From The Economist

Not sure if I have the words to describe this one:

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.

By a 14 to 2 margin, the class voted him out of the class.

Barton said her son is in the process of being diagnosed with Aspberger's, a type of high-functioning autism.

[...]

Barton said after the vote, Alex's teacher asked him how he felt.

"He said, 'I feel sad,'" she said.

I had some terrible teachers in my public school days, but this cold-sore of a woman really takes the cake and punts it fifty or sixty yards downfield.

(H/T to Reason, which reminds us always to fear "the tyranny of the majority.")

So I have been wasting a good part of my day at work playing a game called "Budget Hero." Basically, you get to control how the government spends in money and the goal of the game to successfully balance the budget. After a few tries, I still have yet to balance the budget, but I will keep trying.

HT: Freakonomics Blog

Sales Of Spam Rise As Consumers Trim Food Costs

Should white parents seeking to adopt non-white orphans be screened and sent to classes to "teach" them how to care for such children? Some groups seem to think so:

"We tried to assess what was working and what wasn't, and came to the conclusion that preparing parents who adopt transracially benefits everyone, especially the children," said Adam Pertman, the Donaldson Institute's executive director.

"The view that we can be colorblind is a wonderful, idealistic perspective, but we don't live there," Pertman said. "If we want to do the best for the kids, we have to look at their realities."

At the heart of the debate is the fact that the foster care system has a disproportionately high number of black children, and on average they languish there nine months longer than white children before moving to permanent homes. The latest federal figures showed 32 percent of the 510,000 children in foster care were black in 2006, compared to 15 percent of all U.S. children.

It's a dangerous argument, that these children are better off in a system that delays adoptions in order to ensure that prospective parents "respect [the child's] cultural heritage."

Something tells me that even foster parents and adopters that are "unprepared" for the "cultural heritage" of their new child (what does that mean, anyway?) are better than a childhood spent waiting for a properly prepared family to come along, especially when so few minority families are financially able to adopt and the orphan population is disporportionately composed of minorities.

If you want to know where your tax dollars are going, you can head over to USAspending.gov. You can sort by state, congressional district, or even by the top government contractors.

GW is on the list for Top 10 recipients for federal $'s in the District with $79,047,865.

GW's page on USAspending.gov

From Tom Coburn (OK-Sen) in today's WSJ:

If you plan to follow Sowell's advice this summer and tackle Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg, I would suggest incorporating a little of the rich criticism the book has received into your reading list.

Goldberg is not a political philosopher, so it may seem odd that he has released a book about political philosophy. Odd, perhaps, but not--as some commentators from the left have suggested--proof that he's wrong. Be wary of his conclusions, though, because they don't survive reasonable criticism. Check out, for example, this interview/review by philosophy grad student Terrence Watson (a friend and former Koch Fellow) in the Western Standard:

Goldberg agreed that Canada was an example of liberal fascism--the fascism that comes with a friendly face. Presumably, he would say that Iran and Nazi Germany are just examples of fascism without the friendly face; call it “fascism with a mean face,” if you like. Goldberg would call both Canada and Nazi Germany fascist because both do all the things I listed in the previous paragraph, even though one is friendly and the other is mean. But nastiness (to some scapegoat minority, whether gays or Jews) is arguably constitutive of fascism. You can’t have “fascism with a smiley face” any more than you can have something like married bachelorhood.

Even if what I’ve called nastiness is not constitutive of fascism, it seems like a mistake to try to describe liberalism as a kind of fascism on the basis of a comparison between Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village and the policies of the German Nazi Party. Draw up two lists and you might find a 90 per cent match between them. But this doesn’t make Clinton’s ideology an example of fascism any more than the 97 per cent match between Warren Kinsella’s DNA and the DNA of a chimp makes Kinsella a chimp. Some differences make all the difference.

