Science Debate!!!

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. My internet has been on the fritz, and Comcast had to send someone out twice before they decided that maybe replacing the stupid cable modem was a good idea. Unfortunately, where I live, I can't get anyone else. So anyway, Hillary won Ohio and the Texas primary (Obama probably won the Texas caucus, but the results aren't actually in.) This thing is going to drag on forever, so the least the candidates can do is debate new and interesting things. Enter ScienceDebate 2008, a grassroots effort to get the Democratic and Republican candidates to debate science issues in Philadelphia on April 18. (The Pennsylvania Democratic primary is April 22.) The issues to be debated are divided into three policy areas:... The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy. Questions on topics such as climate change (I'm assuming this debate wouldn't include 'clean coal' commercials), population growth, stem cell research, drug patents, science education, and space exploration. Science questions are going to be particularly crucial in deciding where the nation is heading in the next few years in a variety of ways, and I for one would love to see the candidates discuss these policy positions more fully and openly with the public. Maybe we could even get a feel for relative levels of tech savvy/cluelessness. (Hint: If any candidate says "The Google," I will spring my secret trapdoor in the stage floor, just like they do in the cartoons.)

Race-based Disenfranchisement Alive and Kicking

Over 2,000 students at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college in Texas, marched 7 miles from campus to Hempstead, the Waller County seat, where county officials had planned to site the sole polling place for early voting in the March 4 election. According to the University web site, "Waller County had reduced the number of early voting locations from about six around the county to only one at its courthouse [located in the county seat] because county officials said they could not afford to operate multiple early voting locations." The county later added 3 more locations due to pressure from the federal government, and while one will be in Prairie View, "there was not one announced for the Prairie View campus, convenient to students." Still, at least their activism produced results. Prairie View students, I know you're not reading this, but this white girl is proud of your willingness to stand up for all of our rights. If Chicago weren't so far from Texas, I'd be with you.

I am a firm believer in the right of citizens to vote as a core tenet of the process of maintaining a democratic republic. When anyone tries to abridge that right, it pisses me off. When the GOVERNMENT abridges that right, my head feels like it's going to explode!!! How is it that, in an age when a black man has a real chance at becoming our next president, this sort of thing can happen? And this is not an isolated incident. Policies across the country disproportionately disenfranchise black Americans, to the detriment of our democratic process.

Approximately 60% of the population of Washington, DC is black. The District lacks voting representation in Congress. To strike another historical chord of democracy, DC does have "No Taxation Without Representation" license plates. They used to adorn the presidential limo, but one of Bush's first acts as president was to remove them. It is widely believed that the continued refusal of Congress to grant DC voting rights is based on Republican fears that blacks' historical support for the Democratic party would make the District a consistently democratic district; I, however, think that if the Republicans were the ones to push a bill for full representation through, enfranchising the residents of DC, it would greatly improve their image in the city. (Full disclosure: I grew up near DC, hearing my Mom's stories about how excited her parents were when they could vote for president for the first time as residents of the
District, in the 1964 presidential election. They voted for Kennedy.)

As angry as race-based disenfranchisement of a single district makes me, I am truly horrified at the laws that disenfranchise ex-felons who have paid their debt to society. Simple ethical issues aside, racial profiling, biased laws (particularly drug laws), selective enforcement, and other issues mean that these laws disproportionately affect blacks. I also find it fascinating (in that car-accident, can't-help-but-look way) that of the 14 states that disenfranchise ex-felons in one way or another, 7 of them had poll taxes or educational requirements in the Jim Crow era. Coincidence? I think not.

Come on America. We are better than this!

Hillary Clinton and Tracy Flick!

I'm an Obama supporter, for so many reasons that I decided not to blog on the subject based on the idea that other people tend not to be more than 10-issue voters. I'm probably a 50-issue voter, if I think about it enough. It's kind of a problem. If you aren't into politics, or you, like my mother, support Hillary Clinton so intensely that a sense of humor is not an option, stop reading this post here.

For everyone else, this video comparing Hillary to Tracy Flick in the movie "Election" is so funny I almost cried.