Opinions

The Presidential campaign in 2008 turned out historical numbers of youth and minority voters. A tremendous achievement for our nation! Engaging a record numbers of citizens in voter participation—assumedly a cross-party victory, right? Think again. Since President Obama’s election in ’08 many state legislatures, (cough, G.O.P politicians), have proposed and passed new voting laws requiring all voters to present state-issues photo id. The Brennan Center for Justice reports during this past year alone, more than two-dozen new voting laws have passed in 19 states. Ostensibly harmless laws; however, restrictions that have...

On 6 August 2012, while much of the world was sleeping, the global scientific community watched a handful of scientists make history when the Mars Science Laboratory successfully landed on Mars. Engineers at Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had previously landed rovers on Mars, but none came close to matching the Curiosity rover's 1,982 pound mass. The earlier landing processes were rendered obsolete, and an entirely new "SkyCrane" drop had to be developed and properly executed in order to land what is nearly the size of a Mini Cooper on...

As the latter half of Lent slowly progresses, and my willpower to avoid eating chips for the duration of the Catholic observance has me jonesing like an addict, I have been thinking a lot about religion. I was raised in a very open household. While I studied the catechism for my first communion, my mother encouraged me to study up on a number of other religions in case I found one I preferred. In the end, I received my first communion, but only after terrifying my priest with questions about...

The recent political debates have unearthed a large number of unrealistic assumptions people make about government. The most ridiculous one of all is the idea that the government creates jobs. This mantra actually harms workers, threatening at every stage to prioritize businesses over people. Short of hiring people for government jobs, which raises taxes, a government responsibility that is typically violently opposed by the more fiscally conservative politicians in Washington, the government cannot directly affect unemployment rates. What they can do, however, is deregulate markets while providing incentives or tax...