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Notebook

Brokeback Hill: A Tragic Tale of Love... of Money

Indictment Bingo!

Bad Science: Ex-EPA Chiefs Unanimously Scold Bush

Dumbass!

Homeland Security

Patriot Games: A Dangerous Power Play with Our Nation’s Security – Finley Wise

One month after the terrorist attacks of September the 11th, our United States Congress choked down the USA PATRIOT Act not just without gagging, but without so much as a hiccup. Today, the Patriot Act is coming back up for reconsideration in our nation’s capitol: sixteen of its most prominent provisions are due to expire at the beginning of next month. The Bush Administration is seeking to smear all opposition with the same scare tactics it used four years ago to ensure that the original law successfully raped and pillaged its way through the House and Senate with panic-inducing ease. [more]

The Return of Fear: How Will Our Generation Be Remembered? – Marshall Geck

Remember your AP U.S. History textbook? The American Pageant: filled with trite but accurate generalizations about the mood of the American public during each era of history. Americans of the 1950’s, for example, are remembered for both their inward turn to the domestic sphere as well as their haunting fear of “the communist.” The political result (and to some degree, cause) of this “communist hysteria” was politicians like Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who commanded public attention by asserting that communists were all around them, even in their own government. [more]

Primary Preview

A Presidential Primer: A Look at the Democratic Hopefuls for Our Nation’s Top Office – Brian Wantz

A look at the potential Democratic presidential nominees: their names, their stories and their chances.

A New California Idealism: Angelides Gaining Support as Gubernatorial Primary Approaches – Sarah Gold

Phil Angelides, current California State Treasurer and 2006 gubernatorial hopeful, fancies himself an idealist. As a nineteen-year-old college student at Harvard, Angelides sprinted into politics when he returned to his hometown of Sacramento to unexpectedly run for city council in 1973. Angelides had virtually no political experience or support, running simply on the youthful enthusiasm and optimism. He was influenced by the belief that “[one person] could change the world,” which stemmed from his work at Harvard campaigning against president Richard Nixon’s reelection. [more]

From the Field

Madam President: The New Face of Politics in Chile and Liberia – Rachel Caligiuri

In preparation for my semester studying abroad in Chile, I’ve done a lot of reading about the South American country’s culture, history, and politics. A Catholic country still recovering from 27 years under the rule of a dictator, Chile is in many ways more traditional than much of Europe or the United States. I was not surprised to read that women don’t wear miniskirts, abortion is illegal, and divorce was only made legal in 2004. One would expect gender roles to be more defined in such a traditional society, and most of what I read about the country’s social mores seemed to reflect just that. [more]

National Health

When the Sky Falls: A Nation Scrambles to Prepare for Bird Flu – Alexandra Liu

On December 5, 2005, during a meeting on pandemic planning, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt announced that the H5N1 avian flu virus “could become one of the most terrible threats to life that this world has ever faced.” This is hardly news. The World Health Organization has been trying to contain the bird flu pandemic since 1997, when the virus first appeared in Hong Kong’s poultry and among several of its civilians. However, the H5N1 virus reappeared in Vietnam in January 2003 and has now spread throughout East Asia and across Europe to Turkey, and possibly into Canada. [more]

A Democratic Tax Cut: Saving the Middle Class from Bush’s Irresponsibility – Eric Lopez and Jamie Beard

The conservative viewpoint holds the Republican Party as the stronghold of fiscal responsibility in contrast to the over-taxing, over-spending, bra-burning (and likely Communist) Democrats, but a quick glance at the budgets of the last four Administrations betrays this perspective. The time has come, not just for a fair tax policy, but for a discussion on why the tax burden must be shifted away from the lower and middle classes. [more]

Opinion

39 Witnesses: A Reflection on the Death Penalty – Matt Werner

Driving back to the East Bay from San Quentin Prison at 1:30 a.m., I feel nauseated. I have just spent the last five hours with over 2,500 other people, most of them complete strangers, participating in a peaceful vigil for Stanley Tookie Williams. I am listening to one of the seventeen media representatives who witnessed the execution on my car’s radio. [more]

A Tortured Policy: The Bush Administration, Congress, and The Treatment of Prisoners – The Roosevelt Institution

How close to performing torture can U.S. soldiers come before they are in violation of the law? What, if any, are the official limitations that the United States government places upon the treatment of enemy combatants? Are these enemy combatants protected under the Geneva Conventions? More than a year ago, Capt. Ian Fishback found himself asking those exact questions. [more]