post-event coverage would be important in shaping the audience’s perception. There were big stakes, including the future of education at all levels, on the table for Thursday’s debate and for the election as a whole, he said.

“Debates are really complex organisms,” Sears said. “All the media frenzy afterward is a way of clarifying all the facts and figures.”

Last week’s debate between Obama and Romney reflected a noteworthy shift in voter attitude, said Gary Orfield, a professor of education and political science. A Gallup poll released Tuesday showed Romney leading Obama 49 percent to 47 percent following their debate.

“It’s clear the first debate really did damage the president and the Democratic party as a whole,” Orfield said. “We’ll have to wait and see about (the impact of) this one.”

Obama and Romney will square off once again next Tuesday on foreign and domestic policy, the second-to-last debate of the season.

In his visit to the Tar Heel state, Romney promoted his proposed economic and education reform plan to a crowd of locals and Romney supporters. The former Massachusetts governor was joined by one-time GOP presidential candidate hopeful Mike Huckabee and country singer Ronnie Milsap. In his remarks, Romney highlighted his plans for job creation and rebooting the economy, a clear appeal to an audience from a region where unemployment rates have topped 10 percent.

“This president says he wants to change America,” Romney said. “I want to restore the principles that made America the hope of the earth.”

The Romney campaign announced its visit to Asheville just three days prior to the rally. North Carolina is one of only nine “undecided” states in the presidential election. In North Carolina, Romney leads Obama by three percentage points in the polls—51 to 48 percent, according to Rasmussen Reports Thursday.

But the state has historically been very close—in 2008, Obama won by just 14,177 votes.

This was Romney’s first visit to western North Carolina, where the campaign expects to see a great show of support, said Robert Reid, North Carolina communications director for Mitt Romney for President.

“There is a lot of potential for growth, there’s a lot of people who are very friendly to us out here, with the economy out here taking a big hit,” Reid said. “People in western North Carolina understand that they can’t have four more years of the last four years…. We think there is a big opportunity out west.”

Roger Hartley, associate professor of political science at Western Carolina University, said Romney’s visit is an indication that Republicans may not be as confident that they will win North Carolina in November as they were earlier in this election cycle.

“The fact that [Romney] came here tonight is really significant,” Hartley said. “The thinking goes if you keep it close in the west, you can win.”

He added that the visit to Asheville is strategic in its appeal to widening the Republican gap in the rural areas of North Carolina. Obama will likely take the state’s metropolitan areas—including Asheville, considered a left-leaning city. If Romney can make gains in the west, including the rural counties surrounding Asheville, he would be in a good position to take the state.

His appearance in Asheville may have also been an attempt for Romney, as a conservative speaking in a liberal city, to appear more moderate, Hartley noted.

North Carolina’s status as a toss-up means that Romney’s latest visit to the state is not likely to be his last.

“People in North Carolina will probably be seeing a lot of Governor Romney between now and November,” Reid said.

Since Romney secured the GOP presidential nomination, he has visited North Carolina only once, for a Charlotte fundraiser in August. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, campaigned for Romney in Cary earlier this week.

Romney has campaigned heavily in other swing states, however, visiting Florida and Virginia the most, according to MittRomneyCentral, a fan site promoting the presidential hopeful.

Early voting allows citizens to vote before Election Day, usually to accommodate out-of-state residents, such as college students, or those who will be unable to vote on the inconvenient Tuesday election day. In addition, as college students, some of us decide to vote in our home states as opposed to registering in New Hampshire. The absentee ballots that we send in are received upwards of a month before Election Day. Though these ballots aren’t counted until November 6, they still have a significant impact on election dynamics.

During the 2008 election, President Obama accrued so many votes during the early voting period in North Carolina that even though he lost the Election Day popular vote, he was still able to secure the state’s electoral votes. Though most of these early votes don’t occur a month in advance, with some states having early voting periods the weekend before the election, there is something to be said about the impact early voting has.

Voting dynamics are, in large part, influenced by the specific socioeconomic groups that are physically able to vote. For example, for some people who may work odd hours or double shifts, holding Election Day during a weekday hinders their ability to cast a vote. The fact that most election days around the world don’t occur during the week but instead occur on weekends attests to the fact that our election calendar is antiquated.

The decision to hold elections on Tuesday is based on our agrarian history. Back when the majority of Americans were farmers and needed a day to get to the polls, it seemed convenient to place Election Day on the day before market day, meaning that farmers could harvest their crops and then go to town and sell their crops as well as vote.

In modern times, Americans are increasingly located in cities and polling places have become more easily accessible to most Americans, which makes this out-of-date procedure more inconvenient than anything else. In a country in which 9:00 to 5:00 jobs are extremely common and in which voting on a Tuesday may be physically impossible for some, this choice may inadvertently serve to disenfranchise a select few.

Early voting acts as a solution to this problem by accommodating those Americans who otherwise would not be able to vote, either because of the aforementioned obstacle or because, like us college students, they temporarily reside in another state.

With this in mind, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned an Ohio law allowing only military personnel to participate in early voting. The court stated that all voters must be treated equally under Ohio law and that allowing early voting for some residents requires that it must be allowed for all.

Proponents of the law claimed that because military personnel could be deployed at any time, they deserved special privileges in terms of when they could vote. Although this point is in fact true, when it comes to voting, any incapacity is equally legitimate. Whether deployed to foreign soil or unable to vote because of the necessity to work to provide for one’s own family, the incapacity is the same and results in the same inability to participate in the voting process. Therefore, early voting must be applied equally to all residents of a state or county.

A change in one factor or one aspect of the voting process, such as early voting, can have systemic effects that alter the nature of the election and voter dynamics. The exact nature of these effects is unknown in the best case, or intended in the worst, and therefore should be avoided at all costs to prevent any form of unlawful or unfair tampering with elections.

Moderator Martha Raddatz, of ABC News, threw foreign policy on the table, referencing the recent attack in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, on a broadcast of the debate on 7 News.

Ryan said it took President Barack Obama two weeks to call the incident a terrorist attack.

“Look, if we’re hit by terrorists, we’re going to call it for what it is — a terrorist attack,” he said.

He questioned why an Ambassador stationed in Libya did not have as much protection as one stationed in France.

Biden said he justified the lack of increased security because it was based on what the intelligence community had told White House officials.

“We said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew. That was the assessment,” he said. “And as the intelligence community changed their view, we made it clear they changed their view.”

The two candidates also disputed over economic growth and the fight for the middle class.

Biden said the Romney-Ryan tax plan was “not mathematically possible.”

“They’re [Romney-Ryan] pushing the continuation of a tax cut that will give an additional $500 billion in tax cuts to 120,000 families,” Biden said. “They’re holding hostage the middle class tax cut because they say we won’t pass. We won’t continue the middle-class tax cut unless you give the tax cut for the super wealthy.”

Ryan said he and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney are proposing “real reforms for real recovery.”

“It’s a five-point plan,” he said. “Get America energy-independent in North America by the end of the decade. Help people who are hurting get the skills they need to get the jobs they want. Get this deficit and debt under control to prevent a debt crisis.”

Ryan attacked Obama’s performance in salvaging a nation in crisis.

At one point during the debate Biden asked, “What more can the President do?” — a stance of the Obama campaign arguing that only so much work can be completed in four years.

“This is not what a real recovery looks like,” Ryan said.

Biden held his composure for most of the debate, smirking at Ryan’s remarks and, at times, laughing.

“If you notice, he [Ryan] never answers the question,” Biden said.

But Ryan still managed to defend his running mate during Biden’s attacks on Romney’s “47 percent” remarks.

“I think the Vice President knows, sometimes the words don’t come out of your mouth the right way,” Ryan said.

Biden used his own political experience in the White House to speak for himself.

“Look at my record,” he said. “It’s been all about the middle class. They’re the people who grow this country. We think you grow this country from the middle out, not from the top down.”

Paul Conway, president of the nonprofit Generation Opportunity and former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Labor, said Biden’s experience gives him increased responsibility in a phone interview following the debate.

“One the things that comes with 30 years of Congress is a huge amount of accountability for what has happened in 30 years in Congress,” he said.

Conway said Biden’s mannerisms throughout the debate were “probably unhelpful,” and that Ryan succeeded in defending Romney’s issues.

“What you saw was a younger elected official being very respectful and differential to a sitting Vice President,” he said. “I think what that allowed was discourse back and forth.”

Party representatives in Massachusetts stood by their respective candidates in a debate with a seemingly unclear winner.

“Tonight’s debate was a battle with facts and conviction on one side and empty zingers and hollow promises on the other,” said Kevin Franck, communications director for the Massachusetts Democratic Party, in an email. “Clearly the Vice President won.”

Tim Buckley, communications director for the Massachusetts Republican Party, said Ryan presents a “fast forward” with an opportunity for all Americans.

“Congressman Ryan did exactly what he needs to do, which is lay out a clear agenda for our country’s future,” Buckley said.

Even though the debate was substantive, Conway said neither candidate was able to hurt or gain advance for Romney and Obama because Ryan and Biden are not the front-runners on the ticket.

“Overall … it’s an interesting couple different levels,” Conaway said about the debate. “[You have] a contrast of generations, a contrast of philosophy and you have a contrast of style.”

Who is telling the truth?

Well, like most issues in politics, it depends on how you define the terms.

Let’s look at President Obama first. Although claiming in the Wednesday debate that he reduced taxes on the middle class by $3,600, the reality is that those cuts were temporary. The “Making Work Pay” tax credit saved the average family $800 a year, but it expired in 2011 and Obama did not renew it. The other tax cut Obama refers to, the payroll tax cut, expires at the end of this year as well.

We can’t forget the impact of “ObamaCare.” According to the Associated Press, nearly 6 million people will see a tax increase due to the new health insurance law. Most of these 6 million are in the “middle class” and will see their taxes rise by an average of $1,200 per year.

Mitt Romney’s plan relies on lowering tax rates and closing loopholes to make up for the difference in revenue.

His plan has been criticized as “impossible” by the Obama campaign, citing a study from a Princeton economist, Harvey Rosen.

Unfortunately for the president, Rosen soon spoke to the press claiming Obama had misrepresented his study, saying:

“I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work… The main conclusion of my study is that under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral,” he said.

How is this possible? How can tax rates be reduced without slashing revenue? It all depends on economic growth. Cutting tax rates often spurs economic growth, as consumers have more money to spend and invest. As the economy grows, more people become wealthier and end up offsetting some of the revenue lost from lower rates.

