Don’t ask don’t tell,

While I completely agree on the point that gay’s shouldn’t have to hide their identities when serving in our military, I believe you are missing a few key points. DADT was not entirely put into actions by our society’s homophobia. The issue of soldiers not being openly gay in the military is a performance issue as well.
Were there intimate relationships between gay soldiers in the same platoon, decisions in the field and military actions would be compromised due to the extra emotions they would have for each other. Who would be able to defuse a bomb or evacuate hostages after seeing their wife, mom, dad, or sibling be shot and die right in front of them? Almost no one would be completely unaffected, and therein lies the problem.
Soldiers are trained to be hard, tough, and have the ability to carry out orders regardless of the situation. Having to worry about someone who you’re intimately involved with while on active duty is the same reason that married couples are not allowed to work together, or near each other if both are serving. While I do believe there is also open homophobia fueling the DADT policy, I also believe DADT has been put in place because a solution has yet to be proposed that would allow gays to openly serve, while not compromising the integrity of our armed forces.

freedom for who?

While reading our government textbook I was reminded of a conversation I had with my debate teacher about the separation of church and state. At our school’s graduation ceremony student speech, the officer always inserts something along the lines of “god blesses you all you go off to college.” She believes this makes some students uncomfortable, especially when the top students at school are those of Buddhist decent. This raises an interesting question. Does a student speech in school violate the first amendment? While the student is not employed by the state and therefore does not represent the will or opinions of the school or government, the speech is still being given at a school event which the school should be held somewhat accountable for. But in doing so would the school be violating the rights of the student? After all it is unlikely that any action would be taken against the student if he or she said “god bless you” to every student individually. So where do we draw the line? The first amendment is in place to prevent citizens from being alienated for and able to practice their beliefs, whatever they may be. Any student who is made to sit in place while surrounded by others who are openly expressing their religious ideals would feel both trapped and isolated. A mob mentality might also influence the students in such a way that they will begin to doubt their faiths, something that the parents of our nation have expressed strong feelings against. Personally I don’t consider a student given speech to be an unconstitutional influence over the religious rights of others since the speech is simply the thoughts of the student so long as it’s limited to a few sentences at most, and doesn’t push the religion on others. “God bless you” is only meant to be positive words of encouragement, which I believe should be allowed as such.

Freedom of speech, or harassment and violation

Sadly, I’m going to have to agree with the majority of comments on this one, buy I will voice my outrage in the loophole. Our soldiers are out there dying so that we can enjoy the freedom to say whatever we want without the government being able so censer us. Even when our views are in complete opposition to the norm or most popular, its usually important to listen to their views to reach a greater understanding of others, allowing us to share ideas, beliefs and values. But I have some reasons why this is obviously not the case here as evidence by how their protest moves form free speech to something grotesque. The church thinks our soldiers are being killed because we tolerate gays and abortion. That’s all well and good. I say let them say they want everyone to be less tolerant and deny happiness for our citizens because other people don’t like it. It’s hypocritical given that they’re just giving in and denying us the freedoms that allow them to say such things, but its all well and good. Let them have their church meetings on Sundays preaching whatever they want. Where they crossed the line was going to the funeral of the soldier and spreading their message in a private venue. Now granted I’m not all that enlightened about the specifics of the first amendment, but it seems to me that if its illegal for a single person to go to your house (private property) and harass you about any matter, it should also be illegal for a mob of people to harass you at a cemetery you own a piece of (even a small plot of land where you’re son is buried.) I’m not arguing the church’s right to say whatever it wants. Let them march on the capitol or down the streets waving their "Thank God for dead soldiers" signs all they want. The difference is that this funeral was a private venue. An event for the family of the dead soldier. There wasn’t anyone there with enough political power to do anything about the soldiers being at war. Who were they even protesting? The Father? The cemetery? The dead body? What’s he going do about it? What can he do about it? NOTHING. Besides the media attention that could have been generated form a non offensive public area, they chose to harass the father of a dead soldier. I’m all for free speech, but that’s not what these people were doing. They crashed a funeral and only gave more grief and sadness to a already pained father the man should get some kind of reparations for that.

