Each Sunday, the Patriot will provide a look at some of the news issues that you should know about. We know it is tough for college students to keep up-to-date on current events. The Patriot’s Sunday News Beat is your answer to that. Enjoy!

• Last Friday, the Supreme Court made one of its most controversial rulings with regard to corporations and campaign financing in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The 5-4 ruling overturned much of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, and allows both corporations and individuals more freedoms to finance political advertising. The Wall Street Journal provides a good analysis of the decision as a victory for the first ammendment.
• This week, President Obama gave his first state of the union address (transcript here). In an interesting article, Peter Wehner of Politics Daily argues that Obama’s shifting of blame away from his administration should unnerve democrats. Meanwhile, Eleanor Clift of Newsweek claims that his speech should enthuse liberals.
• Even with the State of the Union being given, the fate of the health care legislation is still up in the air. Several sources suggest that Democrats may give up on the legislation and shift their focus to repairing the economy, which was the main focus of Obama’s speech. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama have all signaled that they “will not walk away from health care.” However, many moderate Democrats are shifting away from their support in light of the shifting political tide. John Bresnahan reports on Politico that influential Democratic Senator Evan Bayh wants to move on from the health care bill and focus on creating jobs.
• While news organizations specializing in liberal propaganda ignore the ever-decreasing credibility of climate alarmists, The Orange County Register has a great editorial detailing another incident that discredits their hypothesis. Specifically, the 2007 UN IPCC Climate Change report knowingly included a claim – that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 – that had “no scientific basis.” This follows the scandal in November revolving around several very prominent climate researchers. The issue was also covered in the Wall Street Journal, which shows that the IPCC was warned by glaciologist Georg Kaser that 2035 was “so wrong that it is not even worth discussing.”

This coming week, we will likely see continued attempts by Democrats to accomplish something of note. Some commentators suggest their failures thus far have been due to having Gilligan, of Gilligan’s Island fame, as their highest paid consultant.

Until next Sunday, have a good week!

Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantanamo detainees be held indefinitely

In the newest iteration of President Obama’s “Change for America: A rejection of Bushy Policies” the Federal Government has decided to continue the trend of indefinite detention in our secret prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The issue at hand centers on what rights (if any) people captured by American Military, Paramilitary and contracted personnel have.

The unique style of the “War on Terror” demands unique solutions to the problems facing our policymakers. No longer does contracts like the Geneva Convention dictate procedures, because the line between “enemy combatants” and “woman making rice for Resistance Fighters” is increasingly blurred. Additionally, provisions for repatriating foreign fighters at the end of conflict are nullified because the current conflicts have no definition of victory or means of ending the conflict, two traditional hallmarks of prisoner release.

Moving forward, the concepts of Git-Mo and secret prisons are unethical and should be abandoned. Although some may claim that European torture-houses are necessary for our safety, I refuse to be part of any government in which Rendition is the status quo; in which our view of “aggressive information gathering” is “out of sight, out of mind” and we stand by as fellow human beings get treated in such a manner.

It seems foolish to decry current policy without an adequate counter-plan, and I would suggest instead that the United States accept the responsibility of our foreign actions and allow for internment inside the United States, a tradition that dates back through both World Wars and even into the American Revolution.

President Gast’s tandem of emails to the student body at-large last week simply reeked of political maneuvering. With everything that is going on in Washington D.C. right now, it’s hardly a surprise that our President has decided to play a similar game here at Lehigh to pass her agenda: hire a Chief Diversity Officer.

She made this clear in her email, entitled “Martin Luther King Celebration 2010.” After a brief remembrance of Dr. King, she moved onto more important things, like transforming Lehigh from the racially and sexually biased campus that she currently sees, and in the process building her resume. In the email, she outlined her plan to hire a CDO to fix the University’s aforementioned woes. In doing so, she decided to bring up the alleged events of racial name calling, which have not been mentioned in any official campus dialogue or in the Brown and White for eleven months. Curious timing to say the least. Sure, those events are relevant to what Dr. King worked for and accomplished in his lifetime. But in celebrating his work, why not focus on the positive, that the events were isolated, and nothing similar has occurred in the past year.

