Vanity Fair recently published an 8-page scathing feature on Sarah Palin.  In it, Palin is portrayed as a duplicitous, self-serving politician/self-marketer.  The reporter provides examples of Palin’s temper (one anecdote describes Palin’s fights with husband Todd as violent, the two tossing canned food items at each other with such intensity that their stainless steel refrigerator was damaged), and explores the controversial relationship between Palin and groups like SarahPAC and Conservatives4Palin.  Palin is also described as an all-around mean-spirited lady, yelling at campaign volunteers and refusing to thank the kitchen staff at an event.  Her speaking engagements, apparently, must come with deluxe hotel accommodations.

It seems that Vanity Fair is a tough crowd for Palin, as they also recently published an article dissecting Palin’s wardrobe expenses from her 2008 VP campaign.  That article alleges that Palin used campaign funds for personal purchases — clothes for daughter Bristol, etc. — and expensed them to the campaign.

Obama’s policy in the Middle East has been based more heavily upon the perseverance of his political image than on pragmatism.

On Aug. 2, 2010, Obama said that he is on the way to fulfilling his campaign promise of ending the war in Iraq. Under his plan, the United States will have removed all combat troops by Aug. 31, 2010 and 50,000 troops will remain to train Iraqi security forces, conduct counterterrorism operations and provide security for ongoing U.S. civilian efforts. Obama, however, seems more intent on being precisely on schedule to withdraw than to actually assess the situation and to make decisions based on that assessment. According to Obama’s website, “the responsible pace of redeployment called for by the Obama-Biden plan offers more than enough time for Iraqi leaders to get their own house in order….” However, on August 1, 2010, the Washington Post reported that “nearly five months after disputed parliamentary elections, leading Iraqi politicians say they have all but abandoned hope of resolving an impasse over forming a new government before fall.”

The latest government figures show that July has been the most violent month for Iraq in more than two years. These figures cause critics of the withdrawal to question the readiness of Iraqi security forces to take over.

Although Obama is adhering to his withdrawal timetable, he is doing so at the expense of stability in Iraq and the welfare of Iraqi civilians.

As Obama draws down forces in Iraq, he has also ordered a surge of 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. He has emphasized that al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that the goal of the war in Afghanistan is to ultimately defeat al-Qaeda. However, the goals of the withdrawal in Iraq and the defeat of al-Qaeda are at odds with each other. General Michael Hayden, the Director of the CIA, says that a quick U.S. withdrawal would result in a political vacuum that the al-Qaeda network could quickly fill, thus establishing a major safe haven from which to expand its jihad in the region and plan attacks against the West. A National Intelligence Estimate released on July 17, 2007 states that “al-Qaeda will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland… and will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qaeda in Iraq, its most visible and capable affiliate.”

The continuing violence in Iraq and the Iraqis’ inability to form a new government reveals the region’s instability. The political vacuum created by US withdrawal would open the floodgates for sectarian and terrorist violence, and the inevitable spillover effects could destabilize the entire Middle East, including tipping the balance of power in favor of Iran. A State Department-issued report on global terrorism declared that Iran “remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism” in the world in 2009. On August 3, 2010, John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said that “this is exactly the wrong moment to complete the withdrawal of combat forces, given the uncertainty in Iraq and Iran’s increased involvement in trying to cause trouble in Iraq.” And yet, Obama not only ignores the threat of Iran, he wants to open up the possibility for talks in Afghanistan. According to an article in the Washington Post on August 5, 2010, Obama said he favored a “separate track” for discussion of the issue, in which the two countries have a “mutual interest” in fighting the Taliban. However, a February 7, 2005 threat report, which was released as part of the Wikileaks Papers, showed that U.S. commanders received regular reports of collusion between the Iranians, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremists groups. The report states that Iranians arm, train, shelter, and fund the jihadists.

The president told reporters that Iran “could be a constructive partner” with the U.S. in fighting the Taliban and stabilizing Afghanistan.

Obama was criticized in the 2008 presidential campaign for having an appeasement policy toward Iran. He has since made concerted efforts to assert his “hard-line” stance on Iran. On June 9, 2010, the U.N. Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran’s military establishment to pressure Iran to negotiate with the U.S. and its allies. However, the legitimacy of his stance on Iran begins to fall apart when he states that he wants to partner with a country who is at war with us. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said in 2008 that “it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans….”

