New Poll Shows 70% of Americans Support Uniform License Standards

A new poll shows that 70% of Americans support the introduction of national standards for driver's licenses under the Real ID Act. The poll was UPI/Zogby survey of 6,000 Americans across the country. Surveyed adults that considered, or labeled, themselves as conservatives and moderates supported the law the most at 84% and 75% respectively. On the other hand, 51% of libertarians and 49% of progressives oppose the law. These numbers were not that surprising to me. I am not sure where I stand on the issue. This is clearly a controversial issue; however, you must be careful not to jump to conclusions when looking at the poll numbers.

Washington Times Article

Academic Bill of Rights

Academic Bill of Rights :

What this bill does:
• Requires the board of trustees of each public and private institution of
higher education to adopt a policy recognizing that students, faculty and
instructors of the institution have the following rights:
o A learning environment in which students have access to a broad
range of serious scholarly opinion.
o Students are to be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned
answers and not to be discriminated on the basis of political,
ideological, or religious beliefs. Faculty and instructors are not to
use their courses or positions for the purpose of political,
ideological, religious, or anti religious indoctrination.
o Faculty and instructors are not to infringe the academic freedom
and quality of education by persistently introducing controversial
matter into the classroom that has no relation to their subject of
study.
o University administrators, student government organization, and
institutional policies are not to infringe the freedom of speech,
freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of
conscience of students and student organizations.
o The institution must distribute student fee funds on a viewpoint-
neutral basis and must maintain a posture of neutrality with
respect to political and religious disagreements.
o Faculty and instructors are free to pursue and discuss their own
findings and perspectives but have to make students aware of
other serious scholarly viewpoints.
o Faculty and instructors have to be hired, fired, promoted and
granted tenure on the basis of their competence and knowledge
and not on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious
beliefs.
o Faculty and instructors cannot be excluded from tenure, search,
and hiring committees on the basis of their political, ideological, or
religious beliefs.
• Boards of trustees of public and private campuses are required to adopt
a grievance procedure under which a student, faculty member, or
instructor may seek redress for an alleged violation of any of the rights
specified by the institution’s policy adopted under this bill.
• Each board of trustees must provide students, faculty, and instructors
with notice of the rights and grievance procedures in the institution’s
course catalog, student handbook and web site.
Additional information:

• To access the bill in its entirety, click on or visit the following link:
http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=126_SB_24

I hope all institutions across the country follow the same direction that Ohio has. As a conservative here at Plymouth State University, I had professors who are very liberal and press there political view as fact. I've had professors that all they talk about is liberal this, liberal that and not talking about other political views. Futhermore, if you have another political view the professor feels threatened and switches subjects, or might take points off from a paper, test, etc for different view's. If they are going to teach then they should teach without political bias, or at least mention what the other political parties think about that certain subject. I'm wondering if anyone else has an opinion about this, or had this happen to them, or visa versa.

You can't beat NEWSMEAT

I'm a bit of a political junkie, as I'm sure most of us are. I found a great website called NEWSMEAT some time back that easily gives you access to federal campaign contribution records. You can look up all contributions of over $200 to federal campaigns since 1980. It gives some good insights into the process and is also just fun to look up celebrities or people you know and see who they're donating to.

For instance I went ahead and looked up Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge because I suspected that he, as a Mormon who moved to Massachusetts and made a name for himself there, would probably be a supporter of Mitt Romney. True enough, he and his wife have donated several thousand dollars to the Romney campaign.

I also looked up News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch. I'm not surprised that the owner of Fox News has donated hundreds of thousands to Republicans (including Conrad Burns and Rick Santorum, ech) but look at which Democrats he's given money to-- names like Hilary Clinton, Harold Ford, Jr., and Diane Feinstein, among others.

It's also interesting to look up "celebrity" candidates to see where a lot of their contributions come from. Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley received a lot of donations from athletes and entertainers during his senate campaigns and his try for the White House.

You can also narrow down contributors from NEWSMEAT's Hall of Fame list based on how they're famous. Is it surprising that NASCAR drivers donate a lot to Republicans?

Post some of your interesting findings in the comments.

I'm Barack Obama, and I did not approve this message.

Now that Americans are spending more and more time getting their information and entertainment online, the power for individuals to have a large effect on the political process is now larger than ever. An endorsement from a popular blog like the Daily Kos or Instapundit has the ability to sway the opinions of a gigantic base of readers. Even YouTube is an important political hub nowadays. An unauthorized ad for the Obama campaign, borrowing (stealing) heavily from the famous Macintosh ad from 1984, caused a huge splash. This is unchartered territory we're in now. Nobody is quite sure how these kinds of changes in the campaign process are going to affect the candidates and the process.

If bloggers and YouTubers are going to spread the word of their favored candidate most candidates would probably be all for it, right? It's free advertising, basically. But the candidates have no control over what these people do or the kinds of messages they put out. The unauthorized Obama ad was an attack ad against Hillary Clinton that came out months ago, well before the traditional time for primary candidates to start bringing out the attack dogs against the other candidates from their party.

Controlling the message is one of the most important parts of running a campaign. They don't want their opponents to try to put words in their mouths and misrepresent their views. This has always been something campaigns fight against. Now they may face the problem of making sure their own supporters don't disseminate false information about them, be too harsh on their opponents, and alienate undecided voters.