The key to establishing meaningful links between political philosophies is searching for what Watson calls "essential similarities": similarities that go to the root of what a particular political philosophy stands for and strives for. That is, the 3% of DNA that Warren Kinsella and the average chimp do not have in common, which makes Kinsella Kinsella and the chimp a chimp. Goldberg may be correct in arguing that both fascism and modern left-liberalism seek to perfect the world," but the differences between their various definitions of "worldly perfection" (say, a world cleansed of Judaism as opposed to a world of rough economic equality) is vital and neglected. Hillary Clinton, for all her faults, is no more a Hitler than Bush.

Thomas Sowell published a summer reading list for conservatives in today's Dallas Morning News. He offers these books to parents as a way to present their children with "viewpoints that are unlikely to be heard in classrooms that hve become indoctrination centers." I might pick up one of these this summer, but mostly I just wanted to share these with the Patriot community. So here goes:

The Best-Laid Plans by Randal O'Toole: "...gives a richly documented account of government actions and their consequences, and shows a far from flattering side of politicians, 'experts' and environmentalists--who have ruined cities and suburbs in countries around the world."

Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg: "So many liberals use the term 'fascism' to condemn conservative ideas that it may come as a revelation to many that the original fascism was in fact a doctrine having far more in common with the left than with conservatism."

Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell (what's a booklist without a little self-promotion?): "It looks in-depth at fallacies about such things as housing, income, race, sex discrimination, the economics of academia and the Third World."

Hope this gives some ideas for how to occupy your summer.

I saw this ingenious ad campaign by EnergyTomorrow in the Capitol South metro station (obviously aimed at lawmakers). It features a pie chart showing who "owns" oil companies, that is, who has stock in them- the beauty of publicly traded companies. Pension funds, mutual funds and IRAs own 70.5% of oil companies and individual investors own another 23%. Only 6.6% is owned by corporate management and "other institutional investors."

Food for thought for those who decry the evils of big oil companies.

I can't say that there's evidence that you are manipulating the price but I believe that you probably are so prove to me that you're not.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz - D (FL)

Comment: Yikes, I guess Congress has never heard of Innocent Until Proven Guilty...

Seems Maxine Waters thinks its a good idea...

A friend of the Patriot (though I'm sure he would just as soon not be associated with us) pointed me towards this entry in the Hatchet's "inside" blog 2109 F st.

Apparently we started a bit of a ruckus with what , admittedly, turned out to be a non-story. They even stole some of my language. Sorry I didn't come across this sooner,but I really try not to read a blog that was created solely for self-love.

Sitting on a Story

Over the past few weeks, we have gotten tons of e-mails, phone calls and blog comments about not covering an incident outside an Anchor Bowl event at Funger Hall. People are curious whether we are sitting on a story about a prominent student.

Well we aren’t.

As I have mentioned in other blog posts, we report on crime pretty heavily on campus. When we have an incident that results in an arrest, we obtain the police report and do a story. In this instance, there was no arrest. The subject was taken to a detoxification center and released. Hence the lack of a story.

I heard about the seizure, but this was a shocker.

Sam Schulman wrote one of the most compelling cases against gay marriage in recent memory, in the pages of Commentary in 2003. He puts the subject in its proper context:

I believe, in fact, that we are at an "Antigone moment." Some of our fellow citizens wish to impose a radically new understanding upon laws and institutions that are both very old and fundamental to our organization as individuals and as a society. As Antigone said to Creon, we are being asked to tamper with "unwritten and unfailing laws, not of now, nor of yesterday; they always live, and no one knows their origin in time."

Admittedly, it is very difficult to defend that which is both ancient and "unwritten"--the arguments do not resolve themselves into a neat parade of documentary evidence, research results, or citations from the legal literature. Admittedly, too, proponents of this radical new understanding have been uncommonly effective in presenting their program as something that is not radical at all but as requiring merely a slight and painless adjustment in our customary arrangements.