Professor Greg Mankiw of Harvard University calculated the effects that tax cuts pay for themselves in a paper written back in 2005:

“In all of the models considered here, the dynamic response of the economy to tax changes is too large to be ignored. In almost all cases, tax cuts are partly self-financing. This is especially true for cuts in capital income taxes.”

Although Obama criticizes Romney’s plan because it “might” burden the middle class at some point, he ignores the fact that his own plans have not been particularly helpful, to say the least.

Even if Romney did need to eventually close some loopholes that currently benefit the middle-class, the tax cuts would first and foremost give relief to middle-class Americans.

Young Americans fighting for prosperity and progress are running on a treadmill on which every attmept to move forward is met with a backward drag by debt. So far this fiscal year, 343 billion tax dollars have been spent simply on interest to maintain the existing debt. This money does not fund programs like Medicare, nor does it fund services like road construction. This is $343 billion in pure interest t  hat taxpayers lose every year. Americans cannot afford to continue to pay more and more taxes without receiving services and benefits back. As the debt gets bigger, it pulls more of us down.

Tackling the monstrous debt situation will require a change in attitudes and ideas regarding spending. Currently, the government uses a severely misguided budgeting strategy known as baseline budgeting. Under baseline budgeting, the budget of each department or program for each year is assumed to be equal to the budget for the previous year plus a built-in projected increase. Negotiations are then made with respect to this assumption that spending will always increase. Therefore, a budget allocation of “zero” means that a department’s funding actually increased by the projected amount. Even a “cut” to the baseline could still represent an increase in spending from the previous year.

In order to bring the debt down, voters must learn to reinterpret how the government talks about budgeting. It is just not enough to make cuts to a projected increase. We must settle for nothing less than a real, significant and immediate reduction in the actual number of dollars the government spends. At this time, the government would need to cut about $1.3 trillion in spending just to balance expenditures with revenues. More cuts will be needed in the future in order to pay down the debt and help our country begin to heal.

Attorneys faced pointed questions from the justices, as the sharply divided court wrestles with how to address the claim brought forth by Abigail Fisher, a white Texan who was denied admission to the University of Texas, which uses race-based admissions practices.

During questioning, Justice Sonia Sotomayor laid out the central question facing the court as it decides whether race should be considered in university admissions.

“When do we stop deferring to the university’s judgment that race is still necessary?” Sotomayor said. “That’s the bottom line of this case.”

In 2003, the Supreme Court attempted to create a framework whereby higher education institutions could use affirmative action within certain bounds. In Gratz v. Bollinger, the justices determined that an automatic awarding of points or preferential admissions based solely on race was not legal. However, in the companion case Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in her majority opinion that race could be considered on a holistic basis with regard to how much an individual could bring to campus diversity.

Attorneys from U. Texas, which is defending its admissions practices faced pointed questions from Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts — the court’s conservative leaning members.

Bert Rein, Fisher’s attorney, said he didn’t want the court to overturn Grutter, but rather force the court to better define how universities could use race as a factor in admissions. He argued that Texas’s use of affirmative action didn’t meet Grutter’s requirements because its policy to grant automatic admission to the top 10 percent of students at every Texas high school provided enough diversity.

“You don’t want to overrule Grutter,” Sotomayor said. “You just want to gut it.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered to be the potential swing vote in the case, didn’t appear to tip his hand during the debate, questioning both sides.

Kennedy challenged one of U. Texas’ attorneys after he argued that the school wanted to consider race in admissions in order to attract students outside the top 10 percent of each high school’s graduating class.

“What you’re saying, is that race counts above all,” Kennedy said.

The case is widely expected to be a victory for Fisher in some form. However, the way in which she prevails will determine the case’s legacy in future considerations. Should the court rule that what U. Texas was doing with the combination of the ten percent plan and additional race exceeded its mandate under Grutter, but provides a better definition for how diversity goals should be achieved, affirmative action will largely stand.

Still, it’s also possible that the conservative justices who now dominate the court could overturn the precedent set by Grutter and eliminate the consideration of race altogether in college admissions.

Further changing the composition of the court was Justice Elena Kagan’s decision to recuse herself from the case. Though no official explanation was provided, it is likely because she worked on related issues during her time as United States Solicitor General. Justice Kagan usually votes with the liberal side of the court, which makes the University of Texas’ case more difficult to win.

Should the court split 4-4, the lower circuit court’s decision that the actions of the University of Texas are legal under Grutter would stand, but would not have any precedential value.

The ad’s narrator delivers the line “Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street” while cutting to images of Big Bird, the loveable, yellow bird on the PBS show “Sesame Street.”

The Globe and other major news organizations have already identified the ad as satire. However, satire was probably too strong of a word to be applied here.

Typically, satire involves wit. This ad is anything but witty. Rather, the ad capitalizes on a line that Romney uttered in the first presidential debate a week ago: “I love Big Bird … but I’m not going to keep on spending money on things [we need] to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

However ridiculous the ad, is it really all that surprising that is was produced? It shouldn’t be.

Political candidates capitalize on the details of their opponents’ campaigns. That is the reality of 21st century campaigns.

Is it right? No. But it happens.

If the situation was reversed and Obama had uttered the Big Bird line, we could probably expect Romney to produce an ad mocking the president.

Looking forward, it will be interesting to see how Obama’s campaign responds to Sesame Workshop’s request to pull the ad, if at all.

The studio released a statement on its website Tuesday requesting that the ad be taken down because it does not “endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns,” according to The Globe.
Regardless of whether or not the ad violates the studio’s policy, its message is weak and reinforces just how bitter the presidential campaign has become.

The Wesleyan Media Project released a report last week that showed Obama “dominat[ing]” advertisements in the election’s crucial states.

“The heavy advertising from the Obama campaign has challenged the assumption Romney-friendly outside groups would saturate and dominate the airwaves in key markets,” Co-Director Erika Franklin Fowler said in the report.

Since April, Obama’s campaign has spent about $164 million, while former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., has spent approximately $57 million, the report said. From the time the national conventions ended in Sept. 9 until Sept. 30, Obama had a larger advantage in advertising in 14 of the 15 top markets.

The report also showed both campaigns have become more negative in their advertising. Obama’s campaign ads consist of 63.8 percent attacks, 33.7 percent contrast and 2.5 percent promotion of the candidate. These numbers for Romney were 61.3 percent, 23.3 percent and 15.4 percent, respectively.

Presidential campaign spending this election cycle has surpassed any other election in history, according to Common Cause in Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck.

The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, which allowed unlimited campaign spending through super PACs, is a large reason for the dramatic increase in spending. Obama’s 2008 turning down of public financing for his campaign contributed to that as well.

“Obama was the first presidential candidate in 30 years to not abide by spending limits in 2008 when he ran, and that, combined with the Citizens United decision, blew the top off of spending limits in election campaigns,” Heck said.

In an email to The Badger Herald, U. Wisconsin life sciences communication professor Dietram Scheufele said campaigns are going outside traditional media in order to reach voters who were previously difficult to connect with.

“This includes Obama targeting young voters in video games, but also fairly elaborate strategies for tailoring political messages to potential voters in various online arenas, including social media,” Scheufele said.

Scheufele said he agreed there is more advertising spending occurring during this campaign.

This increase in campaign spending, he added, will only cease when Congress passes reforms in campaign financing.

“I think campaign spending will not slow down any time soon, unless Congress manages to pass comprehensive campaign finance reform,” Scheufele said. “Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening any time soon.”

In Wisconsin’s Senate race, the report said Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., is spending more in ads than her Republican opponent. She is spending about $1.98 million, while former Gov. Tommy Thompson is spending $1.65 million in ads.

Scheufele said advertising, polls and funds are all tied together so the recent polling that has found Baldwin in the lead might be leading to more funds, which in turn lead to more ads.

“Fundraising, poll numbers and media coverage are all linked reciprocally,” he said. “In other words, the better a candidate does in the polls, the more money she raises. And the more money she raises, the more media coverage she’ll get and the better she’ll do in the polls.”

Heck said campaign advertising has become the most expensive Senate race in Wisconsin history, adding he expects this record to be broken again.

While the media continues to largely ignore the gravity of the matter, the cold, hard truth is we were not prepared for what happened Sept. 11 at the U.S. Consulate in Libya. The cost was steep – a dead ambassador, another diplomat and two former Navy SEALs – in what was now clearly a planned attack from some kind of terrorist entity. Most fingers point toward Al Qaeda in the Maghreb.

The original position of the administration was that it was a “spontaneous” attack, for which no one could have really been prepared. Furthermore, they attributed the “spontaneous” attack to the video mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

While there can be no doubt the mentioned video caused mass outrage in the Muslim world, it cannot, however, be used as the reason Ambassador Stevens and the others were brutally murdered.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice explained the attack this way during a statement she issued at the U.N. That notion has essentially been entirely debunked. Now, the heat is on her and others in the administration from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. After pressure began to build, the administration finally changed its tune and conceded it was indeed a terrorist attack. Still,the spin has not stopped there.

According to the Washington Post, a number of sensitive documents were recently found that detail the situation at the consulate prior to the attack, such as Ambassador Steven’s itinerary, the identity of several Libyan guards who had been contracted to protect the consulate and, most importantly, evidence that the U.S. Embassy requested more security out of fear of an attack based on actual intelligence assessments. These documents contradict essentially everything the administration has laid out.

Now, out of nowhere, administration officials have said they went solely off the intelligence at hand to base their belief it was spontaneous. If there was a request by the embassy for more security based off of intelligence they had, what does that say about the administration’s stance on their intelligence?

Either the intelligence is clearly faulty or the administration is trying to purposely sweep this huge intelligence failure under the rug, strictly for fear of the consequences. If what the administration said is true, then heads should be rolling at the U.S. State Department and the various intelligence agencies. If the latter is true, then heads within the administration itself need to start rolling, and the necessary policy makers, including the President, need to be held responsible.

Despite this strong criticism of the administration’s contradicting stances, we must not be so quick to jump to the worst-case conclusion, which is the administration actively knew about the threats of a terrorist attack and not only did anything to prevent it, but also actively covered it up after the fact.

We are in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty.

In this case, that is the Obama Administration, and at least personally, I will wait until I see actually definitive results before I cast my final judgments on the matter at hand.

This conversation has gone somewhat unnoticed in the United States, with Americans distracted by a weak economy and a presidential election where this particular issue is little more than a footnote, or perhaps the latest episode of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”

That may be because it’s become easy, or perhaps even preferred, for the specter of an armed conflict to become a distant concern. Americans are tired of war. We’ve been in at least one since before current fourth-graders were born.

