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(05/30/01 9:00am)
The rumors swirled through the marble stairwells of the Senate and the ornate gardens of the Capitol. Whispers of shock met scoffs of disbelief at every office's water cooler. Barely anyone dared utter the word -- "independent." Oblivious to the precipitous change about to occur, a Dartmouth '01 wandered the Senate, looking for the site of his next job interview (for a lowly staff assistant position). Passing through the office of last summer's internship, I ran into an old friend. "Have you heard?" she asked me, "Jim Jeffords might leave the Republican Party!" It was almost too incredible to be true. And yet just like the removal of a single card from a card house, Jeffords single handedly brought the entire Republican Senate crashing to the ground. How could Jim Jeffords, Vermont's loyal Senator of 13 years, strike such a stunning blow to the Republicans in the Senate who had called him a colleague and a friend? How could the Bush White House have been so asleep at the switch that they could allow their precious control of the Senate to utterly collapse? More importantly, was Jim Jeffords a confused dissenter who decided to fundamentally alter his political beliefs or a loyal Republican who could not in good conscience support an agenda that repressed the voices of so many? The Jim Jeffords story is a perfect example of what happens when the moderates in any political party are stifled, not because the party disrespects their views, but because the party's ambitions become too great. Moderates are the gears in the complex machinery of successful lawmaking and Jeffords' departure should serve as a warning to both parties about the penalties of political arrogance.
(05/16/01 9:00am)
The decision to permanently derecognize the Zeta Psi fraternity was disproportionate to the administration's punishment of acts committed by other Greek and non-Greek organizations. However, Zeta Psi could hardly claim ignorance in light of their failure to make institutional improvements after their temporary derecognition in 1987. The entire incident hints at a lack of understanding of what constitutes acceptable speech and how to appropriately hold people responsible for their actions. In the wake of this derecognition, the Dartmouth community must demand a more specific codification of the range of acceptable speech, rather than continue with a set of incoherent principles and utopian goals that puts too much judicial power in the hands of a few unaccountable individuals. The best reaction to the Zeta Psi incident would be for the student body to demand the creation of additional (rather than replacement) student-controlled social life options that don't engage in discriminatory speech.
(05/02/01 9:00am)
No, I'm not kidding. On May 9th Dartmouth students will have an opportunity to tell the administration that we will no longer acquiesce to phony elections of a Student Body President who has no true institutional voice in the management of the school. There is no democracy in the administration of Dartmouth College; hence we should not let the administration maintain the facade of democracy. If you truly want your vote to count, you should vote for someone who can actually influence this school.
(04/04/01 9:00am)
Our new President is incredibly adept at making self-fulfilling prophecies. First, there were his negative comments about the economy for over a year during the presidential campaign, which may have actually helped to slow down the economy. Then, on foreign policy, Bush downgraded our relationship with China from "strategic partner," to "strategic competitor." Although the two phrases might sound equally meaningless (sort of like "compassionate conservative"), the Chinese apparently didn't think so. Last weekend a U.S. EP-3E Aries II intelligence-gathering plane collided with a Chinese F-8 fighter jet that was flying at close range during the U.S. plane's routine surveillance flight over the South China Sea. The Chinese fighter jet, one of two following the U.S. plane, crashed into the ocean and the pilot has yet to be rescued. The EP-3's 24 member crew managed to land their plane on Hainan Island, a Chinese province approximately 70 miles to the North of the incident. As of last night, China was still detaining the crew members and the plane had not been returned. Whether the crew members are being held as hostages, suspected spies or just for medical treatment is unknown. Still, the incident brings up a number of important questions regarding the future of U.S.-China relations and marks a difficult first test of the Bush administration's ability to deal with international military crises.
(03/06/01 11:00am)
It doesn't always happen, but yesterday's snow proved that our friendly weatherman's (or woman's) prediction was correct. If weather predictions are sometimes wrong it is because they are based on probability, not fact. There was an 80 percent probability that it would snow yesterday, and not surprisingly, it actually snowed. Our predictions for the future fiscal health of this country work the same way. Every few months the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) publishes its best guess about what will happen to our government's finances over the next 10 years, based on a huge number of economic variables. Because this guess-work forms the basis for President George W. Bush's tax cut proposal, there is no way to know for sure whether we will really be able to afford the tax cuts, not to mention whether we should be cutting taxes according to his particular plan. Just as the weather can sometimes bring unexpected surprises, his gigantic tax cut may leave our country wearing nothing but shorts in the middle of an economic snowstorm.