Stanley Kurtz, quoted in Schulman's article, addresses Sullivan's argument in the following manner:

In contrast to moderates and "conservatives" like Andrew Sullivan, who consistently play down [the] difference [between gays and straights] in order to promote their vision of gays as monogamists-in-the-making, radical gays have argued--more knowledgeably, more powerfully, and more vocally than any opponent of same-sex marriage would dare to do--that homosexuality, and particularly male homosexuality, is by its very nature incompatible with the norms of traditional monogamous marriage.

Sullivan is fine in making making his own case for gay marriage, but don't bring Burke into this. It is these institutions, timeless, "not of now, not of yesterday" that inspired the passion of Burke when he discussed the "community of souls" consisting of those of the past, those living now, and those yet unborn. Anyone who has studied Burke should find his apparent "support of gay marriage" laughable.

Our former fearless leader here at the Patriot, John McCormack,currently an assistant at the Weekly Standard, has an article in this week's issue on the effect of the California S.C.'s marriage decision on the November elections.

To add to the awesomeness, John has now got a head-sketch next to the link to his article, an honor reserved for all the regulars on the TWS staff.

Congrats John. We are really jealous... I mean proud of you..

For those interested, I offer Andrew Sullivan's 1989 New Republic piece, "Here Comes the Groom"--one of the original statements of the conservative case for gay marriage, written at a time when gay marriage itself was a novel idea. In the light of our recent discussion, I hope this article provides some clarity to those confused by the idea of a conservative that supports gay marriage.

The argument is rooted in the idea that gays are here to stay as a "permanent minority," and the most prudent way to integrate them into a stable, healthy society is to allow them the right to participate in the previously exclusive, "conservative" social institutions like marriage which define that society. Implicit in the argument is the idea that legalizing gay marriage is the ideal Burkean reform: a careful change intended to preserve more than it alters (the fevered, apocalyptic visions of some opponents notwithstanding). Gay marriage changes the definition of a traditional social institution in order to integrate a particular population into traditional society:

Legalizing gay marriage would offer homosexuals the same deal society now offers heterosexuals: general social approval and specific legal advantages in exchange for a deeper and harder-to-extract- yourself-from commitment to another human being. Like straight marriage, it would foster social cohesion, emotional security, and economic prudence. Since there's no reason gays should not be allowed to adopt or be foster parents, it could also help nurture children. And its introduction would not be some sort of radical break with social custom. As it has become more acceptable for gay people to acknowledge their loves publicly, more and more have committed themselves to one another for life in full view of their families and their friends. A law
institutionalizing gay marriage would merely reinforce a healthy social trend. It would also, in the wake of AIDS, qualify as a genuine public health measure. Those conservatives who deplore promiscuity among some homosexuals should be among the first to support it. Burke could have written a powerful case for it.

Vikki Reyes has had it with Locke High, the school her daughters attend in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She walked in on class one day and recalls “the place was just like a zoo!” Students had taken control, while the teacher sat quietly with a book.

Frank Wells has also had it with Locke High. When he became principal he says gangs ruled the campus. He tried to turn things around but ran into a “brick wall” of resistance from the school district and teachers union.

Locke seemed destined to languish in high crime and low test scores until Wells, Reyes, and many reform-minded teachers joined with a maverick named Steve Barr in an attempt to break free from the status quo. Their battle is just one example of the charter school education revolt that’s erupting across the nation.

An anonymous adjunct professor of English explains why society is demanding that too many people attend too much college, when they just aren't prepared for it:

No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces [...] that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. [...] Although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment.

The writer teaches mostly older, "night school" students, but the point stands for the average student, as well. It may make us feel good that so many of our generation have access to college and will earn college diplomas. But at what cost?

The California Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on gay marriage today, holding that the state must treat gay and straight couples equally in this regard. This is a big deal for gay marriage advocates, obviously.

Note, of course, that the Supreme Court's decision doesn't mandate gay marriage. It simply requires that the legal standards applied to straight couples be applied to gays as well. So, it's theoretically possible for California to offer state-sanctioned civil unions to all couples, leaving "marriage" to the churches. Also, it's possible that a ballot initiative (such as the one recently passed in Virginia) could add an anti-gay marriage amendment to the State's constitution. Apparently, such an initiative has already been passed around the state for signatures. CNN says that it is "awaiting verification" with the Secretary of State's office.