If there was any confusion on Iran’s sentiments and the likelihood that it would partner with us in Afghanistan, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the situation quite clear on the day after Obama’s new peace offering. According to the Weekly Standard, Ahmadinejad hosted Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and declared that their two nations, together with Tajikistan, could form an alliance that would serve as a bulwark against Western influence in the region.

Obama cannot continue to ignore the threat that Iran poses to both U.S. domestic security and to regional security in the Middle East.

The popular rhetoric of campaign speeches is a poor substitute for informed foreign policy decisions. Obama needs to adapt to changing situations in the Middle East, and make decisions that will protect the American people.

This just in:

BJ Lawson has won the Republican Party’s nomination for NC’s fourth congressional district, earning  46 percent of the 23,000 votes cast (2010 North Carolina Primary Election Results, WRAL.com (link)).

Lawson, who also won the 2008 GOP nomination, won tonight’s primary election running on a platform of limited government and fiscal responsibility. The Lawson campaign especially highlighted the importance of constitutional government and opposed the Federal Reserve.

“I think the primary message of the campaign has been about getting our economic freedom back, the freedom to create our own jobs and our own businesses and get the economy going again at the grass roots,” Lawson said in a post-election phone interview.

As the Republican candidate for the fourth district, Lawson will represent all of the constituents of Durham and Orange counties, as well as many residents of Wake and Chatham Counties. He will represent the Republican party against incumbent David Price (D) this November.

In addition to permanent residents of the fourth district, Duke students who registered to vote locally participated in tonight’s primary election. Chelsea Goldstein, current DSG Vice President for Academic Affairs, proudly voted in today’s Republican primary. She laments that “it’s a shame that so many people didn’t vote in such an important primary,” a competitive election for both the Republican House and Democratic Senate races. “I think going at noon and having less than 20 people having already voted at the polling place where all the Duke students should be voting was sad,” Goldstein says.

Nonetheless, “More than 7,000 Wake County people voted early, compared to 700 in 2006, the most recent off-year election without a presidential or gubernatorial race” (Turnout steady, slow for Tuesday primaries, WRAL.com (link)). However, 2006 was the lowest voter turnout in recent history at 12 percent, while “the 2008 presidential primary recorded the highest turnout at 37 percent” (Vote 2010: Trickle Of Voters Decide Key Races, WSOCTV.com (link)).

The Gothic Guardian also extends its congratulations to first-time candidate and runner-up Frank Roche, who won 41% percent of the vote, as well as candidates David Burnett and George Hutchins (9% and 5%, respectively) (WRAL.com (link)).

Read The Gothic Guardian‘s profile on BJ Lawson here.

Ever had sexual relations with an underclassman, or someone who is your subordinate in a Duke Club hierarchy? Under the university’s new sexual misconduct policy, you are likely guilty of sexual misconduct.

The university’s new policy, adopted in summer 2009, destroys the importance of context clues and nonsensically broadens Duke’s adjudication of sexual harassment to indict students who are clearly innocent of any sexual misconduct¹. As such, the policy is both antithetical to the proper enforcement of sexual misconduct on campus, as well as lethally dangerous for students.

On March 4, 2010, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education wrote a concerned email to President Brodhead discussing the university’s policy².  The letter highlights three (among other) especially ambiguous textual areas of the policy which, FIRE argues, make Duke’s new policy inconsistent with the North Carolina statute on sexual misconduct.

The first problem centers around the clause, “[r]eal or perceived power differentials between individuals may create an unintentional atmosphere of coercion.³” Are the sexual partners of Duke Basketball players or seniors automatically incapable of consenting if they are underclassmen girls, as FIRE intimates⁴?

It seems like this clause’s elasticity destroys the importance of context; power differentials must only vaguely be “perceived” and/or “unintentional” to qualify as power differentials with implications for the possibility of consensual or “coercive” sex⁵. So everything from public sex to sex in private in both committed and casual relationships might qualify as coercive sex regardless of the expressed consent of both partners at the time. Perhaps Duke students are the “cream of the crop” because we have been legally interpellated as such⁶.