the US works

Our government is a pioneer. We are one of the first nations to have such a wide variety of cultures, backgrounds, and different ideals all living together peacefully, and as such we have no exact guideline to fallow to ensure it stays that way. Our policies are hard to change for a reason. The push and pull of control over majority rule must be higher than a 2% difference on both sides. With this design, there must be a clear cut majority on anything that is approved to ensure that the consequences of our changes are acceptable (or at least tolerable) throughout the country. Because of this our country is able to change its laws, and allows us to adapt as the world progresses. Although our founding fathers would never have conceived the idea of downloading music off the internet illegally, the constitution they put in place is broad and flexible enough that it was easily modified to encompass that crime. People do not give the United States Government enough credit for what it has accomplished. Turn on the news and stories about how government is simply going to drive our country into the ground are the typical political points of interest. When one party doesn’t get their way, they overstate the flaws in their opponent’s solutions as well as campaigning against them to raise support to stop or slow the progress that would have been made to improve our Country without their resistance. What we all need to remember is that this is a good thing. Even when the policies we want to be enacted fall short or are overpowered we must remember that this is all part of the giant compromise that is the USA. True, the media and political officials could spend much more time trying to find applicable solutions than focusing on winning elections or debates, and the political parties sort every issue into an “us or them” rift, but as flawed as it is our government more often than not runs the way our citizens like it to, and that’s the real goal of a government.

illogical polotics

Simon Maloy writes in his blog that Matthew Continetti’s attempt to justify Sarah Palin’s actions is a complete joke, pointing out the “illogic” of his arguments, even going so far as to use sarcasm in his final paragraph to show the complete absurdity of Palin’s whole political campaign. He does this by simply quoting Continetti, asking questions that go unanswered in his story and pointing out the catch-22 in his so called “illogic.” This blog was clearly intended for those who already believe that Palin is less than the best political figure out there as evidence by the clear mocking tone of the whole piece. But keeping that in mind, Maloy does make sense with his arguments, even if they are a bit on the cruel side. I would have to agree with the blog post because of the inconsistency of the article that he is critiquing. His main point is that Palin has been doing illogical things, quitting her job as governor, that he finds quite absurd, but he finds the explanations of those who support her, such as that quitting would allow her to settle her debts so she would seem like she could handle her job better, to be even more unbelievable. All in all Malory is clearly biased in his opinions of Palin and those who support her, he out rightly mocks her in every reference he makes to her or the article defending her. But whether his word is to be taken at face value or not is really only up to the credibility of those defending Palin.

Political laughs

Based on the article of Roy Peter Clark a writer for the journalism website Poynter.org, who has written two books himself, has written an editorial paper on CNN.com about the use of comedians in the political world. He argues that the old political critiques were the authors George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Anthony Burgess, whose books used satire and over-exaggeration to show the folly of the government and their societies. Through their books people were able to see the way the world would work if the government was given total control, or if the world was devoid of problems. But now the authors’ seem to have been replaced with the comedians Stephen Colbert and John Stuart, who’s political-comedic satire has gained so much popularity that they are attracting real creditable politicians to their shows. Colbert even appeared before congress to speak (in character) about immigration. So the question is made: do these political comedians have a real political force backing them up? The answer is an obvious yes. Weather or not they have a legitimate ability to run for a real political position like congress or president, the fact remains that they have a giant fan base made of followers who are listening to what they say. Above all else, they are honest. Personally I’d rather have a president who would be honest in admitting that his policies, strategies, ideas, or words were weak and contradictory than one who would try to cover it up, or deny the problems he creates. At least then the public would know exactly what is going on in the country. Politics now have everyone wondering what’s really going on, when the economy crashes, and we’re spending trillions of dollars to fix it, when we’re attacked, and invade the “wrong” country, and when we want to keep illegal immigrants out of our borders, and hire them for cheep labor. But as proven by “the daily show’s” popularity, Roy Peter Clark is right in saying that these comedians do us a service by pointing at the criminals, wrongdoers, and mudslingers, and having us all laugh at them.

militairy secrets possibly exposed

The printing and distribution of  a book called, "Operation Dark Heart,” written by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer has been halted by the pentagon because they fear that the book may contain military secrets that should not be released to the public. Shaffer, having only received permission to publish the book from his direct superiors, had not gotten the permission to write the book form the Department Of Defense, and the pentagon is not scrambling to prevent the book form being seen by the public at large. New edited versions of the book are being sold instead, but it remains unclear weather all of the original, unedited versions have been collected. A testament to our government’s power within our own borders, its interesting to read all the statements made form the people who were involved.