Yet at the same time, citizens of the U.S. haven’t experienced the worst horrors of war — combat on its own soil — since the Civil War. Even the most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only been experienced firsthand by a tiny slice of the population.

Thus although we are vaguely aware of the costs of a foreign war in terms of lives and treasure, the national psyche of the U.S. isn’t properly equipped to understand the true horrors of war. So when talk of yet another conflict pops up, we respond with annoyance or even applause, instead of fear and solemnity.

Many have said Americans don’t have an “appetite” for another conflict in the Middle East;thus, the logic follows, the U.S. wouldn’t take a lead in such a conflict.

Rather it would be Israel, whose diminutive size and frequent appearance in the rants of the Islamic Republic’s leaders has it concerned over the possibility of Iran’s development of powerful weapons. However, many believe that the U.S. would almost certainly get drawn into the conflict anyway since, as a close ally of Israel, it would be seen as having explicitly or tacitly supported Israel’s move.

So any military action against Iran not only holds the possibility of dangerous escalation, but it could even strengthen Iranian leaders’ resolve to build a nuclear weapon or trigger other unforeseen consequences.

Economic sanctions are also proving to be a peaceful, albeit painful, way to put pressure on the Iranian regime. In short, there are plenty of great reasons not to start this war.

As for myself, an outsider who has paid quite a bit of attention to this issue, I too have found it becomes far too easy to talk or think about it in amoral, mathematical terms — discussions about “objectives,” “strategy,” or whether or not it would be “successful” from various viewpoints.

But this approach leaves out the most important fact and the most important reason not to go to war: human lives are at stake — people with families, careers, dreams and aspirations.

So alongside all of the talk of weapons capability, red lines, and enrichment facilities, should be a simultaneous awareness of how it all affects the Iranian people, many of whom hold generally positive feelings towards the U.S.

Many Iranians — in contrast to the distance Americans possess from armed conflict — have fresh memories of the brutal Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and simply wish to live peaceful, free lives. Any military strike on Iran would deny that wish, greatly hurt a population that is by all accounts highly pro-U.S. and end innocent lives.

Once the dust settles from this year’s presidential election, we are sure to hear more and more talk about a war in Iran regardless of the victor.

History warns of the dangers of a public blasé about the effects of foreign wars justified with dubious information. But regardless of what happens in the months and years to come, I encourage you to always heed the enormous power of perspective when discussing and thinking about these matters. Lives are at stake.

How much is $16 trillion? To put it in perspective, $16 trillion would buy Apple, Inc. 25 times. It would buy the Chicago Cubs more than 9,000 times or pay this year’s undergraduate tuition for more than 1.3 billion University of Illinois students. It’s a lot of money.

The national debt is currently exceeding our nation’s GDP. This means that even if our government collected every penny our economy reels in, it still would not even cover the debt our government has created. Even though part of the debt issue was created under the Bush Administration because of the wars that were waged, the amount of debt that President Bush created in eight years was doubled under the Obama Administration in only four years. The main contributor in Obama’s Administration debt explosion was the so-called “stimulus,” which showed little to no to bad results as key economic indicators point out.

The issue here is that our government is spending money recklessly, and the taxpayers suffer the consequences and eventually foot the bill. If it is not from the taxpayers’ wallets then it is either lent from foreign investors or simply just printing more money with nothing to hold the value of our currency. If the foreign countries lending us money take away our credit card, it could have disastrous effects.

How can we trust the government with our money when it is wasting it and putting a burden on us in the future due to their negligence? Who is going to pay back this debt? We are. We paid taxes for the government to throw away on pointless social programs and “stimulus.” Now, we will have to pay more taxes in the future to foot the bill for this wasteful spending. If we spread out the debt amongst the population, each citizen will have to fork over nearly $52,000. When considering just the taxpayers, each would have to pay $140,500. That number is going up, and that means taxes are going up. Higher taxes on business means they will hire fewer people, which means fewer jobs for us when we graduate. It is a potentially devastating cycle.

The issue with the role of the government is still a top priority that many are concerned about and is a top issue in the election. Republicans want to cut spending, help businesses create more jobs and hire more people and begin to pay down the national debt. It is economically proven that by reducing the size of government and by decreasing taxes, economic expansion will be possible. In the long run, we will begin to see the debt clock move backward and our nation will move forward as the economic powerhouse.

“I want to be real clear that I’m very proud to say we elected our first black president,” Kid Rock said. “I’m sorry he didn’t do a better job. I really wish he would’ve. I really do, but the facts are the facts.”

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate took the stage as AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” rang out over the crowd, and after waves to attendees, he spoke out against President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, discussing his plans for fostering a stronger nation, and echoing the comments Romney made in a speech earlier in the day that focused on his foreign policy goals.

“When you turn on your television, what you are witnessing on TV is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy,” Ryan said. “Our enemies are becoming more brazen. Our adversaries seem more willing to test us. And we’re showing more daylight between ourselves and our allies, and they are beginning to question our resolve. And the reason is America is projecting weakness right now.”

The visit to Michigan was Ryan’s second since becoming the nominee in August. It’s also a sign that the Romney campaign thinks Michigan may be in play following Romney’s debate win last week.

In a poll conducted between Sept. 8 and Sept. 11 by EPIC-MRA — a professional survey firm — Obama’s Michigan lead among likely voters fell from a 10-point lead to a three-point lead within the last month.

Along with the emphasis put on foreign policy, Ryan spent a large portion of his speech addressing domestic economic issues, particularly in comparison to the economic policy of European countries.

“The problem is all of these ideas, all of this agenda that the president put in place, more borrowing, more spending, more regulating, more money printing, more taxing — it does not create more jobs,” Ryan said. “If you want to see what that story looks like at the end of the day, go home again and turn on your TV and look at Europe. If you want European results, you copy European policy, but we don’t want European results.”

Ryan also addressed the auto industry, a topic particularly salient to Michigan and other Midwest states, including Wisconsin, his home state. The largest General Motors plant in operation was located in Janesville, Wisc. when it closed in 2009.

“We lost four auto factories from the area I represent in just four years,” Ryan said. “Trust me, I come from Detroit west. We know we need a healthy auto sector. “

Ryan then explained the Republican Party’s plan is to recreate a successful auto industry.

“The way we do that is we stop sending all of our decisions to Washington with a government-driven economy,” Ryan said. “That’s what our manufacturing agenda is all about: strong manufacturing, low tax rates, good regulations, and good energy policy.”

Ryan also addressed what he called a sign of the clear failure in Obama’s economic policy, and America’s slipping to other international powers.

“China just beat us as number one nation in manufacturing just two years ago, and we were on top for 100 years,” Ryan said. “The good news is, if we put the right people in place and get the right policies in place, we can turn this around.”

Elaborating on his plans to salvage the sector, Ryan said the United States needs trade agreements that put the country on a “level playing field” with other nations in order to save our manufacturing industry.

“Let’s also not forget that most people who buy products are outside of this country,” Ryan said. “We need to make sure we have trade agreements that work for us, so they don’t take advantage of us.”

In closing, Ryan reiterated his party’s stance and alluded to the Obama administration’s recurring blame on the Bush administration for current ailments to the country.

“We’re not going to spend the next four years blaming other people; we are going to take responsibility,” Ryan said. “We are not going to try to transform this country into something it was never intended to be. We are not going to replace our founding principles. We are going to reapply our founding principles.”

Other prominent Michigan political figures also spoke at the event, including former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. Hoekstra turned to the crowd to garner support for his campaign against Senator Debbie Stabenow.

“30 days,” Hoekstra said. “Dump Debbie.”

Hoekstra focused on foreign affairs, and how he believes Obama and the Democratic platform have failed in Middle Eastern affairs.

“When I was in the Middle East, this is what I saw: an Israel that was isolated, an Iran that is 12 months away from a nuclear weapon, an Egypt that is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Hoekstra said. “This is not my vision of national security. It’s not what Israel’s looking for. It’s not what America’s looking for.”

Other speakers included Don Volaric, the Republican candidate for U.S. Representative in Michigan’s 9th district, U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, Kerry Bentivolio, the Republican candidate for U.S. Representative in Michigan’s 11th district, and Pastor Kent Clark of Grace Centers for Hope.

For those who recognize our harrowing environmental circumstance and are compelled to heed to the call of sustainability (as we all should), there are means of action. Low-carbon alternatives to conventional consumer goods are becoming ubiquitous, and there is an incipient cultural shift toward more sustainable lifestyles that will surely play a prominent role in the future.

But we can only go so far in our individual efforts. We must not neglect the need for large-scale, government-run operations to assuage our addiction to fossil fuels. It is for precisely this reason we all must abandon our naive fears of nuclear energy and embrace nuclear power for what it really is: a safe, convenient and efficient source of energy that must be utilized if we are to seriously combat our climate crisis.

In any pragmatic examination of energy policy, there are three key terms that must first be established: baseload, footprint and portfolio.

Gwyneth Cravens, an environmental activist and former New Yorker editor, explains baseload most concisely in her 2007 book, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. Cravens describes baseload as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of consumers.”

Grid power, the energy required to fuel our growing cities and booming urbanized populations, requires baseload as its foundation. So far in the U.S., baseload comes from fossil fuels (68 percent), renewable energy (13 percent) and nuclear power (19 percent). Wind and solar, however desirable, cannot currently provide baseload power, but future innovations in energy storage could update their potential. Until then, considering hydroelectricity’s myriad inconveniences, nuclear energy proves to be the most viable energy source to meet our baseload needs.

Footprint is the physical efficiency of a given utility. For example, to produce 1,000 megawatts of energy, a wind farm would have to cover 200 square miles, and a solar array would require 50 square miles. In comparison, a nuclear power plant would take up only one-third of a square mile to obtain the same amount of power.

Beyond its spacial capabilities, nuclear waste is miniscule in size. A person’s entire lifetime’s worth of electricity, strictly from nuclear energy, amounts to waste roughly the size of a Coke can. From there, nuclear waste goes into dry cask storage, where it is kept in a small area and is monitored and controlled.

In comparison, a person using strictly coal produces 77 tons of carbon dioxide in a lifetime. It is then released into our planet’s atmosphere, contributing to a climate crisis that threatens our very existence.

Nuclear meltdown incidents are always a possibility but are rare. However, the safety of nuclear power plants has advanced dramatically since the cases of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In fact, the cause of last year’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster had more to do with negligent geographical placement than anything else.