The second troublesome issue is the policy’s definition of conduct as being categorically “without consent” whenever an individual is intoxicated or “high.⁷” In other words, “in some situations an individual’s ability to freely consent is taken away by another person or circumstance.⁸” Again, the clause’s elasticity obscures the importance of context. As FIRE points out, parties are an inevitable reality on a college campus, and this new policy treats casual drinkers and “wasted” people identically.⁹

As a result, it uses the forest to hide the trees, as the cliché goes; the policy conceals the real acts of sexual misconduct at Duke by legally defining many consensual acts as coercive sex. For the welfare of the students, shouldn’t our policy differentiate between the consenting capacity of someone who has had one drink at a party and someone who has just downed a fifth?

The third particularly frightening issue covered in FIRE’s letter concerns the rights of the accused under the new sexual misconduct policy. “Due process” for students accused of sexual misconduct is constituted by a completely disparate set of criteria from any other area of UCB policy.¹⁰ While the normal UCB jury consists of a 3:2 student: faculty ratio, the ratio is reversed in sexual misconduct cases.¹¹

Additionally, students involved in typical misconduct accusations are permitted an advisor who may advocate on their behalf; in sexual misconduct cases, the advisor may not speak at the tribunal. The normal rights of the accused are foregone under the new sexual misconduct policy, implying that the accused in these cases are presumed to be guilty in a way which is not applied to other potential offenders.

Overall, the new policy is surrounded by an atmosphere of “guilty until proven innocent.” Students accused of sexual misconduct are treated differently from other students at every ideological level, regardless of the policy’s claim that “[s]tudents accused of sexual misconduct have the same rights as any student accused of a policy violation.¹²”

Duke students adhere to a strict community standard with minimal infractions each school year, and should be treated with the respect of a consistent sense of due process, even those accused of sexual misconduct. Furthermore, Duke students who are involved with “perceived” powerful groups on campus seem especially and arbitrarily singled out by the policy.¹³ The very serious issue of sexual harassment is trivialized if students are implicated for coercive sex simply for being upperclassmen or varsity athletes.

References

1 Duke Sexual Misconduct Policy. http://www.studentaffairs.duke.edu/conduct/resources/sexualmisconduct

2  “FIRE Letter to Duke University President Richard Brodhead.” March 26 2010. http://www.thefire.org/article/11692.html

3  Duke Sexual Misconduct Policy, ibid.

4  Ibid.

5  Ibid.

6  Quote appeared in a letter-to-the-editor of Duke’s The Chronicle. First cited by Rupp, Lindsay. “Rape Policy Mandates Reporting.” The Chronicle. August 28, 2009. http://dukechronicle.com/node/149519

7  Duke Sexual Misconduct Policy, ibid.

8  Ibid.

9  “FIRE Letter to Duke University President Richard Brodhead.” Ibid.

10  Undergraduate Conduct Board. http://www.studentaffairs.duke.edu/conduct/programs-services/ucbinfo

11  “Fire Letter to Duke University President Richard Brodhead.” Ibid.

12  Duke Sexual Misconduct Policy, ibid.

13  Ibid.

You know there is a problem with the tax system when the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury fails to file his taxes correctly.

Whether or not Timothy Geithner knowingly evaded his taxes, the discrepancy shows how complex our current tax system really is.

If you’ve ever filed taxes, images of inscrutable tax policies and forms are probably ingrained in your recent memory – studies agree.  A Tax Foundation survey in April 2007 found that 83 percent of people surveyed said the federal income tax is “very complex” or somewhat “complex.” The Brookings Institution reports that a recent study estimated that taxpayers spent 3.2 billion hours and $18.8 billion preparing and paying taxes in 2000. On average, each taxpayer spent an average of 25.5 hours and $149.

The tax system is difficult to navigate because over the years, Congress has made rules and exceptions to incentivize taxpayers to use their money in certain ways. However, taxpayers often cannot easily take advantage of incentives, because they are hidden amid the mounds of instructions.

In addition to being complex, the current tax system discourages savings, according to a testimony to the President’s Advisory Board on Tax Reform. The government taxes hard-earned income each step of the way. With payroll taxes and income taxes, state taxes, local taxes, property taxes, sales tax – even taxes on money made from investments, the government seems to have developed a never-ending stream of innovative methods that serve the sole purpose of taking money from the Americans that earn it.

