You’ve been going to MSU for a while now, and you know the ropes of the school. But what about the city in which our school is located? Do you know much about what’s going on around us? Do you even know who is the mayor of East Lansing?
From party to party we hopped. The gusting winds swirling in East Lansing that night — my very first night as a college student — had blown my buddies and I square across the city.
Consumer waste comes in all shapes and sizes, but perhaps the most damaging has come from a generally unnoticed source — plastic shopping bags. According to GOOD Magazine, the U.S. uses 60,000 plastic bags every five seconds, which adds up to some heavy environmental consequences.
This week, the best editorial opinion in any newspaper on the Hugo Chávez election defeat was in The State News. I simultaneously want to praise my fellow college students and chastise our mainstream media “big brothers” for focusing attention on far more parochial issues of the day.
I don’t know what possessed us to watch “The Jane Pauley Show” that lazy afternoon, but I do know how lucky I am that we did.
Hypocrisy and American politics go hand in hand. The process of superficially pleasing a diverse and disparate constituency, while stealthily prioritizing the interests of wealthy campaign donors, necessarily creates an atmosphere of duplicitous insincerity.
It’s holiday season again, which in the U.S. means door-buster sales, TV commercials with elves and reindeer and long lines in department stores.
Some familiar faces were absent from the U.S. Senate floor during a late-night roll call vote on the controversial confirmation of Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey. Despite the weight of the Nov. 8 decision, not one presidential candidate showed up to take a stance.
With several regions of the world locked in violent conflict, it is sometimes easy to forget the United Nations is still around. It was created to allow free dialogue between countries in hopes that diplomacy will avert bloodshed. Sixty years after its founding, the organization has only been semi-effective in this endeavor.
Taser International, Inc., uses Santa on the front of its Web site saying, “What does Santa bring you when you have been good but the world is getting bad?” Really, is this necessary?
They’ve been getting a bad rap lately, but Tasers — when used responsibly and properly — can be extremely effective in terms of keeping someone safe.
Only the people you know really well are complex enough to have emotional problems. Everyone else is either just normal or crazy, and therapy is only for the latter.
I rarely follow politics in other states very closely, but there is a particularly interesting and unique race for the Senate developing in Minnesota. The incumbent, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, is facing his first re-election bid since winning the seat of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died with his wife and daughter in a plane crash 11 days before the 2002 election.
The current field of Republican candidates has failed to quench the thirsts of conservatives for another Ronald Reagan-like figure. Many conservatives do not believe any of the eight major candidates fit the mold of a conservative who can defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election.
I was a vocal supporter of the Iraq war during its initial stages and into 2005 and believed with conviction in the stated goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East. I agreed that Saddam Hussein was a dictator against whom force was justified. I cheered when we took Baghdad and dismissed the skeptics’ claim that we were merely in it for the oil. With this admission, I join a significant portion of policy makers, government leaders and the American intelligentsia who were duped.
Thanksgiving is approaching and most people in the U.S. are gearing up for one of the laziest days of the year — complete with copious amounts of food, making this the perfect time to address our nation’s out of control eating habits.
While writing about Latin American-aimed racism last week, I began exploring the issue of illegal immigration — a very hot topic. Racism and discrimination of any kind is wrong and usually based on ignorance, no questions asked, and should be socially unacceptable in any form.
We, both as Americans and Michiganians, are constantly assailed by extremist partisan rhetoric. This holds true for city council elections just as much as it holds true for national ones. Political polarization seems to be a fact of life.
When I was the ripe age of 11, what I looked forward to was playing kickball during recess and drinking chocolate milk at lunch. It definitely wasn’t getting my next round of birth control pills, which are now available to middle school students in Maine.
I never thought so many of my liberal friends would vote Republican. Ron Paul’s $4.7 million online fundraiser last week proved him an online, if not actual, presidential heavyweight.