The last essential term in understanding nuclear energy’s importance is portfolio, which refers to the fact climate change is such a serious matter that we have to do everything, simultaneously, to combat it.

Nuclear energy is no be-all cure, and it certainly has its risks, but they are miniscule compared to the climate chaos that will ensue if we do not reform our current energy policies. At the very least, we should embrace nuclear energy as a temporary alternative to fossil fuels while the transition to a more renewable-based energy economy is being developed.

In any case, nuclear energy’s undeserved stigma is something that will simply have to evaporate as climate change becomes more readily apparent and accepted. Let’s just hope that by then, it’s not too late.

In late September, a Pew study found voters between 18 and 29 to be much less engaged in the 2012 elections than in recent years.

While those 65 and older saw no drop in their election engagement from 2008, youth voters dropped 14 percent in engagement. The two other age groups in between saw smaller drops, contributing to an overall drop in engagement of 6 percent.

The number of young adults who were sure they were registered to vote dropped from 61 percent in 2008 to 50 percent when the poll was taken. Of the registered voters polled, 63 percent said they would definitely vote, a nine-point drop from 2008.

U. Wisconsin College Republicans Chair Jeff Snow said his group has been registering voters and getting students involved in canvasses and events across campus.

Snow said the Pew study does not match with the growing support of his group, which doubled the amount of students at its kick-off meeting this year. Recent events such as a debate-watching party or Tagg Romney — the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s son — coming to State Street Brats have been well attended.

“We have a significant amount of active members that go and volunteer for Romney in the local victory center, and we have had large crowds at all of our events,” Snow said. “Pew might have said that youth enthusiasm is down overall, but we have a lot of enthusiasm from our organization.”

Snow contrasted this enthusiasm for Romney with students unhappy with their employment prospects under Obama’s economy.

Students for Obama Chair Peter Anich said while Snow frequently talks about students’ dislike for Obama, the president’s Thursday campaign rally on campus shows that is not the case.

With more than 30,000 attendees, it is the largest campaign rally this election cycle has seen so far. According to Anich, about 200 volunteers collected thousands of voter registration forms from the people in line.

Along with youth voters knowing Romney is on the “wrong side of history” on many issues, Anich said Wisconsinites have not been strangers to elections lately. These things have prevented the enthusiasm gap from taking place in Madison, he said.

Anich said his group focuses much of their efforts on registering voters, as some students might be confused about election laws, especially with the moving around students do.

“That is essentially our biggest job — informing them they don’t need their voter ID or they need to register every time they move,” he said.

Among the events Students for Obama will be holding in the future are drives for early voting, which begins Oct. 22.

Obama’s 2008 “hope and change” theme was popular among youth, UW-Milwaukee political science professor Kathleen Dolan said. As that message has largely faded away in this election, she added, young voters are now reverting back to their normal rates of engagement, which could be a factor in the Pew results.

Dolan emphasized that young voters do not consist solely of college students so campaigns also need to reach those outside of college campuses.

“Higher education issues are real and important to the people that go to college, but not everybody goes to college, and more people don’t finish college than do,” she said. “Mobilizing is the most effective way to reach that group. Having said that, campaigns tend to do most of their mobilizing on college campuses so that’s part of the challenge.”

In order to reach voters outside of college campuses, Dolan said campaigns need to set up voter registration drives in malls or grocery stores and use social media.

Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan organization aimed at improving youth participation, has been using the Internet to accomplish its goal, spokesperson Chrissy Faessen said.

“We definitely do work on college campuses, but that isn’t all we do,” Faessen said. “We reach out to [young voters] through social media, mobile and other effective means of communication to get them registered to vote.”

Surely, though, this chaos was nothing that a “proud hunter” like Paul Ryan couldn’t tame. Indeed, for all the hype surrounding his natural charisma and silver tongue, I was half-expecting to be swept up in a whirlwind of Ryan-ism myself. If there’s one thing that’s difficult for me to take down with a straight face, it’s political rhetoric. The cattiness, the baseless accusations, the half-truths and unabashed contradictions — whether it’s from the right or the left, I’m prone to dismissing most of the vitriol as static. Would Ryan, though, with his reported irresistible charm, stand alone as a model of integrity among it all? Could he break through my icy layer of skepticism?

In a word: no. By the time Ryan actually got on stage, my old habits had already crept safely back in. Whether it was inflammatory, garbled or just plain uncomfortable, each Republican hopeful that filed onto the stage only pushed me closer to the edge of outright political apathy. Kerry Bentivolio, a House hopeful for Michigan’s 11th district, stammered through vague ideas of hope and American values. U.S. Rep. Candice Miller managed to blame high gas prices on “an absence of leadership in the White House.” My favorite in terms of entertainment value had to be Don Volarics, whose over-the-top hysterics mostly resulted in awkward applause or dead air. I don’t think he has my vote for the House of Representatives, but I’ll definitely put him down for “Most Likely To Have Pregamed With A Box of 5-Hour Energy”.

Of course, the common thread throughout all of this rambling stemmed back to the faults of one man: President Barack Obama. Pastor Kent Clark lamented how the Lord had been “banned from America” by the current administration. Pete Hoekstra — Sen. Stabenow’s Republican challenger — criticized the strength of our national security. Ben Bishop, the tween son of Oakland County’s Mike Bishop, was given a minute to talk about how his generation wouldn’t have the ability to pay off the debts that Obama’s spending would incur upon them. Thank you, Mike, for sacrificing your son in order to complete this three-ring circus of a rally. Ugh.

I realize that the Republican campaign has never been about winning votes through fair play and ethics, but when Ryan and his cronies are coming out with a holier-than-thou attitude about the dirtiness of the political process, how can you not feel like your intelligence has been insulted a little bit? “Obama is criticizing.” Ryan said. “He’s going from hope and change, to attack and blame. We’re not gonna fall for that.” What do you call what you’ve all been doing for the past two hours, Paul? It’s disheartening, to say the least, that by the end of the night, the only speaker who had said anything with even an ounce of goodwill towards the opposition was none other than Michigan’s own, Kid Rock.

“I strongly believe,” he said, “that it’s possible to disagree about politics without hating each other.” That may be true, Kid, but just be sure to let your friends know it too.

The speech, which lasted just under 30 minutes, focused much of its attention on the strides Obama has made in just four years despite “enormous opposition” and the need for Americans to join together to achieve prosperity instead of leaving individuals to fend for themselves.

Clinton started his speech by saying he had been reading local press coverage of his upcoming visit to the university, and was particularly troubled by one student who was quoted as saying he didn’t know if he would vote because he wasn’t sure if his vote mattered.

“Let me just say this,” Clinton said. “The Republicans in New Hampshire think it matters, that’s why they work so hard to keep you from voting.”

Clinton referenced the legal controversy surrounding out-of-state college students’ right to vote in New Hampshire. It was recently ruled that out-of-state students do have the right to register to vote in the Granite State, though critics of this decision are pushing to appeal it.

“Over 40 years ago, the United States Supreme Court said that every full-time college student in the United States had an absolute constitutional right to register to vote either where their home was or where they went to college; they got to choose,” Clinton said, before pushing UNH students to send politicians a message with their opinion on the appeal.

Much of Clinton’s speech was focused on the economy, and he emphasized the idea that one of the main questions concerning this election is who is going to get the country out of its mess as quickly as possible.

“It is my opinion, and not just mine, but the opinion of every single serious economist with whom I have spoken, that no president — not me, not any of my predecessors — could undo all the damage that President Obama found on the day he took office in just four years,” Clinton said.

“The only reason this is a race is that we’re Americans, we’re impatient, we want things fixed the day before yesterday and the economy’s not fixed,” he said. “The president’s economic plan is better in the short-run, better in the long-run, and a vision of ‘we’re all in this together’ is a heck of a lot better than ‘you’re on your own.’”

Speaking directly to the crowd of UNH students, Clinton referenced the changes made to student loans under Obama’s leadership and the impact they have had and will continue to have on the affordability of a college education.

“The university and college and community college system in America is our great hope for a modern, 21st century, middle-class economy,” he said. “But the trends are a great threat to it.”

According to Clinton, America has dropped from first to 16th in the world in the percentage of young adults who, at 24-25 years old, actually have college degrees, even though America is still in the top of young adults who enroll in higher education.

To combat this, Clinton said, Obama utilized a program that had been used on an experimental basis during Clinton’s presidency where the federal government gave money for the student loans directly to the universities and set aside a loan, rather than subsidizing the banks to do the same thing.

Under this program, Clinton said, students saved $9 million and lowered interest rates, and taxpayers saved $4 billion because nobody defaulted on their loans once they could repay them.

“The taxpayers came out ahead,” Clinton said.

Upon stating that Romney intends to repeal this, Clinton emphasized the importance of college education in moving the economy forward.

“Not every job in the 21st century requires a four-year degree, but almost every job will be created by someone who has one,” he said.

Clinton then moved toward the subject of health care, which gained many cheers of approval from the crowd as he announced that people under 26, under the Affordable Care Act, could still use their parent’s health-care plans.

He stated that health care is an “economic issue that threatens your future” because many countries advertise the fact that they have better health outcomes and costs than America. According to him, Americans spend 17.8 percent of their income on health care annually, while none of its major competitors spend more than 11.8 percent.

“That is one trillion dollars a year,” Clinton said, saying it was a trillion dollars a year that could be put toward science, research development, helping small businesses hire more employees and giving pay raises to people to raise their income.

Clinton wrapped up his speech by hitting home with the point of moving forward together, saying that although New Hampshire is famous for its independent citizens and emphasis on personal responsibility, the country should feel no shame in the country banding together to fix its problems.

“We have got to stop saying that there’s a contradiction between being self-reliant and standing on your own two feet and knowing you have to take responsibility for yourself, and saying that your neighbor’s future and your future are bound up together, and we’re better if we go forward together,” he said.

Yes, Romney won. While Obama effused confidence in his plan and maintained a calm demeanor, there was something listless about his movements all night. Perhaps unaware that, for the first time, debates would be viewed on split-screen television, Obama spent much of the night looking down and taking notes while Romney was talking. He was unprepared for Romney’s blatant denial of Obama’s assertions that the plan Romney champions would add $5 trillion to the deficit through tax cuts for the rich, repeating it as though stunned when Romney insisted this wasn’t the case.

To his credit, Romney—who trailed Obama in the polls coming into the night—played the attacker from the beginning and went after the president’s record on issues from the economy to energy policy. He was animated from the onset and nothing, not even moderator Jim Lehrer, stopped him from a harrowing attack on Obama’s record. The aggression was borne out of desperation; Romney has steadily been falling further and further back in the polls since the Democratic National Convention, and nothing truly positive has bolstered his campaign since.