To fix this system that fails to reward the middle class for working hard and being economically productive, the tax system needs to be completely overhauled. We need a simpler, flatter tax.  It seems that most Americans would agree, as

78 percent of people surveyed by the Tax Foundation believed the federal tax system  needed “major changes” or “a complete overhaul.”

One alternative tax proposal is the “FairTax.” The FairTax would eliminate all federal income and payroll-based taxes and institute a flat 23 percent national sales tax in its place. The tax is levied at the point of purchase on all goods and services for personal consumption.

According to the Americans for Fair Tax, the FairTax is more progressive than the individual income tax, payroll tax, and the corporate income tax. Only those with the ability to pay actually pay. It eliminates both the payroll tax and hidden tax costs passed along to consumers in the price of goods and services.

By proposing federal government issue monthly “prebates” that would ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, this tax method would continue to protect lower-income families. For example, under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services poverty guidelines for 2005, a family of four could consume $25,660 worth of new goods tax-free (under this system, used products would not be taxed at all). Above the poverty line, taxes increase according to how much a family consumes. The tax, unlike the current tax system, gives workers their full paycheck so they have the choice to spend, save, or invest.

One primary point of concern is the viability of such a flat tax, even though this model has already improved financial stability in a number of European countries. In a February 2010 article, the Financial Times compared 27 European countries’ gross government debt to their gross domestic product in 2010. The overall European Union nation has a gross government debt that represents 79.3 percent of their gross domestic product. European nations with flat tax systems tend to have more financially efficient government systems: six of the eight lowest indebted countries have a flat tax system, with an average gross public debt of 29.2 percent.

Tax policy is complicated and controversial, and ideas for tax reform are often met with cautious silence from political leaders and misrepresentation from media outlets.  According to research by the Business and Media Institute, the media has largely ignored the FairTax and has mischaracterized many of its measures when the FairTax has been covered. It is time that the American people set the facts straight and advocate for a better system.

So when the dreaded April 15 rolls around again, just remember that the Secretary of the Treasury could not even get his taxes right. Hopefully that will offer some consolation. When it doesn’t, consider supporting a better method of taxing.

Fees, unions, directed choice, two-million dollar deficit: these are the buzzwords that have framed the dining debate in recent months. While the issues of creating a self supporting dining program and providing the campus with diverse foods both receive much attention, other pertinent issues in Duke Dining are less broadly discussed. Of these issues, the most troubling is the lack of healthy options available to low income students on a small dining budget.

It is a well-known that Duke students tend to be wealthier than their counterparts at many other institutions. It is almost assumed that everyone on campus is sufficiently affluent to eat well. For most students, it is normal enough to eat out several times a week and to add food points as they run out in the closing weeks of the semester.

There are, though, those students that cannot afford to buy more food points at will and rely on outside dining. The students that are forced to eat their meals on campus and to monitor their food point usage  are also the ones ignored in the current dining model. While most students cannot afford to eat at the Wa-Duke every night, these students’ choices are even more limited as they are forced to accept lower quality and less healthy food choices on campus.

I consider myself an average Duke student. I think I eat well. I eat out about once a week and often spend time off campus with meals on my own tab.  When I am on campus, I do not seek out the most expensive meals, and do try to put some effort into not overspending on food. Each semester I buy the cheapest meal plan at $1,710. Each semester, I overspend this amount by about $200 to $300. At 21 meals a week, this means over the course of a semester (once you take out the 20 or so meals I eat off campus), I can spend about $6.50 per meal on average. Even someone who has an appetite the size of mine, but can’t afford to eat out and acquire additional points, will only have about $5 available per meal. Thus, these students are forced to strictly dictate their meal choices by the price of the items they buy.

In a survey of the dining options on campus, price and quality of the food are definitely positively correlated: the more expensive the item, the healthier it tends to be. This is to be expected though. No one is expecting a sirloin steak and spaghetti to carry the same price tag, but Duke dining should not allow the health-value of food to have such a large range.

For example, a meal at the Great Hall (main dish with 2 sides and a drink) will cost $9 to $10 depending on the particular entrée, well above the allocated $5 dollars.  A meal at Alpine Atrium, a fairly healthy option, will run between $8 and $8.50. Meanwhile, a meal at Chick-fil-a will cost $6 to $6.50 and a Big Mac meal at the campus McDonalds costs $5.09. Of all the meals presented here, only one is remotely close to meeting the average meal cost goal demanded by an affordable university meal plan.