Having mentioned those caveats (and knowing that I disagree with many of my fellow Patriot writers on this issue), I'm still pretty damned happy about what went down in Sacremento today.

Meredith brought it up, so I'll give my opinion on the issue.

It's a bad idea--a very, very bad idea--because it contradicts the conservative argument against "affirmative action" in higher education. This "conservative" Professor will be given a position at the University not necessarily because of his or her talent or intelligence, but simply because he or she is a conservative (in the same way that other affirmative action programs reward prospective students on the basis of any number of characteristics other than demonstrated talent and intelligence).

And anyway, any academic in a position like that is begging to be pidgeon-holed into the role of "the token conservative" and excluded from the mainstream intellectual conversation. In the same way that many black students face the soft bigotry of low expectations "because they only got in through affirmative action," this conservative will be assumed (correctly) to have "only gotten in because he or she is politically right-of-center." The professor's work will be assumed to have a damning bias before it is even written, and nothing the professor does could possibly overcome the stigma of the title of "Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy." Such a situation can only bring academic conservatism even more disrespect than it presently has.

This is not change for the better in any authentic sense. If conservatives believe that racial minorities should be required to succeed or fail on their own intellectual merits, why should conservatives themselves be any different? And will the upshot of that "leg up" be any different than it has been for those able, intelligent minority students that deal with the stigma of affirmative action?

The University of Colorado at Boulder is looking for a Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy, in response to the Ward Churchill affair and amid calls for intellectual diversity on college campuses.

I certainly wish there was more intellectual diversity on college campuses, but I'm not sure that this is the right way to go about it. As we at The Patriot know and have first hand experience, conservatism is a wide net that encompasses not only many issues, but many takes on those issues. I think one person representing "what is conservatism" to a large student body would not only do conservatism an injustice, but would do the students an injustice, who would only get one take on the movement and think that's all there is. I also think this is a bit of a stop-gap measure, one that would satisfy critics but not actually foster intellectual diversity.

Those are my thoughts, what are yours? I'm interested to see others' takes on this event.

such ran the title of an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. i had to do a double-take. why would environmentalists oppose a plan to clean up air in Long Beach, CA? perhaps the plan had unintended environmental side effects, or didn't clean up the air enough.

unfortunately, none of the above are true. the Port of Long Beach's plan would replace "thousands of aging diesel trucks that haul cargo," but the plan "doesn't guarantee that driving jobs will go to trucking-company employees, who are easier for unions to organize than independent owner-operators" (emphasis added).

the National Resources Defense Council and others are opposing this emissions-cutting plan because of labor unions. more evidence that environmentalists do not always have saving the earth as their first concern. evidence that they are not objective but biased and have ulterior motives behind just saving the earth.

Let's see how he defends this. His Muslim grandmother will not be pleased.

So I was interested in the Manhattan Institute report that Pat blogged about on TAC's blog (congratulations be to him about the job, by the way). I also read Dave Weigel's short blurb on the subject at Reason. I have a few comments to make, but I won't make them until I've cleared up one mundane point.

Pat claims in his post at TAC that the Manhattan Institute didn't factor into the report the throngs of "overwhelmingly Mexican" illegal immigrants entering the United States. It seems to me, however, that they did. How else could a paragraph like the following make sense?

By a substantial margin, Mexico was the largest source of immigrants to the United States in 2006. Between 1980 and 2006, the number of Mexican-born residents of the United States more than sextupled, to nearly 11 million, representing an annual growth rate of over 6%, which was more than five times the growth rate of the U.S. population over the same time period. This growth rate accelerated after 1990. A large proportion of these immigrants live and work in the United States illegally. Finally, [...] Mexican immigrants attain the lowest assimilation-index value among large immigrant groups, both in the composite index and in the component indexes of economic and civic assimilation.

