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The Legacies of the 2010 Elections
Tweet Share on Facebook October 27, 2010 Comment (9)This year’s off-year congressional elections will be remembered for three things. The first will be the record-breaking levels of spending and the increasingly garish and over the top television ads that money made possible. The election’s legacy will be increased public dissatisfaction with partisan politics, as it is practiced in the United States, with renewed contempt for whomever winds up in control of the levers of power in Washington. Not a good sign for the continued health of our democracy.
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Education Will Split the Democratic Party
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2010 Comment (6)Throughout an electoral season that is, thankfully, coming to a close, the media remained fixated on a phenomenon that an increasing number of pundits and academics think may render the Republican Party asunder: the rise of the Tea Parties. The story line continues to evolve.
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Obama’s Presidency Is Unraveling
Tweet Share on Facebook October 13, 2010 Comment (26)Make no bones about it--what we have been witnessing these past several months has been nothing short of the unraveling of the Obama presidency. “Don’t be so sure,” his defenders will insist. “Reagan and Clinton saw their parties take a dive in the first off-year election of their presidencies, only to recover and win easy re-elections. What reasons have you to think that Obama’s situation will be any different?” In a word, plenty.
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Rutgers Should Expel Tyler Clementi’s Tormentors
Tweet Share on Facebook October 6, 2010 Comment (10)Not long ago, a foreign visitor to our shores asked me whether there was anything anyone could do on an American college campus that assured automatic expulsion. I thought for a minute. “Plagiarism,” I said. “And falsified transcripts and other application records. And possibly ‘sexual harassment.’” I wanted to add the proverbial “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but knew of cases where students were re-admitted after having completed prison sentences. One can practically hear the situational ethicists on and off disciplinary boards arguing that, in most cases, those offenses occurred off campus. Having long ago abandoned any pretense of requiring students and faculty to abide by any moral code whatsoever, on what basis could it start drawing lines, well-paid counsel, retained by societal offenders might rightly ask.