Perhaps this contradictory behavior became apparent to the administration. Cue Thursday’s announcement that hateful incidences have returned to Lehigh. This time it was in the form of a ‘hostile and racist symbol’ in an undisclosed elevator discovered by an unnamed Lehigh employee. The convenient timing of the event, along with the vagueness of the wording in the email, prompts several questions. Before President Gast starts allocating possibly $1 million or more each year for diversity initiatives to cure this campus, we should make sure that there is an actual diagnosis. We can start by getting the answers to these four questions:

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1. Why give this incident so much publicity?

Sure, we know the timing played into your favor. But does one symbol in one elevator really justify a campus-wide email? Whoever drew the swastika clearly wanted attention, and President Gast gladly delivered. I’m not saying the incident should be ignored. The University should clearly pursue disciplinary action if they find out who did it. But doing so quietly would have been the best approach. Additionally, it trivializes past and future campus-wide emails sent by President Gast. Are we to treat this event with the same degree of seriousness as the earthquake in Haiti, which also provoked a campus-wide email? How seriously should we take her next email admonishing homophobic phrases found inside men’s bathroom stalls around campus?

2. Why withhold the location of the ‘hostile and racist symbol’?

We still don’t know which one of Lehigh’s extraordinarily slow elevators was host to the symbol in question. Lehigh’s official response, as detailed in the Brown and White article on the subject, is that the location “will not be released so as not to bring unwanted attention to people who frequent that building.” Perhaps we could ask a Washington politician to explain that statement. Unwanted attention? A campus-wide email was sent out, clearly the administration wants people to pay attention to this event. Additionally, most buildings on campus are frequented by literally thousands of students, staff, and faculty. Say the incident occurred in Rauch, are people honestly going to say: “Oh, you go to Rauch every day, therefore you probably drew the swastika.” The answer is, of course not. This was a move to increase the mystery and intrigue surrounding the incident to generate more publicity for it.

3. Why withhold the fact that the symbol was a swastika for five days?

Thanks to the Brown and White, we were told five days after the incident that the ‘hostile and racist symbol’ was a swastika. Apparently, this information was deemed too sensitive at first, and was withheld from the student body. Was that really necessary? As adult members of the Lehigh community, we deserved to be given as many details as possible about the incident, especially as she called on us to be responsible for elevating the level of discourse within the Lehigh community. Again, withholding the nature of the symbol only increased the mystery and intrigue around the incident, which was completely unnecessary.

4. Why did the reporting of this incident correspond so well with your announcement that you hope to hire a Vice President of Equity and Community?

Yes, of course this could be a coincidence. But the two events are simply too close on a timeline to not be related to each other. With that being said, there are plenty of possibilities. Clearly, the University has already made the assumption that the goal of the swastika was to spread hate of some kind. However, it is equally possible that the symbol was drawn by someone who supports Lehigh’s hiring of a VPEC / CDO. Why’s that? Well, there are two reasons:

First, quite simply,  someone who supports a CDO has much more to gain from having a ‘hateful incident’ occur on campus, as it goes to prove President Gast’s aforementioned hypothesis about Lehigh. This incident serves that agenda very well, and someone who wants Lehigh to hire a CDO easily could have seen that bringing another ‘hateful incident’ to campus would cause an uproar similar to last semester, which would galvanize support for the hiring of a CDO.

Second, the timing is too good. We haven’t been notified of any ‘hateful incidents’ for almost a year, and then three days after President Gast makes her announcement – poof – we find a hateful incident, one which perfectly supports the need for Gast’s plan. Someone who is truly hateful always has an incentive (in their own mind) to write hateful things. However, someone who would benefit from a perceived ‘hateful incident’ has a limited period during which an incident is beneficial. Clearly, this event occurred within that period.

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Before everyone jumps on the “Lehigh is racist, Lehigh is sexist” bandwagon, President Gast should answer these questions. She wants to hire a Chief Diversity Officer – that is her prerogative. But she used this incident to advance those claims, and launched an unfair assault on this school’s character by blowing this ‘incident’ entirely out of proportion. The large investment required for her diversity initiatives should not be based on isolated incidents perpetrated by a mere handful of Lehigh’s 6,000 students. Unfortunately, if her response to this event is any indication, that is exactly what she plans to do.

