The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/mwackercornellsun-com/page/4/)
Come on, over 20 other colleges have it, including Harvard. You can also have it off-campus. Why not on campus? These reasons and others for gender-neutral housing, stated in a resolution proposed to the Student Assembly, offer a poor rationale for the policy. Frankly, who cares about Harvard? And what about the hundreds of other colleges without gender-neutral housing; do they not count?
Since I still am somewhat new to this whole blogging niche, I may make mistakes at times, such as praising Clinton for her foreign policy. Granted, she rightly rebuked Obama for his unilateral threat against our ally Pakistan (as I mentioned in my last blog), but why did she make this decision? Because she has all this wisdom and experience that Obama does not, or because Obama said the exact opposite thing earlier? I must apologize to my readers for not noticing this. After all, although Hillary criticized Obama for taking nuclear weapons off the table for the purpose of diplomacy, Hillary suggested the same thing herself for Iran back in 2006.
Despite his rising status as the rockstar of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama has proven that no amount of popularity can match the experience and knowledge required to master the complexities of foreign policy. Obama threatened to unilaterally bomb Pakistan if actionable intelligence placed high-level al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and President Musharraf would not act. While this threat became a good applause line, Musharraf, a U.S. ally who faces a tough situation in Pakistan, did not take so kindly to Obama’s words, and he certainly was not alone.
ABC’s Republican debate may have not received the massive advertising and promotion of the YouTube debate, but it worked surprisingly well, with a mix of some video and email questions from average people with statements and videos of the candidates themselves as well as traditional journalistic questions. Moderator George Stephanopoulos did a superb job of including all the candidates into the debate, and generating some debate between candidates and keeping them on track. The only major criticism I have is that the debate did not cover immigration at all, but at least there were no questions from a snowman. With that said, I’ll give my top three performers: first Mitt Romney, then Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul
While many nations including the United States have long refused to negotiate with terrorists, the latest hostage crisis in Afghanistan has renewed the debate over the policy of non-negotiation. Not only did the Taliban kidnap 23 innocent Christian missionaries from South Korea, demanding an exchange for Taliban prisoners, but they have also killed some of the hostages already, ratcheting up the pressure to cut a deal to save the rest. Even if South Korea and the Afghan government find a way to buy more time for the hostages, it may not help the seriously ill hostages who face the prospect of death merely by remaining in captivity. Despite the compelling reasons to negotiate in this scenario, however, the policy of non-negotiation has been practiced for many sound reasons that hold true today like they always have.
As much as candidates like stale debates where the questions can be anticipated and talking points can be prepared, they lost much of this control today with the YouTube/CNN debate. There were many great questions in this debate that journalists would not usually think to ask, making it easy for none of the candidates to just slide by with rhetoric. A new debate format also brought a new set of rankings compared to last debate (where my top three were Obama, Edwards, and Biden). Here are my top three candidates for this debate.
Today marks a new milestone in political debates with tonight’s CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate. Yes, the questions will come not from journalists in the upper echelons of the mainstream media, but from simple people submitting questions via YouTube videos. However, while the questions will come from the people, ultimately CNN itself will decide which questions to select. This has created a bit of a ruckus, as people wonder why they can not only submit the questions but choose them, too. Needless to say, the principles of democracy get invoked, anybody who disagrees gets labeled a fascist…OK, I am exaggerating somewhat, but I have a point to make here.
After President Bush and Democrats agreed to a compromise on funding the Iraq War back in May, the issue theoretically should have been closed until a comprehensive report on Iraq was issued in September. Unfortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to backtrack and raised the issue again in July. Although funding for our troops does mix well with politics, Reid attached an amendment from Senator Jack Reed and Senator Carl Levin to a Pentagon spending measure, requiring troop withdrawals to begin in 120 days. And although Democrats privately knew the Levin-Reed amendment had no chance of passing, Reid not only put a chokehold on troop funding by refusing to pass the spending measure without the amendment, but he also decided to call for an all-nighter in the Senate to consider the amendment, amounting to the worst political stunt in the history of the war in Iraq.