Even within the same restaurant, healthier options tend to be more expensive. A soda at the Great Hall costs $1.19, but a comparable fruit juice costs $1.69. A fried chicken sandwich at Chick-fil-a costs $2.85, but the same sandwich grilled will cost an extra $0.70. The price differential for a salad is even greater, at  $4.85. At McDonalds, the Big Mac is one of the cheapest meals on the menu. While these small increases in price may not seem significant, a few extra dollars per meal is a huge burden for students struggling to stay within their budget.

While the debate rages on about how to close the dining deficit, the dining ‘people’ need to realize this campus needs an eatery where students can regularly eat nutritious meals without spending $9 to $10 each meal. The Great Hall is not a viable option, as its products are drastically overpriced, not to mention generally unappetizing. Another issue with the Great Hall is its lack of service on weekends, which assumes that every student has the means to eat elsewhere for the weekend. Changes need to be made so that every student can eat both healthily and affordably.

As we look forward to the 2010 elections, The Gothic Guardian sat down with BJ Lawson, a Republican candidate for the United States Congress representing North Carolina, for an interview.Our interview with Frank Roche, Lawson’s opponent in the Republican primary, can be found here.

“I’m not trying to fit into anyone’s box, in terms of labels,” William “BJ” Lawson says.

At age 36, Lawson, a Republican Congressional candidate for North Carolina’s fourth district, has already fit and outgrown many labels. He has been an engineer, a doctor, an entrepreneur, and now again a potential congressman (he ran in 2008 as well). His political leanings are similarly difficult to pin down – having been deemed progressive, Republican, libertarian, Lawson prefers to simply cite the United States Constitution as his platform.

Accurate, concise labels, appear difficult to find for this particular political candidate.

This is not to say that Lawson is arbitrarily running for the GOP nomination. He has considered himself a Republican his entire life – reading the National Review at a young age, listening to Rush Limbaugh, and even supporting the George H.W. Bush campaign. Many of his political beliefs align safely within Republican party lines: for example Lawson, like most of his conservative peers, is pro-life and against gun control. He supports a smaller government and reduced bureaucracy.

But for each stance that colors within the lines, there is also a thoughtfully articulated idea that challenges standard-issue Republican beliefs. These are not the outlandish suggestions of a radical, but the product of a thoughtful political evolution that took place over the last 10 years.

For example, Lawson is vehemently against the existence of the Federal Reserve, a major point of contention between him and his opponent in the Republican primary, Frank Roche. While his stance deviates significantly from that of his party, Lawson defends his belief with plenty of factual evidence and intelligent rhetoric.

Lawson claims that the Federal Reserve fits the mold of a Marxist organization and has helped provoke inflation since its inception in 1913. “Plank number five [of the Marxist “ten commandments”] is centralization of the control of money and credit in the hands of the state,” Lawson says. “That’s it. That’s the federal reserve.”

Using a simple example of purchasing milk, Lawson described the lack of flexibility and free market in the Federal Reserve “monopoly” system. He says that, under a commodity purchasing system analogous to that of the Federal Reserve, all Americans would be forced to buy their milk from the Federal Reserve at a price solely determined by the Federal Reserve itself. If you want chocolate milk and the Fed only sells vanilla, Lawson says, then you just cannot have chocolate milk.

Instead, Lawson advocates for a system that promotes free market currency options. “There’s nothing wrong with the Federal Reserve note as a currency … but it shouldn’t have a monopoly. Just like the post office still exists, even in the age of Federal Express and UPS,” he says.

It is because of his belief in a less monopolistic currency system that Lawson supported the Plenty, a community currency coupon intended to encourage Pittsboro, NC consumers to purchase local goods. Roche, Lawson’s Republican rival, was critical of Lawson’s belief in competing currencies. Lawson counters that the plenty is really a means of promoting grassroots prosperity and local self-sustainability. “The idea behind the plenty was simply to recognize that at a very basic level we need to have communities who are able to sustain themselves in certain areas,” he says.

Even Lawson’s more conventional political positions seem to be a product of research and careful consideration. He is against affirmative action because he believes that Americans should be protected by government policy as individuals, not groups. By following “systems of counting noses and doling out special favors based on things like affirmative action,” Lawson believes that the U.S. is taking “a step towards collectivism.”

