Sunday, September 29, 2024

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Editorials

COMMENTARY

Join the WRC

As of Jan. 1 President-designate Lou Anna Simon has an opportunity to sign MSU up for more workers' rights groups. Campus group Students for Economic Justice, or SEJ, has lobbied MSU President M.

COMMENTARY

In the money

It must be a tremendously troubling burden to sit on $600,000 in risk-management funds. What a bore, what a chore, what a taxing, vexing problem to have - too much money and no where to spend it.

COMMENTARY

Bad business

Music downloading services for college campuses are nice. Maybe, in some small way, they'd help curb some illegal downloading.

COMMENTARY

Taken to task

This semester, The State News has had the unfortunate responsibility of reporting on an unusually high number of reported sexual assaults.

COMMENTARY

D.C. bound

Fate has opened up a couple of options for MSU President M. Peter McPherson. On Jan. 1 McPherson will be out on a job search that might end at the White House.

COMMENTARY

Easy on the nog

We know a lot of you are skipping class tomorrow. We won't rat you out. We will, however, take advantage of Tuesday's readership to offer some advice for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Alcohol, and binge drinking in particular, gets blamed for a lot of the less-than-desirable acts we see.

COMMENTARY

Contemptible

Last summer, The State News ran an editorial commending the Detroit Pistons and their fans for putting a blue-collar stamp on the otherwise-glitzy and egomaniacal world of professional basketball.

COMMENTARY

Commendable

The Spartans total offensive package was not delivered Saturday at Penn State. Although there's the depressing realization that the Spartans will not advance to a bowl game, we have to acknowledge this was by no means a losing season. If MSU prevails in its Dec.

COMMENTARY

Live document

The mission of the U.S. Constitution is to enumerate and protect the rights of Americans and to provide a loose framework of ideas open to interpretation and modification.

COMMENTARY

Keeping mum

Sometime Thursday morning - when a television reporter was convicted of criminal contempt in Providence, R.I., for refusing to identify his source - the prospect of First Amendment rights to a free press took a step back. The reporter, Jim Taricani of WJAR-TV, faces up to six months in prison for protecting his source who leaked an FBI tape of a city official taking a bribe. Technically, what happened to Taricani is allowed for under judicial interpretations of the First Amendment.

COMMENTARY

Back it up

Nicolette Sheridan has every right to be upset about ABC's apology for running an allegedly racy introduction to "Monday Night Football." One of Janet Jackson's breasts was worth $550,000 - presumably more than a cool $1 million for the pair - but Sheridan's bare back could only be worth $32,500, max. In what can only be considered an attempt at inflicting pre-color "Pleasantville" morals on America, the Federal Communications Commission has again declared indecency where there is none to be found.

COMMENTARY

Building block

The East Lansing City Council shut out local developer Corey Partnership on Tuesday from refurbishing its own vacant building on the corner of Bailey Street and Grand River Avenue into apartments and condos.

COMMENTARY

In the booth

How to best hire the board of administrators at a public university like MSU? Some say allowing the state's governor to appoint board members would infuse too many partisan politics with higher education, and that it would result in a partisan-stacked board room.

COMMENTARY

In cold blood?

What we do know is that an embedded NBC correspondent filmed a U.S. Marine shooting an Iraqi man in a Fallujah mosque.

COMMENTARY

Taking 'U' on

By deciding to spend nearly $7,000 to gauge student opinion of its representative government, ASMSU has made a smart move. To get the student feedback they need, the group will survey undergraduate students on how ASMSU could do a better job representing student interests.

COMMENTARY

RIA is not MIA

As President Bush's cabinet members played another round of musical chairs Monday, a former Spartan found himself out of work.

COMMENTARY

'Known to all'

For two weeks, we received a good amount of letters suggesting that head football coach John L. Smith was running the program into the ground.

COMMENTARY

Early and often

Early voting and lowered restrictions on absentee ballots could be a good thing for Michigan, with the proper checks and balances in place. Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land recently announced plans to enact these exact measures in our state.

COMMENTARY

Moore again?

Filmmaker Michael Moore has announced plans to create a sequel to "Fahrenheit 9/11." While Moore's films can entertain, the probability runs high that he'll editorialize and bend the truth to his whim.

COMMENTARY

#&@! the FCC

If American history is too grisly for you, please turn the page and continue reading. For those hardy souls who stayed put, congratulate yourselves for not living in fear of the Federal Communications Commission, better known as the FCC, better known to us as a public enemy. ABC affiliates in at least eight states have decided not to run an unedited version of "Saving Private Ryan," Steven Spielberg's triumphant 1998 World War II picture, because it contains violent, grisly and graphic images.