Yet, if the expectations for Romney had not been so low coming into the debate would we have been all that surprised? The knock on Mitt is his inability to empathize with his constituents—his comments about the “47 percent” refueled criticism that he is out-of touch—but he displayed a talent for debating during the Republican primaries. His one gaffe, offering to bet Rick Perry $10,000 on an outcome, was tactless but displayed his comfort on the stage.

You could have watched this debate without sound and proclaimed him the victor, much as you could during the Republican primaries. Here Mitt looks more comfortable than at formal functions; his body language is positive, and his expression reflects his eagerness for confrontation. Obama’s reputation as a great orator is well deserved, but Romney is no slouch in this department. Had we come into this debate acknowledging Romney’s skills, perhaps the result would not have been so shocking.

Similarly, it is important to acknowledge the nature of the first debate. The discussion topics—the economy and health care—lent themselves to a discussion of Obama’s record. They are major topics in the election, no doubt, but topics that Obama was unable to turn into a discussion of Romney’s history. Phrases like “the one percent,” “Bain Capital,” and “the forty-seven percent” were conspicuously absent from the president’s lexicon as he abstained from a full-on attack of Romney’s record.

The first debate routinely goes in favor of the challenger, and there are two more to come. In the meantime, Obama will likely regroup and prepare to come out focused and on the attack from the first question. In the first debate, as The Atlantic’s James Fallows writes, challengers are “elevated simply by being matched on equal footing with the president.” Obama was also forced to publicly argue with someone directly opposed to his views for the first time in four years, while Romney spent his winter crisscrossing the country swapping intellectual banter with Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich. While not the liberal standard-bearer Romney faced Wednesday, the trio provided a diverse array of attacks on Romney’s record he quickly learned to parry and avoid.

Polling shows a wide discrepancy in the number of Americans who declared Romney the victor—as much as three to one by CNN’s estimate—but we should view these findings with caution. A simple random dialing method of polling American households still riding the emotional crest of the debate is insufficient evidence for how this will affect the race moving forward. The number of undecided voters remaining is a minute fraction of the total electorate, and few committed votes likely switched sides after Wednesday night.

Media hyperbole like Sullivan’s draws good ratings but is too preemptive. There are three more debates and, if the 67.2 million Americans that tuned in Wednesday night are any indicator, the country will be watching. Next week’s matchup of two political bulldogs in Joe Biden and Paul Ryan should set the tone for a more adversarial Barack Obama and Mitt Romney matchup the week after.

Certainly Romney outperformed expectations, but lest we forget, some were on the edge of declaring the race over as little as a week ago. The first debate favors the challenger, the second the incumbent. This story is far from over.

While Romney might not be making one of the blatant mistakes he’s become known for this election season, the move holds little political value for his campaign — it won’t impact the Latino vote to any significant extent, and it could potentially alienate his more conservative supporters.

At first glance, supporting Obama’s program seems like a great move for Romney. He comes off as open-minded and sympathetic toward a demographic that has criticized him for being out-of-touch. Changing his stance could also be a sign of compromise in an extremely uncompromising election.

Upon further inspection, however, the decision seems to be almost entirely politically motivated. In light of the fact that Romney has had to put his foot in his mouth more than once while discussing immigration policy, his new position is more a political Band-Aid than a genuine effort to improve important immigration issues. It should also be noted that rather than adding anything to the debate on the immigration issue, Romney is simply taking one pre-existing program and promising not to cancel it. And he isn’t even referencing actual immigrants — since the program deals only with younger illegal “immigrants” — most of whom did not choose to come here, but were brought to the United States at a young age — this is far from an actual plan to tackle the problem of illegal immigration.

Though making such a politically — rather than ethically — motivated decision might seem harmless, Romney’s new stance could prove detrimental to his campaign and his complete plan for immigration, which he says will be implemented in his first term.

With relatively high Latino populations in swing states such as Colorado and Nevada, the Latino vote will be a major determining factor in the election. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, however, 69 percent of Latino voters support Obama as of last month. To change the minds of such an overwhelming majority would require much more effort on Romney’s part than agreeing once with Obama — such as creating his own policy and campaigning with it openly.

Obviously, Romney isn’t approaching the Latino voting bloc as effectively as he could be. According to a CNN poll taken last month, 44 percent of Latino voters consider the economy to be the most important issue facing the country today versus 14 percent who chose immigration. To appeal to a demographic that overwhelmingly supports Obama — who has been criticized for vague and ineffective economic policy — Romney should have focused on this rather than make a small compromise to his immigration policy.

His compromise will, however, be seriously taken into account by another demographic: staunch conservatives, who will interpret the move as weakness on Romney’s part. It also might offend those who strongly believe in rigid anti-immigration policy. This is a group of voters that Romney has locked down. Though it is unlikely conservatives will instead support Obama, Romney should be keeping them as close as possible.

Romney’s commitment to continue Obama’s immigration program is inconsistent with his previously harsh immigration policy, which could cause problems down the road if he is elected president. And Romney will have trouble following through on his other initiatives regarding immigration if he has to continue supporting a policy that isn’t consistent with his platform. To truly improve his numbers in the polls, Romney must focus on making concrete and effective policies rather than insignificant compromises.

We’re not talking about far-right religious morals. This morality is one of simple right and wrong — morals in their most basic sense. I find it interesting that Romney would reference morality when talking about deficit reduction, given his policies and his choice of running mate.

“The Path to Prosperity,” better known as the Ryan Budget, calls for massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Pell Grants. This essentially amounts to balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. In a recent New York Times article, Larkin Warren, a self-professed “former welfare mom” told her story of getting through four years of college by heavily relying on government assistance. She took out student loans, accepted Pell Grants and used food stamps. Her road was an arduous one, but with perseverance, hard work and a lot of help, she eventually graduated and found gainful employment.

Romney’s injection of morality into the debate will likely go unnoticed, but it shouldn’t. The plans that he and his running mate have put forward are, at best, of questionable morality. Though Romney and Ryan both preach “self-reliance” in accordance with their religious morals, they’re largely dodging the elephant in the room. Cutting welfare, whether it’s for students, the elderly, children or just people down on their luck, is horrifically immoral. People need these programs, especially during a period of economic crisis — not just to advance in society, but to get by day-to-day. If Romney wants to talk morals, he needs to justify how he can propose hurting the poor so badly to balance the budget.

Yes, I realize that paying off our federal debt would be a moral achievement. The massive debt we carry makes our country extremely vulnerable as well as weak in diplomatic relations. It would be good for us to be debt-free, or at least minimally in debt. But we cannot alleviate this problem on the backs of our poor. The people in this country who have the hardest lives already shouldn’t be asked to sacrifice even more when there are other ways to balance the budget.

As President Obama asserted, the very wealthiest in America can afford to pay a little more. I’m not proposing we balance the budget purely through increased taxes on the rich — that isn’t moral either. Plus, it would staunch economic growth. The facts, however, are that the richest 1 percent of the country own more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth and pay historically low tax rates. Everyone needs to pay his or her fair share, especially those who can afford a little extra. By increasing taxes, we can begin to cut down our deficit while still providing essential services to grow the economy.

I commend Romney for bringing morals into the discussion — morals, after all, are the basis of law. Romney’s ideas on economic morals, however, are just plain backwards. If I were President Obama, I’d be sure to point that out at the next debate, especially considering the sharp contrast his economic policies present. Romney was the clear winner of Wednesday night’s debate, but he shouldn’t have been. After taking such extreme positions during the primary, not to mention a slew of gaffes and Obama’s campaign ads, which have painted a less than flattering picture of the former governor, I was expecting Romney to be left in the dust during the first debate. President Obama, however, faltered, while the Romney pounded his best talking points home.

Here’s a piece of advice for the president: if he wants to win, he should remind everyone that the guy at the other podium wants to cut help for the poor. Then he should ask the American people if they’d consider someone willing to do that to be “moral.”

Walk up to any business owner or manager and ask them the top five things wrong with their business and possible solutions to those problems, and it’s a sure thing that person can rattle them off in but a minute or two with no thought, and probably have a dozen more problems to give you. And it’s no feat for them to do so really; the business is their life.

Whether you like the idea or not, for competent, diligent, successful people, work does tend to become one’s life, and every little facet of one’s work is as known as the proverbial back of one’s hand. The same is certainly true, and hopefully even moreso given the stakes, for the president of the United States of America.

It was with the typical dismay of this election cycle that we found a story on CNN Tuesday afternoon about President Barack Obama taking a break from studying for the debates to speak with workers at the local campaign office. The president quipped that his staff was keeping him busy boning up on the campaign’s message, making him “do his homework.”

Of course, there’s nothing to be shocked by there; that a candidate would study for a debate is nothing new. No doubt Mitt Romney is off somewhere doing the same thing as you read this. However, that the president of this nation needs to cram to deliver information about the country and his proposals to move forward is just plain disheartening and revelatory of the modern so-called “politician’s” lack of actual political skill.

The presidency is Obama’s life and has been for the last four years. There are few people in the world as qualified to talk about government and matters of American domestic and foreign policy as he is. A truly talented politician president, one who possesses that indescribable spark of the truly political individual, would have no need to study for a debate at all. He could simply waltz on stage and tell it like it is.

And the people would love him for it.

Unless, of course, what’s being studied is a canned message developed by apolitical propagandists who are less interested in public interaction and more interested in scamming the most votes out of our broken electoral system. Furthermore, that candidates occupy themselves memorizing what amounts to a script reveals just how much of a media sideshow elections and politics have become.

Candidates are now asked meaningless questions like “Coke or Pepsi?” Candidates jumping through flaming hoops and balancing balls on their noses will likely be next in the circus the debates have become. Our candidates for public office have been reduced to mere stage actors giving a performance for a witless audience. And while TV networks rake in all the advertising dollars, American civic life dwindles further.

One day Americans will all wake up and ask, “Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?” On that day, it’ll be too late.

Manning was arrested on May 26, 2010 and has been under U.S. military detainment ever since.

Recently, Manning’s defense attorney, David Coombs, filed a motion stating that Manning’s charges should be dismissed because his right to a speedy trial has been completely violated.

“As of the date of this motion, Pfc. Manning has been in pretrial confinement for 845 days,” Coombs said. “With trial scheduled to commence on Feb. 4, 2013, Pfc. Manning will have spent a grand total of 983 days in pre-trial confinement before even a single piece of evidence is offered against him.”