Public Killings

After the Virginia Tech incident you would hope that security becomes much stricter within schools and other public places. Unfortunately there was another shooting very close to here in Keene. A roommate shot his roommate then killed himself. I feel that they need to make it much more difficult for people to get guns by doing this I feel it would help tremendously with the amount of killing. I was just wondering how everyone else felt and if there are any other ideas of how to make sure somehting like this do not happen again.

Violence Forum

The violence forum enough is enough is currently taking place here on the alumni green. This forum is taking place mostly due to the tragic death of Jared Barrows. An active sophomore here at Plymouth State University who lived in Langdon Woods. However, both the Student Administration as well as the Campus Administration has been under critical fire due to this most recent death here at Plymouth State. There is a group of students that are mostly present in Langdon Woods and friends of Jared Barrows who are trying to raise money for his tuition, medical and burial costs. This effort taken on by students is to help relieve his family of these fees during the family’s tragic time of loss. Hopefully, this forum will help address the issue of security on this campus as well as what will come of the fundraising efforts. Since the students that were organized were told they cannot fundraise on campus for such an event.

The campus does have a full emergency plan. It includes everything from bioterrorism, spills, floods, bomb threats, to lockdown methods. The university President Sara Jayne Steen pointed out a little known fact that we are the center of our region. If there is an epidemic that does occur people will be processed here at Plymouth State University in the Foley Gymnasium. To make our campus safer is looking into a text messaging system. This system does seem like a positive environment to access all students in a short period of time. However, the President did say that legally the University can’t require students to relinquish their cell phone numbers to the university. The President did ask for access to student’s cell phone numbers to cooperate so that we can effectively reach students.

President Steen said that she would rather have a student call 911 or campus police at extension 2330. She also asked for trust. Truly this is the Presidents first stride in asking for the students trust when the university will try to get in contact with students. A large number of faulty truly came out of their offices to listen to the Presidents Speech. Dr. Shirley, Dr. McCool, Mr. Chong, Mr. Barba, Ms. Tardiff, and Dr. Browne just to name a few. The current and past student body Presidents Trevor Chandler and Peter Laufenberg were also present at this form and ceremony.

However it is time for two questions to be answered.

1. Response time to dispatchers answering the campus police phones. The administration is meeting with the Campus Chief Of Police. The President said that she would bring up this question posed by the writer. As I was waiting to ask the President (Sara Jayne Steen) this question I saw a fellow classmate ask a similar question to the Chief of Campus Police. Last night during our class three to four students were scaling and climbing the walls of Memorial Hall. One classmate called Campus Police and got through and before the student could answer the student was put on hold. The student hung up and just wondered what our dispatch response time was. Another student called soon after and got through to an operator. When patched through he told the operator. However, during the entire class the class saw no response by Campus Police.

2. There is a way in which the students could try to organize a fundraiser for Jared Barrows. The Vice President Dick Hage said that the students should try to contact the development office. The President said that the Attorney Generals office established a fund to cover the family’s medical and burial cost. However, neither the President nor the Vice President said anything about coverage or voiding the tuition costs of Jared Barrows. Hopefully, the students that are trying to organize this fund will be successful so that the family does not have to suffer any further with the burden of his tuition bill.

This clearly illustrates how university politics have tackled the issues about violence. It is refreshing to see that our administrations are doing their best to make Plymouth State a much safer place for all that attends the university. This is a step in the right direction on the part of the President and her staff. As well as I think the trust that she is asking for is one that we should grant her. This is the one of the most effective ways to make Plymouth the town and the University safer for all who come onto our campus. This was a great forum and it exemplified politics on the University, Town, State and National levels.

President Bush Vetoes the Iraq War Spending Bill

Photo by AP

Exactly four years to the day that President Bush, stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and proclaimed that “major combat operations” in Iraq were over. He exercised his veto power for the second time in his Presidency.

President Bush referred to the bill as “unacceptable.” He said that he would give an address to the nation tonight to give his reason why he veto, then in mid-speech, President Bush cited the following reasons why he veto the bill; just hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) sent the bill to the White House.

In his address to the nation, the President cited three reasons, why he veto the legislation that would have approved the $124 billion war spending measure with the stipulation that troop withdrawal could start as early as July 1st, and it would have to start no later than October 1st regardless of the situation on the ground:

First, the bill would mandate a rigid and artificial deadline for American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq…Second, the bill would impose impossible conditions on our commanders in combat. After forcing most of our troops to withdraw, the bill would dictate the terms under which the remaining commanders and troops could engage the enemy. That means America's commanders in the middle of a combat zone would have to take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. This is a prescription for chaos and confusion, and we must not impose it on our troops…Third, the bill is loaded with billions of dollars in non- emergency spending that has nothing to do with fighting the war on terror. Congress should debate these spending measures on their own merits and not as a part of an emergency funding bill for our troops.

After President Bush gave his remarks and announced his decision to veto the piece of legislation. One thing was very clear, the Democrats received exactly wanted, they were able to make their political statement about their opposition to the war. However, the problem with this is that it is just a statement, it will come quite apparent in the coming days that there is not enough support in the Congress to override the President’s veto.

Related Links:

President Bush Vetoes Spending Bill May 1, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/01/congress.iraq/index.html

President Bush's Speech May 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/washington/02bush-text.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Politico.com May 1, 2007
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0507/3773.html

“Mission Accomplished” Speech May 1, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2415-2003May1?language=printer