He guys, just thought I would share my own self-righteous joy over my first blog post at my new job; a staff assistant and writer for The American Conservative magazine. Ever the rebel, I go after David Weigel of Reason.

My post, on TAC's blog is right here.

Coming to you from the point where psychology, literature, politics, and the time-wasting qualities of the internet collide, here's a series of blogs chronicling real dreams that people have had about John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton (or some combination thereof).

My favorite, about McCain, from a "mother of three and Democrat in Pennsylvania":

I saw John McCain in a totally bombed-out building, standing in the rubble. He bent down, then stood back up and beamed at me and said, Hey look! I found a penny!

Also, don't miss the one where Obama makes out with a gay man in McCain's mom's house, or the one where Hillary puns on the word "hymen."

Senator Logan Dobson (CCAS-U) of "Inside the SA" blog fame, is meeting with SA EVP Kyle Boyer to discuss "Senate stuff".
One wonders if this has anything to do with the blog... Who am I kidding? Of course it does! Dobson will probably be asked to "calm down" and give the SA a chance. Knowing Senator Dobson, he will most likely do no such thing and will just use the meeting as motivation to call the SA out on more of the B*S* they try to pull on the students.

Fight the power!

In case anybody missed it (I did, for three days), Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson has defeated Labour's incumbent "Red Ken" Livingstone to become the Mayor of London.

Knowing the tastes of Wisconsinites quite well, I highly doubt this tax will pass.

As the year draws to a close, I thought it would be appropriate to hand out some superlatives to showcase some of the winners, but mostly losers of this past year.

Best Catchphrase: Various SA tools for "...because of the great work of Nicole and Brand"

Best SA Tool: Eliot Bell-Krasner For finally getting elected (appointed) to a significant position in the SA.

Best rally: a tie between the crowd at the Sean Bell Rally and the STANDers in front of the Chinese embassy for "Dream for Darfur"

The SJT Memorial Award for most wasteful, money-sucking project: OG for GW F.E.E.D.

Best Student Org.: STAND, for ending the genocide in Darfur single-handed

Best Poster: Students for Conservo-fascism Awareness for"Hate Muslims? So do we"! and PosterGate.

Best Faker: a tie between the swastika girl and Tarik Al-Hariri

Best run SA Presidential campaign: OG for getting 20% just as a write-in. Honestly, that's pretty impressive

Worst run SA Presidential Campaign: OG ,for having to fake signatures on notebook paper and not utilizing his 4ooo+ facebook friends to greater use, like collecting signatures.

Student of the year: Ogheneruemu "OG" Oyiborhoro for somehow putting himself in the middle of every single controversy and making it his own.

Prof. Mark Perry over at Carpe Diem has posted some pretty nifty graphs on gas prices today:

Colonials For Life recently put approximately 4,000 flags in university yard to symbolize the 4,000 children that are killed daily by abortion. The event, called Cemetery of the Innocents, went off without a hitch (except for a few people flipping the bird, etc, but they can be immature if they want). Unfortunately, a similar event at a University of Wisconsin campus did not go so well.

One of the student senators came and knocked down their crosses (instead of the flags we used) and berated the students, reportedly saying that the freedom of speech didn't cover that event.

This student senator is not being reprimanded by the university or the student senate. This is abominable. If giant vaginae displayed in the university common areas are protected (as they are, and probably should be), then so should this comparatively tame representation of statistics, and this student should be reprimanded and charged with any crime he committed (vandalism, harassment, etc).

Video of the senator's actions here.

It seems Canada is close to signing a free trade agreement with Colombia. I wonder if Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton will criticize the Canadians for this?

Newly elected CCAS-U Senator Logan Dobson, a devoted libertarian (with some small conservative tendencies), has started a blog where he will be giving his thoughts on the innermost workings of our student government. Inside the SA is the blog. It has been added to our blogroll. His most recent post discusses the transition dinner.

I have begun calling Mr. Dobson "The People's Senator." Everyone else should follow suit.