Lawson’s own history with gun control policy best illustrates his commitment to adapting his views to a consistent, logical framework. As a child, Lawson says that he was not raised around guns, and as a medical resident, grew increasingly wary of guns as he personally watched gunshot victims brought into the emergency room. “You’d just see bullets in places where they’re not supposed to be,” Lawson says.

But after the Virginia Tech shooting, Lawson says his perspective changed. He argues that had a campus bystander been able to successfully shoot down the gunman, the end results would have been less catastrophic. A means for self-defense, Lawson believes, is critical to the preservation of individual freedom and protection against tyranny.

“If you do not honor an individual’s right to self defense, with firearms being … the fundamental equalizer between people of different physical strength, you’ve paved yourself a nice downhill path to tyranny pretty quickly,” Lawson says.

Lawson’s open mindedness has allowed him to form opinions that go beyond cookie-cutter arguments, especially on controversial issues such as gay marriage. Lawson believes that marriage should be outside of government jurisdiction altogether and, consequently, that gay marriage is permissible because it is not the government’s place to dictate a social principle like marriage.

But Lawson goes further. He recognizes the necessity of government involvement in a domain like marriage for practical reasons (taxes must take family structure into account, etc.) and argues that the government should simply create a more accommodating legal framework for families and partnership. He says the necessity for such a legal framework extends beyond gay marriage and would also affect partnerships such as those between unmarried, elderly siblings caring for one another.

“We need bigger churches, we need better, stronger families, we need more individual liberties and the way you do that isn’t by growing government to make it define more things,” Lawson says. “It’s by saying you know what, you’re right, this isn’t a government issue.”

Lawson’s willingness to make innovative, controversial proposals separates him from many other Republican politicians, including Roche. Roche previously said in an interview with The Gothic Guardian that he did not consider Lawson to be a Republican and believed that Lawson should be running on a more progressive party’s ticket.

Lawson, too, cites a number of crucial differences between Roche and himself. On a basic level, Lawson believes that he has more experience in working with people and observing economics through an individual, personal lens as an entrepreneur and doctor.

He also rejects Roche’s criticism about his place in the Republican Party and any claims that his progressive social views will hurt his ability to win the Republican base. In Lawson’s view, these are merely arguments that inhibit actual discourse about important issues. “As soon as someone starts to label me a Republican, conservative, progressive, libertarian, whatever … as soon as we rely on labels, instead of actually talking about the issues … it really shortcuts the dialogue,” he says.

He believes that he has the grassroots support and media presence to challenge and beat David Price. Lawson initially dropped out of the 2010 race because he questioned his ability to win against Price, but has since reevaluated his position. After seeing Price vote in favor of the health care bill last December, Lawson decided that it was time to reenter the race.

He is hoping to build on the relationships first formed in his 2008 run, when he received 36 percent of the vote. Lawson reasons that, without the wave of Obama-support Price had in 2008, his campaign will have a much higher likelihood of success. With the roughly 150,000 votes he received, Lawson believes that he would have earned 45 to 47 percent of the vote had it not been for the Obama factor. “We have a chance, and we can do that because the dynamics for voter turnout are gonna be lot different in 2010 than they were in 2008,” he says.

Unlike many other Republican candidates in traditionally Democrat districts (Price has been in office for two decades now), Lawson may also have the financial backing needed to pose a serious challenge. While the fourth district Republican candidate raised only $50,000 in 2006, Lawson was able to raise $600,000 in 2008. Aided by endorsements from traditional conservatives like Ron Paul, in poured the donations in small increments, each one averaging around $100. This year, Lawson hopes to raise over a million.

Should he win, Lawson seems determined to restore constitutional order to Congress. He routinely carries pocket-sized copies of the Constitution to hand to potential voters (he gave each of us interviewers a copy) and gave out 50,000 of these copies the last time he ran for office.

He says that if Americans want real change, even the ones “who are progressive and who [were] just weeping on election night in tears of joy,” they should simply return to the Constitution. That kind of change will not include auto-industry or big bank bailouts, or the continued military presence in countries like Afghanistan. It will also not include approving votes for initiatives like the Patriot Act, for which Price voted in favor.