(02/20/01 11:00am)
Sequels are rarely as successful as the originals, although apparently Washington doesn't think so. Last week, Republican members of Congress suggested they could impeach Former President Clinton again, this time for the pardoning of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) said the latest Clinton scandal (who ever thought we would be saying that again) could be reason enough to remove him from the symbolic office of "Ex-President."
(01/22/01 11:00am)
It was an ending that even Hollywood could love. The man with instantly-recognizable white and gray hair turned away after one last look at the Capitol, got into the limousine and drove away into the rain. Last Saturday, Clinton's White House, Clinton's economy and Clinton's politics came to end. The president who could enrage his opponents and dazzle his allies, can at long last be referred to using the word "former." For better or for worse, the Clinton era is over.
(01/09/01 11:00am)
Move aside John Ashcroft. Last Sunday, Linda Chavez, a syndicated columnist chosen to be Bush's Secretary of Labor, acquired the unfortunate distinction of being the president-elect's most controversial cabinet designee. Chavez's appointment sank into uncertain waters after the Bush campaign confirmed that she had allowed Marta Mercado, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, to live in her home between 1991 and 1993. Chavez denied charges that Mercado was her employee, although she did admit that Mercado did "odd jobs on an irregular basis," and that she had given Mercado spending money from time to time. According to ABC News, federal law prohibits even giving housing to a known illegal immigrant.
(01/05/01 11:00am)
Does this scenario sound familiar? A young, inexperienced president is elected to office with a slim electoral majority and faces grave doubts about his abilities from leaders both at home and abroad. A Russian leader, concerned with the United States' expanding power, decides to test the new president's resolve by making a surprise transfer of nuclear weapons. This was the series of events that led to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet premier at the time, decided to give Cuban dictator Fidel Castro nuclear missiles because he thought the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, was diplomatically incompetent. Russian missiles and weak leadership brought our country to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And yet, a frighteningly similar chain of events has just taken place in Eastern Europe.
(11/22/00 11:00am)
Very little political news has been able to wedge itself past the partisan rancor over the Presidency. However, there were some fairly interesting aspects of the 2000 election that didn't involve melodrama, chads, dimples or butterflies. In many ways, the 2000 congressional elections were just as historic as the presidential race, although for very different reasons.
(11/13/00 11:00am)
These are perilous times that we live in. Most people, it seems, do not adequately comprehend the risks that underlie the currently unresolved presidential race. The doubts about the authenticity and reliability of the presidential election's results will follow the next president into office and may make the first new president of the 21st century the least powerful president in all of American history. Or what is even scarier is that we may not get any kind of result at all without the intervention of the courts. This past week's events make all the more likely that the results of this election will be decided by a court room, not a ballot box. Regardless of who wins, whose case is thrown out and whose lawyers are more persuasive, because of actions taken by both candidates, we are guaranteed of having a president who will owe his presidency to a judge. Nor is there any turning back. We have exited from the highway of the normal political process and entered a frighteningly uncharted territory of semi-constitutional jurisdiction and tenuous legal authority.
(11/02/00 11:00am)
Trade your vote? It's a bizarre concept. Why would you vote for anyone other than the candidate of your choice? Yet a group of Al Gore supporters have gotten together with a group of Ralph Nader supporters in order to create a website that asks voters to trade their Nader vote in a competitive state with someone voting for Gore in a non-competitive state. This rather sad scheme for trying to prevent the hemorrhaging of Al Gore's candidacy is in itself pathetic, because it admits that Al Gore's only chance of winning the presidency is with Nader's help. Rather than waiting until the last week of the election and trying to convince people to abandon Nader in order to prevent a Bush presidency, Gore should have convinced them through the power of his accomplishments, his ideas and his beliefs. A Bush presidency may be an anathema to many liberals, but Ralph Nader is right when he says, you should vote for whomever you believe is the best candidate. One of the biggest problems with our democracy is that too many people already feel like they are voting for the lesser of two evils. A Gore loss is Gore's fault, not Ralph Nader's.
(10/27/00 9:00am)
As the administration's recent threat to eliminate the bonfire shows, there is a fundamental difference between the philosophies of the students and the administration at this school. For the students, by and large, this school is a community of adults living together, a place to learn more about yourself, a place to learn about others, and a place to learn about certain aspects of the world in exquisite detail.