McCain has begun to court the Hispanic vote by, among other things (ex: opening our borders to invasion), starting a Spanish website.

"I am confident that I will do very well," he said. "I know their patriotism, I know the respect for the family, the advocacy for pro-life, I know the small business aspect of our Hispanic voters." (emphasis my own)

Someone should point out to the Senator the June 23rd "WorldPublicOpinion.org" poll showing that 72 percent of Mexicans consider Americans to be "racist", or the June 6, 2002 Zogby Poll showing that 58 percent of Mexicans believe the American Southwest belongs to them. This is troubling, especially when considering that an enormous portion of the Hispanic population is Mexican and that one in five Mexicans is already here in the United States.

Patriotism doesn't mix well with ancient grudges against the country you claim patriotic affection for...

I have been a fan of Mr. O'Rourke for a while, and I am currently reading his book, On The Wealth of Nations.

This commencement article is pretty funny and puts things in the proper perspective and gives some recommendations for those who are graduating:

1. Go out and make a bunch of money!

Here we are living in the world's most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide. Yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to young people, "Go out and make a bunch of money." Instead, they tell you that money can't buy happiness. Maybe, but money can rent it.

There's nothing the matter with honest moneymaking. Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box. In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich. (Emphasis added)

The speakers at the BSU-sponsored rally mentioned below made an interesting claim about bias in the Hatchet, particularly with regard to a retrospective article published on April 28, surveying the work of the S.A. this year. Their claim, according to the Hatchet:

Speakers said they were unhappy that The Hatchet did not print an article about the Student Excellence Awards last week, where the BSU won best student organization for the first time in more than two decades. They also said an article about the SA in Monday's issue of The Hatchet implied that black students impeded progress in the body.

"We need to take back campus even though we are the minority," junior Richard Fowler said. "We need to get someone on the editorial board of The Hatchet."

Let's see exactly what the Hatchet did say about "black students" in their S.A. retrospective article:

Shortly after the start of the fall semester, Capp issued her first and only veto to block the SA's sponsorship of GW F.E.E.D., an initiative started by SA Sen. OG Oyiborhoro (CCAS-U) to help local homeless.

Some of the program's sponsors disapproved the methods used by Oyiborhoro to acquire funding for GW F.E.E.D. Some of Oyiborhoro's actions disregarded the SA's procedure for fund allocation.

[...]

"I do not support senators getting allocations of money to do their own events and programs," Capp said. "It reminds me of pork barreling, and that is not something I support."

She added, "The intent of the program was positive. It wasn't a bad idea. We just disagreed on how to carry out the idea."

Controversy ensued again in December when Sens. Eugene Beckley (CCAS-U), Jasmine Gaskins (ESIA-U), Eric Woodard (CCAS-U) and Oyiborhoro walked out during a senate vote to establish online voting for this year's SA election. The body later approved online voting.

Beckley, a sophomore, said Kroeger was not calling on the senators during the debate on the electoral reforms. At the time she said Kroeger's actions were racist.

The SA senator has since apologized to Kroeger for the walkout, Kroeger said.

In addition to discussing these events (with a level of accuracy in their account that anyone would be foolish to dispute), the Hatchet talks about the J Street/Sodexho controversy, the expansion of GWorld to include Safeway, and the return of "GW Reads" and "Colonial Invasion." The article ended with a quote from Brand Kroeger, evaluating in total the work of the S.A. this year (and all of its officials, regardless of race):

"I understand people getting caught up in emotion, but as an organization we are not defined by moments like that," Kroeger said. "We are defined by our successes, and throughout the entire year I would say (GW F.E.E.D. and the walkout) … consumed about .01 percent of my time and my thoughts with regards to the Student Association."

Anti-black bias? Judge for yourself. In my opinion, though, if the Hatchet really wants to be bigoted, they aren't doing very well at it.