Whether he is labeled a whistleblower or a cyber-terrorist, the handling of such a nonviolent criminal case by the military’s judicial system is absolutely horrendous. The underlying motive for journalists and the press is to inform an otherwise uninformed democratic society so people within can choose their political candidates accordingly.

Never in the history of the U.S. has any administration utilized the Espionage Act so frequently as President Barack Obama’s administration, and the exponential expansion of information into the hands of people through technology undoubtedly plays a role in the increase of these cases.

It’s ironic that Manning’s imposition of restraint could be more than 630 days before the trial for exposing the espionage acts of our government and then get charged as a spy.

We are entering a new age where government officials cannot protect their classified information from the people, and we are starting to see an increased vigilance among the Internet community as a form of civil disobedience.

Users’ understanding of the Internet is increasing at a remarkable degree. The advances have been rapid, and it’s getting harder for anybody, including our government, to hide anything.

Manning’s case proves that Internet-related activities are going to fall under ever-increasing scrutiny until it is no longer a forum for the people.

Granted, Manning most likely had animosity toward the military and his peers because of the treatment toward his alleged “gender confusion,” as the military calls it. Wherever his motives to leak the information came from, Manning kept the military’s over-reaching arm in check.

The crimes blatantly committed on the videos are far worse than anything Manning has done, but none of these personnel were convicted or tried for any of these crimes.

This case will undoubtedly set a precedent to decide how much the government can get away with in regards to military operations and prisoner detainment.

While the media tried to generate ad revenue off other stories like the Trayvon Martin case, the Manning case fell to the wayside. It’s easy to get the public riled up over issues like race, but getting the public riled up against the military-industrial complex is against the corporate conglomerates’ and governmental institution’s interests.

This was the first of three presidential debates, the topic being domestic policy. Both debaters showed their passion for their different plans and both described the direction that America is heading in the time of a economic crisis.  Romney said he sees the national debt as more than just dollars.

“It is not a economic issue, it is a moral issue,” Romney said.  ”We don’t want to pass that debt on to the next generation, it just isn’t moral.”

Obama defended himself by stating that he was thrown into a debt crisis of more than one trillion dollars his first day of being president.

“It doesn’t matter where we have been, it matters where we are going,” said Obama.

Romney continued by explaining how he will close the economic deficit and fix the debt crisis. Romney stressed the importance of job creation and small businesses. He advocated for competition and people building their own dreams.

“We also believe for individuals the right to pursue their dreams, not have the government substitute themselves to pursue their dreams,” said Romney, referring to the U.S. Constitution.

Romney also said that the fundamental role of the federal government is to keep the American people safe, secondly to allow them to succeed. Obama was confident that the country is headed for recovery, and is only a matter of time before improvements are made.

“Four years ago we were going through a crisis and my future vision for America remains undiminished,” Obama said. He continued by saying that he wants to channel American people’s dreams so that “they can succeed and so that it is fair.”

According to both candidates, the direction that America takes will ultimately be in the hands of voters.

Barack Obama:

When he first took office, President Barack Obama seemed like a dream come true for those concerned with civil liberties. He decried his predecessor’s record of torture, overreaching presidential power and secrecy, and he ran on promises of an open government.

He did fulfill some of those promises. He banned torture (including waterboarding), promised to close our prison at Guantanamo Bay and closed the CIA’s secret prisons. But it quickly became apparent that Obama was not the white knight civil libertarians had been hoping for: His record of abuses matches, if not outdoes, that of any president who came before him.

• He gave in to a stubborn Congress and ceased efforts to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

• Obama has continued indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay and brought the policy home by signing the National Defense Authorization Act this year. The act gives the military the power to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, citizens included, who is suspected of terrorist connections.

• He has continued the warrantless surveillance of American citizens started by his predecessor.

• Obama has demonstrated an enthusiasm for targeted killings and drone warfare, which not only cause large numbers of civilian deaths but also raise troubling questions about the bounds of executive power.

• Perhaps worst of all, he has proven he can and will order the assassination of U.S. citizens abroad based on suspected terrorist connections. Obama bragged about the CIA-orchestrated death of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric who had not been charged for a crime or tried before a court when a U.S. drone strike ended his life.

• His administration has refused to prosecute CIA operatives or other officials responsible for the program of torture under former President George W. Bush. In not investigating and prosecuting those responsible for war crimes, Obama violated international law, and his actions justify the refusal of other states to investigate their own alleged war crimes.

• Domestic dissent also has seen its share of attacks in the form of police harassment and harsh repression.

The White House counsel has tried to explain this radical departure from the views Obama campaigned on in 2008, telling the Wall Street Journal, “Until one experiences [the presidency] first hand, it is difficult to appreciate fully how you need flexibility in a lot of circumstances.”

It’s clear that no one but former presidents truly can understand the pressures and necessities of the job, but no pressure is great enough to justify the violation of the basic individual rights that underlie our society and protect us from federal power.

No, it’s more likely that Obama simply is continuing a long presidential tradition. Since the 1930s, presidents have chosen national security over civil liberties — whether it was the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, the Loyalty Program that paved the way for McCarthyism or the embracing of CIA covert actions and “management” of the press.

Between the president’s duty to protect the nation, the daily briefs on a steady flow of threats and the opposing party’s readiness to strike at any perceived weakness, presidents are pressured to favor security over vital civil liberties.

Obama is not excepted from these pressures. And in response, he has sold out the American people in order to vastly expand the reach of executive power. Obama has eroded citizens’ most vital protections against state abuses in the name of supposedly protecting them from outside threats.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, declared himself “disgusted” with Obama’s record. We have to agree.

Mitt Romney:

Without four years as president, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has no national security record to scrutinize. But his campaign statements say enough.

• Romney has no plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. In 2007, he said, “I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. … My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.”

• In 2012, Romney said in a debate he, too, would have signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which gave the president the power to indefinitely detain citizens suspected of terrorist ties. Obama signed the act on Dec. 31.

• He has vocally supported the same warrantless surveillance used by Obama and condoned by the PATRIOT Act. In a November 2011 debate on National Security, he said, “We need tools when war is waged domestically … We’ll use the Constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes, but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds, we will use instead a very different form of law.”

• In the same debate, he shrugged off concerns about individual rights being eroded by government power: “And I hear from time to time people say, ‘Hey, wait a second, we have civil liberties we have to worry about.’ But don’t forget the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive …”

• He also agreed with Obama’s assassination of an American citizen in Yemen without due process.

• His campaign spokeswoman said last year Romney does not believe waterboarding is torture and would not promise to ban the technique. She said he would not specify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” a Romney administration would use against terrorists.

• In 2009, he decried the possibility of investigations into CIA torture allegations. He worried that such investigations might cause other nations to refuse future partnerships in which prisoners are shipped to those countries for interrogations that violate international law (known as extraordinary rendition).

Unlike Obama, Romney has every reason to stick to these stances. His base would expect nothing less, and the appearance of being tough on national security has won him major points.

But for those in the Republican Party who lean more toward Libertarian views — or anyone concerned about government overreach and human rights — there seems to be no good choice come November.

After canceling a first attempt to land at Charlotte Douglas International Airport due to a thunder cloud storm cell sitting on top of the airport runway, the vice president and motorcade successfully made the second landing attempt.

“Air Force Two had a ‘missed approach’ to the runway and proceeded to circle the area while waiting for the weather to clear. Once the weather cleared, the aircraft came back in and then landed on the second approach with no problems,” the vice president’s office said.

After landing, Biden spoke at The Fillmore Charlotte, criticizing Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s stance on tax reform. He said the Republican’s policies would hurt the middle and lower classes by giving tax cuts to the rich and raising taxes for the middle class.

Biden blamed former president George W. Bush for the recession the country is facing.

“They talk about the Great Recession like it fell out of the sky in 2008,” Biden said, also placing the blame on Bush’s tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “What did it do? It produced the Great Recession, which absolutely eviscerated the middle class.”

Biden also commented on the leaked video in which Romney discounted 47 percent of Americans, saying they will vote for President Barack Obama because they are government freeloaders who pay no income taxes, calling themselves “victims” who will not “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Both Biden and Obama have made a note to mention Romney’s off-the-cuff comments during the campaign.

After leaving Charlotte, Biden traveled to UNC-Asheville, delivering similar remarks to the ones earlier in the day.

Obama and Romney will face off Wednesday Oct. 3 from 9-10:30 p.m. in a presidential debate on the topic of domestic policy.

Cynthia Kellerman, manager of Penn State’s ID+ Office, said the office was planning to issue stickers with expiration dates to students who were registered to vote in order to appease the voter ID law.

She said the new student IDs being issued would also have an expiration date on them.

“At this point, we’re not going to change any of that,” Kellerman said. “While this is still in and out of the courts, we’re going to do what we put in place to avoid backtracking again.”

Local Senator Jake Corman, R-Centre, said the ruling shows members of the judicial party are trying to ensure a fair and just election.

“We’ve had elections for years without it and we’ll have another one, and that’s fine,” Corman said. “We’ll see down the road if this gets into place.”

Corman said the United States has been modernizing the voting system for years to make sure every vote is counted, and said the voter ID law is just another step in the evolution of the voting system.

Tor Michaels, chief of staff for Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, said it was good the voter ID law would not be enforced in the upcoming election.

He said many people would push to repeal the law altogether because there has not been one documented case of voter fraud in the state in recent years.

“I believe that in 2013, we should revisit the whole subject,” Michaels said. “I think we should reset the deck here and have another earnest debate about the propriety of such a measure.”

Michaels said for the presidential election, the commonwealth would proceed as it did in the primary with what it called a “soft roll.”
He said for a soft roll, election workers asked voters if they had an ID, but if they did not, they were still eligible to vote.

In a statement released by Gov. Tom Corbett and Secretary of State Carol Aichele, Corbett said they were pleased by the judge’s decision to uphold the constitutionality of the law.

“While we believe we have made it possible for every registered voter who needs voter identification to obtain one, we’ll continue our efforts for the next election and all future elections to make sure every registered voter has the proper identification in an effort to preserve the integrity of our voting process in Pennsylvania,” Corbett said in the release.

State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, said he did not believe the law would disenfranchise voters.

He said the requirement of identification is very common now, especially after Sept. 11, and said this was just another step in the process in the modernization of the voting system.

“Those who opposed the bill at all should be content and those who wanted it need to accept that that is the process,” Benninghoff said.