“Let’s get beyond the fact that the constitution was written and put into place by imperfect human beings in a social environment that left a lot to be desired in terms of equal rights for every American individual. And let’s look back to the philosophy upon which our nation was founded and that is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for every human being,” he says.

The executive board of The Gothic Guardian met on April 22 to elect Trent Serwetz the publication’s new Editor-in-Chief. The 2009-2010 editor, Lingfeng Li, stepped down in accordance with the Guardian‘s new one-year term limit for editors-in-chief.

Serwetz served as the magazine’s Production Editor this year and was the editor of his high school newspaper. He has also worked at Duke’s Multimedia Project Studio as a media consultant specializing in InDesign and Photoshop for the past three years.

During his tenure as editor, Serwetz hopes to expand the magazine’s presence on and off campus. “By increasing our number of print issues and committing to timeliness in both online and print media, we’re going to get noticed,” he said.

The executive board decided to implement a one-year term limit policy for editors-in-chief in an effort to improve leadership transitions and better spread institutional knowledge among staff members. The new policy will also allow dedicated staff members to rise to leadership positions more quickly.

The new, formal executive board led by Serwetz consists of the executive editor, production editor, and publicity director. The managing editor position, which has existed since the publication’s inception, was replaced with the publicity director position as the magazine seeks to improve its campus presence next year.

“I really think through good reporting and better publicity, better advertising, we can build on the magazine’s growing reputation,” Serwetz said.

For all the controversy over University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow’s decision to feature in a pro-life ad aired during the Super Bowl, there was at least one positive outcome.

It made the radically pro-choice left look indisputably silly. The hyperbolic nature of the episode revealed the deep frustration of the pro-choice lobby at the direction of the nation’s abortion debate.

What was noteworthy about the ad, which was made by conservative group Focus on the Family and showed Tebow playfully tackling his mother as she spoke vaguely about the decision to keep her dangerous pregnancy, was how little it actually said about abortion. In fact, the word “abortion” was never stated even once.

By contrast, what was noteworthy about the reaction to the ad, which began before the ad even aired, was its stridency and vitriol. Pro-choice groups practically threw the kitchen sink at Focus on the Family for daring to raise the issue of life, however obliquely, during the Super Bowl.

A few quotes are valuable for perspective:

Before the ad aired, Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center said, “An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year – an event designed to bring Americans together.”

After it aired, the National Organization for Women alternately declared that the manner in which Tebow tackled his mother reflected an “undercurrent” of “violence against women.”

If only they were joking. The criticism is revelatory, if only of the paranoid psychology of its advocates.

The reaction to the Tebows’ ad from pro-choice groups seems to mask a deep sensitivity among these groups to having any kind of national debate about abortion at all. That the ad, mild as it was, sparked the outrage that it did before and after its airing, reflects the desperate need among pro-choice groups to not let pro-lifers get away with a public relations victory.

Considering the larger trends in the abortion debate and recent poll numbers on the subject, it’s not hard to see why.

A May 2009 Gallup poll send shockwaves through the political world for its revelation that for the first time, more Americans self-identified as “pro-life” than “pro-choice” by a substantial 51 to 42 percent margin.

The data set was not an outlier. Another poll conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in late December and early January 2010 showed that young people (voters aged 18-29) among the most pro-life, with 59 percent calling abortion “morally wrong.” The most pro-choice group seemed to be the Baby Boomers, aged 45 to 64, of which only 51 percent found abortion morally wrong.

The data on young-people has taken the pro-choice lobby particularly by surprise. Where attitudes among older populations are easier to dismiss as white noise from polling, the numbers on youth suggest a true generational shift. Nothing could be more alarming to abortion defenders who have lived the last forty years with a distinctive upper hand in the culture war.

Clearly, the momentum in the abortion debate has shifted towards pro-lifers. According to the popular narrative, the profusion of fetal imaging technologies and increased knowledge about embryonic development has heightened public sensitivity to the humanity of the unborn child. The narrative may well be true. The result is a pro-choice lobby that is bewildered, frustrated, and as we now know, neurotically hyper-sensitive.

One has to wonder what groups like NOW and Planned Parenthood are so afraid of.  That those who defend “choice” recoil at the prospect of a robust public conversation on abortion that could better inform the decisions of women considering the procedure seems contradictory, to say the least.