Unlike Pat, I do not share anger that the rally's mention of us was left out of the article. I personally think the article does a fine enough job of stating how radical those who led the rally are. And it didn't even need embellishing by the Hatchet, the quotes speak for themselves:

Oyiborhoro, who ran for SA president last month, was taken off the ballot after he failed to attain signatures on authorized paper. He said Monday that he felt race played a role in the final outcome.
Speakers said they were unhappy that The Hatchet did not print an article about the Student Excellence Awards last week, where the BSU won best student organization for the first time in more than two decades. They also said an article about the SA in Monday's issue of The Hatchet implied that black students impeded progress in the body.
"We need to take back campus even though we are the minority," junior Richard Fowler said. "We need to get someone on the editorial board of The Hatchet."

Today's Hatchet has coverage of the Sean Bell Rally from last week, yet suspiciously forgot to mention what was most noteworthy... the berating of one recognized student org (The GW Patriot) by another (the BSU).

I guess the Hatchet wanted to avoid the race-baiter's wrath, and the immature and reprehensible behavior of prominent members of the BSU may have intimidated the Hatchet out of reporting this portion of the story, but I am still pretty upset at how this issue continues to be ignored.

On a side note: the Hatchet has refused to share their video of the rally with us so that we can show everyone exactly what was said. What a joke of a campus media.

I just got invited to a Facebook for College Republicans...called Storm.
I think whoever thought of this name needs to be dragged to the proverbial CR town square and shot. Why?
Because Republicans have this really bad, and I believe inaccurate stereotype that we are White, male protestants who are a twinge bit on the racist side, like people who use a white-supremacist site called Stormfront.
I suggest that this name be changed and quickly before others get a hold of this, and make it all nice and controversial like, just in time for the election.

Come one! come all! Today is the Green Carnival in Kogan. Unfortunately this carnival has no rides: No eco-whirl, Iceberg Melting water luge, or Ferris wheel powered by organically-fed rats or bio-fuel.
BUT!:
You can donate your books instead of getting ripped-off by the coffee-cart guy;you can dump all those cans of soup you bought at Safeway because they were on sale, but never ate; you can snack on some organic,fair trade, locally grown,bought to benefit the downtrodden apples; or you can stand in the big air-conditioned tent brought here by a gigantic, gas-guzzling moving truck and ask Green GW minions what measly little steps you can take to make sure your moving out of your dorm or attending graduation doesn't cause the bees to die and the ice-caps to melt.

GW is cutting back the money that is thrown into the black-hole that is CI. First things getting rid of the biggest and most wasteful "Tradition" at this school, the famed laser light show.
One hopes that this is just the beginning to scaling CI. The fact that most kids think of it as a chance to live the college experience for a weekend in the middle of summer and pay little actual attention to the cute little skits, tours and info sessions, and also that other schools seem to attract kids just fine without CI should be a bellwether that CI and all its shenanigans should go by the way side.


Authors note: I have in the past applied for a spot on CI cabinet, I did it purely for the facebook friends.

Remembering State Communism's bloody, bloody toll on humanity in the last century:

How can we understand all this killing by communists? It is the marriage of an absolutist ideology with the absolute power. Communists believed that they knew the truth, absolutely. They believed that they knew through Marxism what would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness. And they believed that power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, must be used to tear down the old feudal or capitalist order and rebuild society and culture to realize this utopia. Nothing must stand in the way of its achievement. Government--the Communist Party--was thus above any law. All institutions, cultural norms, traditions, and sentiments were expendable. And the people were as though lumber and bricks, to be used in building the new world.

Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus, this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths.

More than 100,000,000 dead, and still kicking.

The fifty most popular pages on "Conservapedia." Notice a trend?

(HT: Reason)

Or you might get sued.

Regardless of the current economic condition, it seems nothing can deter fans from enjoying sports!

Gas prices are up. Food prices are up. So, oddly enough, is attendance at Major League Baseball games.

MLB officials say attendance is 2.6 percent ahead of record-breaking figures from last season, when the 30 teams raked in more than $6 billion. The NBA and the NFL also say they see no signs that the economy will cut into attendance or profits.