However, Drew McGehrin, president of the Penn State College Democrats, said it was the correct decision for the court to postpone the enforcement of the law because of the timing of the law.

“It’ll definitely make it easier for people to exercise the right to vote, especially on a student level,” McGehrin (senior-religious studies and history) said. “The voter ID added an additional hurdle that, in my opinion, was unnecessary to vote. With this being struck down, it’ll allow more people to exercise that right.”

The Penn State College Republicans declined comment.

Low voter turnout has been a point of complaint for spirited citizens for decades. Civil-minded types will point to dismal returns from the ballot box as a failure to perform basic civil duties. This is especially true at crucial local and state elections where a single vote carries much more weight than one vote in large national elections.

But registered voters staying home may be a sign of an improving and established democracy rather than a failing one.

On Nov. 6, millions of Americans will perform their “duties” and walk out of a polling place proudly displaying an “I Voted” sticker, proving to their communities that they care about their country. The Get Out the Vote and voter registration drives sprout up across the country in election years to preach that regardless who you cast a ballot for, showing up to the polls is positive.

It’s not negative to feel good about participating in government or influencing others to do so, but isn’t strange that a major motivation for influencing elections is personal pride?

More importantly, we should question whether pushing citizens to the polls at all costs is truly beneficial to our democracy.

Every vote casted should be made by an educated and informed citizen who has a stake in the effect of their selection. The most inconsistent voters, those who show up to one election but not another, are also the most likely to be less educated voters.

There are two reasons why low voter turnout can actually benefit government and even representation.

First, those who aren’t motivated to show up to the polls are unlikely to be educated on or have an opinion about the issues and candidates on the ballot. Sure, apathy is never a good thing, but is ignorantly casting votes any better? Just the opposite: it’s worse.

Second, voting on any and every issue as a matter of civic duty means that voters will inevitably select between options on policy or platforms that don’t affect their lives, diluting the weight of every vote cast by an affected citizen.

In some cases, this is okay; an educated voter can choose an option likely to benefit the whole of society. However, in most instances, an unaffected voter will find it hard to understand the reach of their vote and how they are changing other citizen’s lives.

Voting is a citizen’s right, not a duty. Those who choose to vote, however, ought to understand the civic duty of being an informed voter. There are no points for bubbling in ballot choices without researching their meaning.

Sooners, show up to the polls this November. Being involved can, and should, be absolutely positive. Show up prepared and for the right reasons and you will be part of the most important part of our democratic system.

But, afterward, understand that the “I Voted” sticker on your chest doesn’t tell the whole story. Maybe that sticker should include a modifier in the form of an asterisk:

“I voted*

*responsibly.”

The law, Assembly Bill 2189, applies to individuals who meet the criteria for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Barack Obama announced in July.

Starting in January 2013, documentation of deferred action will satisfy the Department of Motor Vehicle’s requirement to prove lawful residence in the United States to apply for a driver’s license, according to the newly-signed law.

To be a part of the deferred action program, individuals must have traveled to the United States before they were 16 years old, currently be between the ages of 15 and 31, and have lived continuously in the country for the past five years, the Daily Bruin reported in August.

The measure is estimated to allow about 400,000 undocumented individuals to obtain driver’s licenses in the state, according to the Sacramento Bee.

“This is an important first step to making sure our highways are safe for all Californians,” Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who introduced the law, in a prepared statement today. “I look forward to continuing to work with (Brown’s) office to make sure that all motorists in this state are licensed, tested and insured.”

Opponents of the law say the state should be more cautious about issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented individuals than stipulated in the new law, because they can be used for many other identification purposes, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Maybe, despite killing of Osama bin Laden, the Obama team is actually a bunch of “soft” warriors who want the United States to be liked, especially in the Middle East.

I, for one, called it right when the attack took place on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, which left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. I wrote it was “probably a group related to al-Qaida and its offspring is behind the escalating crisis.” I concluded so on Sept. 13. (See my Des Moines Register blog.)

I wrote on Sept. 19 for Insider Iowa: “The United States clearly underestimated the strength and intentions of radical groups in Libya. There is now little question. The group is Ansar al-Sharia, which sympathizes with al-Qaida and appears to have a base in Derna near the Egyptian border. What now becomes a huge political issue is whether President Barack Obama and his administration failed in his obligation to be the steward of U.S. national security and conduct robust foreign policy.” You can look that up.

Now the Obama team is finally saying it probably was a deliberate attack and probably connected to terrorism.

Why did I get it right on Sept. 19? Because being a great intelligence analyst does not include having “political waffling shields” that slow me down. I screened all the possible information that came out on the days after the attack. From news media, from officials in Libya, from European and Latin American news sources. All of the information pointed to a terrorist attack.

It was an “elegant” attack. It involved very precise powerful weapons. It was followed by a superb intelligence operation in which the attackers found the “safe house” to which the dying U.S. ambassador was taken, and they finished him off at this venue.

Reaching a quick and accurate assessment on what this event might have been would have been easy.

“Spontaneous” demonstrations caused by anger at an obscure video insulting the Prophet Muhammad caused the Tripoli attack? Not on your life. Maybe Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland on March 16, 1939, was also a “spontaneous attack.”

That’s not how the real world rolls.

U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who spun the spontaneous attack notion until a few days ago, should be able to make a quick judgment on what is a demonstration “gone bad” and what’s a coordinated, sophisticated attack.

The Republicans are now launching a concerted attack on the Obama administration, claiming a cover up and calling it “Libya-gate” (after the infamous Watergate break in that brought down the Nixon administration). Are the Republicans right? Was it a massive intelligence failure not to know who’s who in Libya? Was it sloppy security work to have a virtually-unprotected consulate in Benghazi? Was it an act of extreme political correctness for the United States to virtually apologize for the anti-Muhammad video that was thought to have triggered the demonstrations in Cairo and other parts of the Islamic world? Will all of this have an impact on the Obama reelection campaign? Could this be an “October Surprise,” one of those last-minute events that have so often shifted the outcome of a presidential election?

Why, so many weeks later, is the FBI team still in the capital of Libya, 400 miles away from where the attack occurred? It’s all very disturbing.

Of course, the intelligence agencies also missed the horde of killers who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.

Whoa. Capitalist?

The idea of the “invisible hand of the free market,” an idea introduced by 18th-century Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith, manifested as a metaphor to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. It has come to be a cry for the deregulation of the free market, a staple of “pure” capitalism.

But Smith never mentions capitalism in “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

We have come to view economic systems like those in the United States as pure capitalism and revolted against what is broadcast as pure socialism or pure communism. We even bristle at the idea that the slightest socialism might be creeping into our marketplace. (It’s part of the reason the new health care law is so highly debated.)

Capitalism, defined as, “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth” is lauded in the United States. Here, it is held up as the example of what a democratic society can do, as the pinnacle of freedom, being able to have complete control over “the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth.”

Socialism, on the other hand, is defined as “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.” So what does that mean?

It means that, as a whole, as a community, the people decide what to make, what to fund and how to divide up what is made and funded. Generally this is taken to mean that the government has control, and while that might operationally be the case, it is not in principle. The government stands for, acts for, the people. The community as a whole.

Countries like Sweden and Norway are commonly defined as “socialist” because they have this strong central government. However, most of their industries are privately run, standing against the idea of a purely socialist society. Some countries, like Sri Lanka and Portugal, discuss socialism in their constitutions, but still others ascribe to various branches of socialism: democratic socialism, African socialism, Arab socialism.

Then there are those countries that identify as socialist in their constitutions but are seen as communist by the rest of the world. How does that happen?

Communism, which branches off socialism, is defined as “a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.” Here, then, is where the state — not the people — makes decisions for the country.

Countries like China, Vietnam and Cuba officially describe themselves as communist, while other countries like North Korea are described externally as communist. (North Korea is an interesting example because, although it is state-run, its military class is elevated above the rest of the population, contradicting the communist idea of a classless society.)

These distinctions are important. Incredibly important. They illustrate the nuances that make economic systems so complex and resistant to the single labels “capitalism,” “communism” or “socialism.”

The United States, with our capitalist economic system, already has aspects of communism and socialism. We operate government-run prisons. We provide health care for soldiers and the elderly. We require drivers to have car insurance. We pay taxes to support national infrastructure. We have copyright and patent laws that limit what we can produce. We have labor laws that limit how we can produce.

The laws that we have now allow our market to work. They allow entrepreneurs to open new businesses, to expand and create jobs. They protect your great idea from getting stolen by me. They protect my land from getting taken by you. They create the opportunity for competition and creativity that would not happen if we relied solely on the concept of supply and demand.

We don’t have a free-market economy because we need government intervention to make any concept of a free market possible. The system that exists now, as flawed as it is, is a blend of the better parts of a myriad of systems. Whether the balance is the one we need (whether we need more capitalism or more socialism or more regulation or more monopolies) will always be up for debate. But it is only when we can understand the accurate definitions of such complicated systems that such a debate can even begin.

The new ordinance will force San Francisco businesses to swap plastic for paper and start charging customers 10 cents per bag. Customers will also receive 10 cents off for each bag they bring in. Eateries are exempt until July 2013 due to food safety and hygiene.

The San Francisco State U. bookstore will not be affected by the ordinance because their bags are biodegradable, said Husam Erciyes, the Bookstore’s director of strategic projects and marketing. The Bookstore also offers reusable bags for 99 cents.

“I’ve never seen an institution like this University, or a city like this striving to improve our quality of life,” said SFSU broadcast and electronic communication arts student Joseph Stewart. “It’s mind-blowing to say the least, and I’m glad to be here to see it firsthand.”

Janate Qutami, manager at the Village Market and Pizza said the demand for bags is little, unless the items are either heavy or a substantial amount. She said students should be encouraged to carry around eco-friendly shopping bags.

“I like it when they bring their own bags, and I hope everyone else does it too,” Qutami said.

There is some confusion surrounding the meaning of socialism. In the economics discipline, these colloquial “isms” are generally not used. Economic systems are described as market economies or command economies, roughly analogous to capitalism and communism, respectively. In the former, prices are determined by markets and capital is privately owned. In the latter, prices are determined by a planning board and capital is publicly owned.

From time to time I hear befuddling discussion about the socialist economies of Europe. Many Americans seem to consider much of Europe, especially Scandinavian countries, as socialist because of their expansive programs for wealth redistribution. However, these are economies with private capital, successful corporations and prices determined by markets. If Norway, Sweden or Denmark were socialist economies, it would not be a stretch to say the same of the U.S. Among Americans, there is some ambiguity surrounding the term socialism, but for most of the world, and for much of history, the varieties of socialist theory have been recognized as roughly synonymous with communism.