Resolution may come from the fact the “pro-choice” moniker is more a function of political convenience than ideological accuracy. “Choice,” as NOW, Planned Parenthood, and like-minded groups envision it, conveys entitlement, not deliberation.

Which is precisely why a national abortion debate is so horrifying to them. Pro-lifers might actually win.

When American President Woodrow Wilson initiated the League of Nations in 1919, his aim was to create an organization that would unite national governments in the pursuit of a global agenda: peace. Criticism of the move, however, flowed thick and fast, with perhaps the most lasting objection being that America should not serve as the “world’s policeman.”

There is little doubt that the United States could fill such a role, especially after the end of the Cold War and the political decline of the only major contender for international hegemony. The topic of “policing” has been raised more recently in critiques of America’s foreign wars.  Now, a spike in longstanding tensions between the U.S. and China over human rights issues, caused by the sentencing of a Chinese dissident, has again pushed the question to the forefront of the political scene; except, it has been re-worded. Critics no longer ask if America should serve as the world’s policeman, but if it can.

Tan Zuoren, a Chinese magazine editor and environmentalist, was officially sentenced to five years in prison for subversion of state power on February 9. The Chinese government claims that several emails written by Mr. Tan criticizing the 1989 bloodshed at Tiananmen Square are designed to undermine state power, and is using these emails as grounds for the charge.

The sentencing has sent Chinese and American human rights activists into an uproar. According to the New York Times, Amnesty International alleges the real impetus behind Mr. Tan’s sentencing is his plan to release a criticism of state-directed school construction in Sichuan Province, where thousands of children died in a 2008 earthquake as schools collapsed (“Editor Reviewing China Quake Deaths Is Sentenced”). In both scenarios, the Chinese government has obstructed Tan’s freedom of speech, which is protected under China’s constitution according to 2004 revisions.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama have been hesitant to address human rights in China. Obama, against protests from the Chinese government, met with the Dalai Lama on February 18 – but the President took pains to make the meeting appear casual, refusing to see the Dalai Lama in the Oval Office (the meeting took place in the Map Room). By receiving a political leader from a region victimized by China in such a manner, Obama has allowed China to dictate his treatment of foreign dignitaries.

Clinton publicly supported Google’s plan to stop censoring search results on its China engine as a step towards freer expression in the nation, triggering a rebuke from the Chinese government. The Secretary of State has kept silent, however, as a confrontation unfolds between Google and China over attempted hacking by people affiliated with the Chinese military. Google’s threats to pull its program from Chinese webspace unless free speech rights are honored have received no backing from American leadership.

Despite the limited action that has been taken, the overall message sent by America remains conciliatory as China’s global economic and political power continues to grow. It would be an exaggeration to say this strategy has caused a confrontation among Democrats, but human rights activists are unhappy with what appears to be the prioritization of economic and trade concerns over the welfare of the Chinese people, a strategy typically attributed to the Republican Party. At the same time, the political leadership in Washington is constrained by the enormous foreign trade deficit and a desire for Chinese cooperation regarding matters of international policy, such as limiting Iran’s nuclear program.

These economic and political circumstances , which make America somewhat dependent on China’s good will, make the question of America’s “policing” habits a moot point. The country’s political leadership has neither the motivation nor the mettle to challenge China’s human rights violations. Gone are the days when a months-long hostage crisis overseas can be ended by a single warning from the White House. The U.S. is grappling with so many other issues that the social politics of the Chinese government currently have no place on its list of concerns.

In fact, the resurgence of human rights as a point of global attention does not derive from any change in equilibrium on the issue — China still offends, America still halfheartedly slaps them on the wrist with the national media — but rather from an increased focus on China itself. Human rights have merely been dragged into the media limelight by habit and happenstance.

This does not mean that the U.S. should never be concerned with China’s human rights policy. America has, on several occasions, infringed on the sovereignty of foreign powers when great injustice has occurred (the plight of those in occupied France during WWII comes to mind). Whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are another manifestation of that principle is hotly debated, but will be passed over here.

Should the situation in China progress to a point where the populace is treated with blatant injustice and brutality, then America may have grounds to interfere – the nation’s legacy of so-called “policing” in such matters suggests that it would interfere. But events have not escalated to that point, and America has its own concerns, and so for now China’s human rights matters will continue to decorate the headlines of international newspapers instead of the headings of U.S. policy memos.