Update: Slight wording changes made on 2/13/2010

It’s not often that I find something on campus so disturbing that I have to stop and think about it.  I’m not *that* type of conservative…

…oh come on.  You know what I mean – I’m not of the book-burning, poster-tearing, art-vandalizing ilk.  I believe that if something warrants such action, it’s worthy of discussion, and when someone tears/burns/vandalizes something, they’re trying to *stop* that discussion – liberals and conservatives alike.

These touchy issues – the ones that stop a dinner conversation or casual dialogue and make things “parents-having-sex” awkward, are the ones that deserve a proper forum.   With regard to abortion, I feel that I cannot be alone when I state that a party is certainly not that forum.

So it goes that when I stumbled onto this sign several days ago (mind you, it’s still hanging on – no one, not even OneSource, has removed it), I was taken aback.  Surely even a pro-choice individual understands the complexities of an issue like abortion deserve more respect than… a party?

Now – my pro-choice friends, I can already predict your response.  ”But… it says Roe v. Wade Anniv. Party.”  Like that makes any difference…  Roe v. Wade was more than a trial – it was a woman, and her difficult decision.  Regardless of where one stands on that decision, it was a sobering one, evocative of (on the left) coat hangers, bloodied sketchy abortionists operating out of dark hotel rooms and alleyways.  On the right, it conjures images of tiny hands and feet, barely the size of a quarter, but still in the image of an unborn life.

I’m not trying to start an abortion debate right here, right now.  This isn’t about abortion rights, this is about good taste – class, decency, and understanding.  All traits that the host or hosts of this “party” certainly lack.

UPDATE: As it turns out, Lehigh’s own Women’s Center was behind this affair. Issues of political neutrality and teal and purple stars aside, this evidence only furthers my conviction that those who claim to speak for women’s rights and women’s issues at Lehigh have a cavernous disconnect from reality. Even Muhlenburg faculty who declined the invitation on Facebook noted that students should “celebrate for me.” Celebrate? Absolutely disgusting… Note that Don Cunningham was on the guest list.

“Shame on you America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment – yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations. 99% of people won’t have the guts to copy and repost this.”

Above quote is from a friend’s status on Facebook.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake affecting Haiti on January 12th resulted in an outpouring of aid throughout the developing world, with Americans being bombarded by “Text ‘Haiti’ to 90999″ and the other numbers for American Red Cross and related charity and relief organizations dedicated to Haitian aid.

Lehigh University has started their own Haitian Initiative; Collecting $50,000 towards relief efforts. Despite the best intentions of the Community Service Office, is Haitian relief, efforts that have been duplicated around the world, really the best use of Lehigh Student’s time and money?

Goodwill to mankind is a noble goal, but logistical and financial concerns limit the impact that can be made. While Dr. King was a proponent of “help[ing] our neighbors across borders just as much as our friends down the street.”, when 17,000 Pennsylvanians are homeless, our efforts would be better spent closer to home, helping our friends down the street.

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.

People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.” – Barack Obama

In the latest saga of Barack Obama’s increasingly illogical comments, our President decided to blame Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts on… drumroll please… George W. Bush! Sure, it isn’t much of a surprise, given that this was Barack’s number one move in getting elected in the first place (followed closely by the hope-change two-step). But the logic behind this accusation is simply non-existent. A Republican doesn’t win, especially not in Massachusetts, due to anger against another Republican. Most democrats have figured this out, notably Senators Evan Bayh and Jim Webb, who have called for slowing down the process on the health care bill.

According to most polling, the health care bill was a primary reason why Scott Brown won. He won because he promised to vote against the bill which President Obama continues to push. By Barack’s logic, if a bill does get passed, George Bush should be blamed (or credited) for that as well.

A transcript of Barack Obama’s interview can be found here.

Additionally, Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg have some interesting, informative, and humorous things to say in reaction to Scott Brown’s election, and Barack’s subsequent interview.