Sunday, January 11, 2026

Take a peek behind the curtain and test drive the NEW StateNews.com today!

Columns

COMMENTARY

Enormous U.S. deficit is another invite to international unpopularity

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently warned, "Given the size of the U.S. current account deficit, a diminished appetite for adding to dollar balances must occur at some point." Greenspan, in his adorably cryptic way, was explaining that foreign investors will eventually grow weary of lending money to the United States. The Los Angeles Times reported that in September foreign investors finally balked at taking on more U.S.

SPORTS

Bar lowered for men's hoops team

I think that my college eligibility runs out when I graduate Saturday. The odds of me finally getting my break and suiting up for the MSU hoops squad is minuscule at best, but that's the hand I've been dealt, and I'm going to cope. This means that I'll never play a minute of college basketball - I'll never get to set one screen, take one jump shot or get to pretend I'm Scott Skiles.

SPORTS

Full steam ahead for Izzo & Co.

Were you disappointed by Saturday's basketball result? I mean, the Spartans only scored 102 points - two under their season average. What happened to the offensive juggernaut we saw in MSU's first two games when the Green and White put up 104 points against Florida A&M and Wisconsin-Green Bay? The Spartans had six players scoring in double figures against the Rattlers and Phoenix, but only five against the Nicholls State Colonels. No Spartans team has ever eclipsed the century mark more than once in a season before, much less three times, consecutively.

COMMENTARY

Pop culture icons from 1980s prove it was disposable decade

Take your pick - either watch the movie or read the book, but there's a lot of cultural truth in Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho." It's not like everyone during the '80s was out killing random people while listening to Huey Lewis & the News, but the culture and music meant little more than novelty. In any other decade, "American Psycho's" anti-hero Patrick Bateman probably would have fared much better. How will our generation communicate or even explain the culture of the 1980s to our own children?

COMMENTARY

'Basketbrawl' is giving city of Detroit, its residents negative image

During the Pacers-Pistons game this past weekend, the basketbrawl of the century broke loose. Several fans were injured and nine basketball players suffered harsh penalties as a result of their actions. Ron Artest was hit with a season suspension, one of the most severe penalties ever in the history of basketball. That said, my aim is not to justify who's wrong or right between the fans and basketball players.

COMMENTARY

Columnist clears up misconceptions on Bush, religion, voting trends

In a previous column, "Bush supporters share common thread with fundamentalists" (SN 11/10), I mentioned a study by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), which found that majorities of President Bush voters were profoundly uninformed, and held erroneous beliefs about election issues and their candidate's policies.

COMMENTARY

Practice of pardoning White House's Thanksgiving turkey must end

There is no practice more inane, no tradition more vapid and no photo opportunity more whorish than the annual Thanksgiving "pardoning" of the White House turkey. Each Thanksgiving since the days of Harry Truman, the president "pardons" a turkey to a presumably pastoral life of pecking at the ground and looking at things around the farm or forest that move.

COMMENTARY

Liberal education needed for personal, professional enrichment

Hey, American Dream-totin', rigid-as-hell parents - listen up. Same to you, money-calculatin', class-resentin' college students who have been filled up with the "get a good money job" mantra by the first group. You're missing the ball if you don't care for the value of liberal education.

SPORTS

Seniors say: Not in our house

"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground." I should have known Saturday's game was going to be a strange one.