This ambiguity resulting from conceptual discussion points to the second major flaw in the debate between capitalism and socialism. These are theoretical concepts. They do not actually exist in reality.

Since the Constitution was written, the U.S. has operated a publicly financed post office. Milton Friedman even referred to the military as a socialist activity because the capital is owned by the state and proposed that the U.S. is 45 percent socialist. These examples illustrate how the United States’ economy has never consisted of complete private ownership of capital. In the 20th century, with the surge of entitlement programs, the economy shifted much further from strict capitalism. We must recognize the inadequacy of simply labeling the U.S. with capitalism.

For real world observations, it is necessary to imagine a spectrum. Consider a pure market economy on one side and a pure command economy on the other, from complete private ownership to complete public ownership, from markets to collective planning as the sole mechanism to determine prices. Like the U.S., there are no pure market economies among developed nations. At no point in the history of the Soviet Union or any other planned economy was capital ever 100 percent publicly owned or markets completely abolished. What we must recognize is that there are no examples in modern history of an economy at either extreme end of these spectrums. In other words, all developed economies of the world consist of some mix of capitalism and socialism.

Has capitalism failed? Is capitalism in crisis? These are not constructive questions. Pure capitalism is not the economic system of the U.S., or any country for that matter. The real question we need to ask is this: Where is the optimal place on the spectrum between private and public ownership, between free markets and planned controls?

So how do we determine the optimal place? Economics is a relatively young science, and it is still clouded with some theoretical subjectivity. Additionally, scientific experiments are impossible. It is not feasible to instruct two countries into a situation where all but one variable is held constant. However, data collection methods are improving, available data is expanding and every day we have more history to analyze.

For example, modern empirical evidence supports the incentives argument of neoclassical economics. Edward Prescott, a former University of Minnesota professor and Nobel Prize-winning economist, has done substantive research comparing the tax rates of G-7 nations. Americans now work more than Germans, French and British, when this was not the case in the 1970s. Prescott’s findings show that the large disparity in marginal tax rates that has arisen between the U.S. and other G-7 nations since the 1970’s accounts for the decreased productivity in Europe, Canada and Japan. Prescott’s studies show that even relatively small moves along the spectrum from private to public ownership of capital can have large, disincentive effects on the productivity of workers. Workers are most motivated when they earn the reward for themselves.

While increasing equality is a noble goal, we must not forget the adverse effects of redistribution. When you try to cut the economic pie more evenly, the pie gets smaller, and there’s less to share.

Americans need to change the way they talk about capitalism and socialism. The appropriate discussion is not a debate of alternatives. It’s a question of balance. The next time you hear someone say capitalism has failed or advocate socialism, remind him or her that those economic systems don’t truly exist.

Theoretically, affirmative action is no longer necessary. Perhaps it was 30 or 40 years ago, but society has evolved beyond discrimination, and now affirmative action only serves to discriminate against applicants who have enough merit but not the right pigment — or so critics of affirmative action policies say.

Still, research shows that most minorities, primarily black and Hispanic students, lag behind their white peers in college enrollment, retention and graduation. Evidence also suggests that race-conscious admissions policies positively influence college graduation rates, enrollment in graduate and professional programs and job prospects.

The case, Fisher v. University of Texas, was filed in 2008 by Abigail Fisher, a white woman who wanted to go to U. Texas, Austin. After she was rejected, Fisher filed suit, saying that the university’s inclusion of race in its admissions process is unconstitutional.

Lower courts sided with U. Texas, citing the earlier decision of Grutter v. Bollinger. The court’s opinion in the Grutter case established that a “narrowly tailored use” of race as a factor in admissions supports a “compelling interest” in diversity.

Last week, the Obama administration filed an amicus brief in support of U. Texas, saying that the use of race in the admissions process furthers a “vital interest” of the government. The brief argues that having a “well-qualified and diverse pool of university and service-academy graduates of all backgrounds” is critical to the future labor force.

But Fisher’s lawsuit against U. Texas and debate in other states makes it clear that Grutter, and earlier cases like Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, did little to clear up confusion.

States have used ballot initiatives to remove race-based affirmative action in college admissions, such as California and Arizona.

Arizona’s Proposition 107, which passed in 2010, banned the consideration of race, ethnicity or gender by units of state government, including public universities.

Prior to Prop 107’s approval, Robert Shelton, U. Arizona’s president at the time, vowed to find new ways to recruit diverse students if the measure passed.

In response, the “Yes on 107” campaign issued a press release, challenging Shelton to “walk his own talk” and give his job to someone else. The campaign argued that, if Shelton was so interested in increasing diversity, he would seek it in all positions, unless he believed “discriminating quotas should only apply to other people, but not to him.”

But critics fail to realize two things. First, people who suspect they are victims of reverse discrimination probably outnumber people who are actually victims. Colleges, especially schools with higher standards, often reject applicants of all races for reasons that don’t have anything to do with race.

Second, affirmative action isn’t about reversing discrimination or its history. Minority students don’t get a free pass as reparations for discrimination leveled against their ancestors.

Rather, a university must reflect the multicultural society that it will send its students into. Affirmative action is about making sure that a diversity of voices — shaped by experience and identity — contributes to the learning environment.

There’s no denying that affirmative action can be risky, as demonstrated by Princeton University, which is under federal investigation for allegedly requiring Asian-Americans to have stronger test scores and grades than other applicants. It must be exercised with caution. But diversity remains a compelling interest, no matter what year it is.

Contrary to what some people think, who gets to participate in the presidential debates is not governed by law. The debates are managed by an independent non-profit organization called the Commission on Presidential Debates, which works with major news organizations to put the events together. The Commission has three requirements for a candidate to be included in the debates: they must meet the Constitutional requirements to be elected president, they must be on the ballot in enough states to win the Electoral College and they must have received at least 15 percent support in five national polls.

These first two requirements are completely understandable – it would not be worth hearing from a candidate if he or she was under 35, not a citizen or not on the ballot in enough states to win the election. But it is the last requirement that we take issue with. Requiring candidates to have at least 15 percent support nationwide has effectively guaranteed that only Democrats and Republicans will qualify. And this is not because Americans love these two parties – a solid third of voters choose not to be affiliated with either of them.

Many polling organizations actually do not even include third-party candidates in their lists of options, making it impossible for them to garner 15 percent support. This exclusion, along with the minimal coverage in the mainstream media, leads to most Americans not being familiar with these candidates even if they agree with them wholeheartedly. In a recent Rasmussen poll that included Johnson, 63 percent of respondents said they did not know enough about Johnson to have any opinion on him at all. Despite this, Johnson is polling around 5 percent nationally, and as high as 13 percent in some states.

Americans deserve to be presented with as many viewpoints as is feasible. Of course, this must be balanced with the need for debates to be productive. Having dozens of candidates on stage would do little to educate voters on any of their options. A reform that would balance these competing interests would be for the Commission to throw out its 15 percent requirement and replace it with a graduating polling requirement. For example, there could be no polling requirement for the first debate, 7 percent support needed to participate in the second and 15 percent support needed for the third.

This would give the American public the opportunity to hear the voices of all candidates that could be elected. The field would gradually be narrowed, eliminating the candidates whose ideas are wildly unpopular and allowing the electorate to learn more about the viable candidates. While this would not solve all of the problems with American presidential elections, it would be a giant leap in the right direction.

Obama’s failure to follow through on plans for immigration reform during his first term was highlighted in the Univision forum. Moderator Jorge Ramos accused Obama of going back on his word, saying, “A promise is a promise and with all due respect, you didn’t keep that promise.”

Obama openly acknowledged this failed promise, thus directly damaging his re-election campaign and relationship with a key voter base that has consistently supported him since 2008. Mitt Romney, however, has not been in a position to affect change for the last four years, nor has he made unfulfilled promises.

The Univision forum will not have a huge impact on Latino voters’ opinions of Romney, whose potential for election relies on other voter demographics’ support. Obama, on the other hand, might need the support of this voting bloc now more than ever and will now have to come up with some concrete immigration policies if he is to hold onto the Latino vote.

Rewind to 2008, with Ramos again interviewing Obama, but when he was still a presidential candidate. Ramos asked if he would commit to immigration reform.

Obama’s response: “I cannot guarantee that it’s going to be in the first 100 days. But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I’m promoting and that I want to move that forward as quickly as possible.”

This bill did not happen in his first year. A major 2008 campaign promise to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants materialized in the form of the DREAM Act, but it failed to pass in the Senate. If he was truly committed to making that promise a reality, wouldn’t he have pushed harder for its passage by now?

Obama had four years to tackle immigration policy. Though there certainly have been other pertinent problems to deal with, there is no excuse for failing to deal with such an important and relevant issue when the administration assured voters on the campaign trail in 2008 that immigration reform would occur during Obama’s first term.

And he did not only fail to keep a promise to Latino voters, his administration had the highest number of deportations in any American presidency. He used bipartisanship in Congress and the rule of law as a scapegoat for the high deportation rate and his lack of action on immigration reform.

Romney’s interview — in which he discussed vague plans for a “permanent solution” to immigration and criticized Obama’s inaction concerning the issue — did little to boost his campaign. While it would have been a positive step forward for the Romney campaign if he had used the Univision interview as an opportunity to earn more clout with the Latino demographic, his campaign hasn’t faced any significant impact.

Voters can blame Romney for failing to articulate a strategy for immigration reform, but they can’t blame him for promising to pursue concrete action and not following through. That’s on Obama.

Both candidates’ Univision interviews were subpar, but it’s the current president who is under the most pressure and scrutiny to come up with a solution that speaks to Latino needs. Latino voters are predicted to come out in record numbers this election, and in 2008 they made up 9 percent of the electorate — losing their support would be a critical loss for Obama’s re-election.

It is the morning of September 11, 2012. Things seem to be looking up for President Obama — a slew of polls has come out showing that the President maintains a lead in a handful of swing states he will need to win come November. Today is the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and to commemorate this solemn occasion President Obama is heading off to Las Vegas for a ritzy fundraiser. Of course with the good domestic news on his mind the President doesn’t attend his daily intelligence briefing — this will be the sixth straight day that he has not been personally briefed. That can, of course, come later. Osama Bin Laden is dead after all, what could possibly go wrong, especially on 9/11? Since his inauguration, the president has attended the Presidential Daily Brief approximately 44 percent of the time, even less in the last year and a half.

Speaking in Ohio Wednesday, President Barack Obama and Rep