(10/16/00 9:00am)
If the main event of fall 2000 is the fight for control of the White House, the contest for the House of Representatives may seem to some like more of a mundane side-show. Since winning the House by a large majority is out of the question for both parties, the amount of power up for grabs hardly compares to the high stakes presidential race. The fact is, however, whichever party wins the majority in Congress will decide the success or failure of the next president's agenda. Since the Republicans currently only have a seven-seat majority, there is a strong possibility that the Democrats could take control. Winning seven out of 435 races doesn't sound like too daunting a task, but both Republicans and Democrats agree that there are essentially only a select few "competitive" House races in the country. These 34 district races are so close and the chance that some candidates might even change parties in exchange for a committee assignment , means that it may be impossible to know who is actually controlling the House until the Members are sworn in Jan. 3.
(08/18/00 9:00am)
LOS ANGELES -- Like a boxer entering the ring before a title fight, Vice President Al Gore ran down a side corridor at the Staples Center and entered the presidential arena to the cheers of the thousands of convention guests and delegates assembled here.
(08/16/00 9:00am)
LOS ANGELES -- Local residents of cities hosting political conventions can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the glitz, the plague of media representatives and surprise appearances by political and entertainment megastars. The tables may be turned at this year's Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Convention attendees got their first taste of Hollywoodland as they flew in over the city and saw the words "Welcome to Los Angeles" spelled out in an aerial-view-only, using 50-foot cement columns with lights on top. The palm-tree lined highways and signs pointing to Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills seem more like the setting for a teen television series than a national political convention. Even veterans of political parties were surprised by the lavishness of the Saturday night welcoming party, which featured a slide show on a 50-story building and 15,000 person guest list.
(05/24/00 9:00am)
In an old Aesop's fable the wind and the sun test their strength by trying to cause a traveler to remove his heavy cloak. In the face of the wind's angry huffing and puffing, the traveler wraps the cloak even tighter around himself. But under the warm, beaming rays of the sun, the traveler happily removes his cloak. This traveler is a good metaphor for the debate that will be waged on the floor of Congress today, over whether or not to grant permanent normalized trading relations (PNTR) to China. The question is how to defeat oppression and improve the quality of life for billions in China. Is it best that we use trade sanctions, military build-ups and possible violence? Or is it better to fight with the power of the pen (or in this day and age, the keyboard) and to spread freedom to China in the form of imported American culture? In today's vote, Congress will decide whether the best way to remove the cloak of tyranny hanging on the shoulders' of the Chinese people, is through cold isolation, or through warm friendliness.
(05/08/00 9:00am)
An elderly woman stands alone in a drab, yellowish room surrounded by voting booths. At a first glance, one would assume that the room is some type of storage room, perhaps where the voting booths are stored when they aren't being used. But then reality sets in. This is Primary Day 2000 in Washington, D.C. This is a polling place in the capital city of the world's most powerful democracy and it has been able to attract only one voter, coming to cast her empty vote.
(04/19/00 9:00am)
The crowd of demonstrators forming a human barricade in front of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. on Sunday was neither starving, poverty-stricken, nor oppressed. Well, perhaps a little oppressed due to a few overly zealous D.C. police officers determined to try-out their new cans of pepper-spray. Anarchists and crazed hippies aside, the point is that a majority of the thousands of people who descended on Washington last weekend were not there out of self-interest. They were on a campaign to inform the country and the world about an issue that is relatively new to most Americans. The problem is that not everyone in the world is sharing in the fabulous wealth and prosperity generated by globalization and the dawn of the information age. To be realistic, the world is not going to get rid of poverty overnight. But an important first step that the U.S. and its allies in the IMF and the World Bank can take to create a stronger world economy and a better life for the billions of people in poverty-stricken countries, is through regulated debt relief.
(03/02/00 11:00am)
When it comes to improving race relations, America seems to be taking baby steps. The acquittal of four New York City police officers, accused of killing Amadou Diallo, a West-African immigrant, gives strength to arguments that 21st century police officers are only marginally different from their 20th century counterparts. The Diallo killing is a perfect example of the practice known as racial profiling that has become rampant in America's businesses, on her streets, and most often, in her inner cities. Unlike the blatant racism exhibited by members of hate groups, racial profiling indoctrinates officers in training, with a pre-determined model of an offender. Trained with a template for criminals, officers often rush to judgement about a suspect, purely based on visual cues. The use of racial profiling is much more likely to lead to unnecessary violence.