This article comes in response to Will Saletan’s op-ed in the NY Times regarding the abortion debate, and I think it rebuts his points pretty clearly. This isn’t to say that he isn’t correct, or that this article is. The interesting thing about this exchange is that Saletan puts forth what he claims to be a new argument in the abortion debate, and the Feministe blog post effectively shows that it not only isn’t new, it’s old.

This raises the question: Given how reasonable this argument seems to be (i.e., “Abortion should be quick, accessible and rare”), and how much of the American public agrees with it….why are there such vicious sides taken in the abortion argument? Nearly everyone agrees that abortion is sometimes the best of bad options. Nearly everyone agrees that abortion is never an enjoyable or desirable outcome. Nearly everyone agrees that we should be doing more for sexual education and pregnancy prevention. Why, then, do we appear to be so far from a consensus?

The answer, I think, lies in the inevitable specialization of a two-party political system. As we come to identify with a particular side, we adopt that side’s positions. Over time, we forget the nuanced distinctions between ‘our’ position and ‘theirs’, and we know simply that ours is right and theirs is wrong. Once the nuances are gone, we slowly boil the opposing argument down to a sound byte: “Pro-choice” or “pro-life”, for example. And because of market specialization–because Democrats have blue news sources and Republicans red ones, and likewise for the political persuasions of friends, family, and neighbors–we never hear the heartfelt, complex and (all too often) shockingly similar arguments from the other side.

The irony is, of course, that I’m posting this on a blog dedicated to Democrats. The message must be that if you’re reading this, you should find a conservative to post on our other topics. If you’re a conservative, post us your favorite blogs, and please–please!–leave your opinions here for us to read.

The two-party system suffocates in its own design if we do not exchange ideas. Let’s not let that happen.

Bush is back on the offensive this week defending his illegal spying program. One wonders that with Democrats not sounding the attack horns so loudly, distracted by Alito, why such the loud defense from Bush? It seems to me that they know they’re in too deep, and relying on sketchy legal reasoning.

He said he “had all kinds of lawyers review the process” to ensure it didn’t violate civil liberties or the law.

And he insisted that a recent Supreme Court decision backs his contention that he had the authority to order the program through a resolution Congress passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks that lets him use force in the anti-terror fight.

“I’m not a lawyer, but I can tell you what it means: It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn’t prescribe the tactics,” Bush said.

“All-kinds,” eh George? Look I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to be President, but can you at least be a little more specific when discussing the law, it is after all what you’re supposed to be enforcing as President. It seems that the defense will take on one that has been used in the past, and has failed in the past. That because it is a matter of national security the President doesn’t have to follow the usual rules, and must act as he sees fit to protect the nation. Harry Reid hit the nail on the head when he said “We can be strong and operate under the rule of law…These are not mutually exclusive principles ” they are the principles upon which our nation was founded.”

What is even more frustrating about the entire thing is that the FISA court, which was a court that handled surveillance requests in private, was established for just this kind of wiretapping. The FISA court allowed government to present information to a court off the public record and receive a warrant. The FISA court was not exactly stopping the government from investigating terrorists, on the contrary it long supported most Presidents and their requests. Now, however, the standard that Bush’s Justice Department presented was so low that FISA wouldn’t approve it, and so Bush circumvented the entire legal process.

The only other President who I can recall who tried to use the national security argument as openly as Bush is doing was none other than Richard Nixon. For a bit of history Nixon’s lawyers contended to the Court that they could use information obtained by warrantless wiretaps in court, since they didn’t need a warrant if they acted in the name of national security. The case is one of my favorites perhaps because of its unique name: United States v. United States District Court. I learned of this case in Freshman year when I studied the work of Arthur Kinnoy one of the nation’s most famous civil rights lawyers. This case was decided unanimously 8-0 (Rehnquist had to recuse himself as he prior to appointment was the architect of this theory), that the President did not have this type of unfettered power to spy on Americans.

The freedoms of the Fourth Amendment cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances are conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch without the detached judgment of a neutral magistrate. Pp. 316-318.

Resort to appropriate warrant procedure would not frustrate the legitimate purposes of domestic security searches. Pp. 318-321.

It should be important to note that this case deals only with domestic surveillance and the issues of national security in the domestic realm and not internationally. FindLaw however has put together excellent resources for case law on the Bill of Rights, and in particular the Fourth Amendment. In their annotations they find this to say regarding the use of wiretaps in national security:

The question of the scope of the President’s constitutional powers, if any, remains judicially unsettled. Congress has acted, however, providing for a special court to hear requests for warrants for electronic surveillance in foreign intelligence situations, and permitting the President to authorize warrantless surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information provided that the communications to be monitored are exclusively between or among foreign powers and there is no substantial likelihood any ”United States person” will be overheard.

And so of course we can in many ways come full circle, because Rehnquist who was “just a lawyer” for Nixon could be compared to Roberts and Alito who were “just lawyers” for Reagan. The reason the Alito nomination is so important is because the issue of presidential power, as was brought up at the hearings, will be crucial into whether or not the truth of Bush’s program is seen for its unconstitutionality and blatant disregard of FISA and the work Congress and the Judiciary have done to provide ample, expedient, but most of all lawful resources for the President to use in protecting our country.

We know now that this program has in fact overheard the voices and conversations of persons of the United States, in this case a pacifist group in Baltimore, not exactly your group of jihadists, and in fact a waste of resources that could be used to find said jihadists. Congress gave the executive a wide range of powers after 9/11 and did so in the PATRIOT Act. That Bush is relying on a resolution of force against Iraq and Afghanistan as the basis for spying on American’s is simply ridiculous. I wonder, and perhaps someone else could answer this, if Bush justifies any spying done on Americans with the resolutions of force, would that not be a violation of posse comitatus? At every stage the Congress has provided for what the executive can and can not do in regard to surveillance in America, and I think everyone would agree they’ve been pretty generous.

When Congress has saw fit to give the executive further powers to protect the nation it has acted both with the PATRIOT Act, and years earlier with the establishment of the FISA court. This recent trampling of civil liberties seems to be the final straw for members of Congress of both parties who still believe that the oath they took to uphold the Constitution actually means something. Now let us hope they do something about it.

The situation with Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of the incredibly popular Blackberry wireless e-mail devices, just seems utterly ludacris. Today the USSC deciede not to issue a writ to Blackberrry who appealed to the highest court in the land in their patient infringement case. As the Wall Street Journal said

RIM asked a federal trial judge to not issue a ban on BlackBerry devices in the U.S. after NTP filed for $126 million in damages, royalty payments and a permanent injunction against RIM.

NTP’s injunction request would cover sales and services of BlackBerry devices in the U.S., where the company generates 70% of its revenue.

Why does NTP not give RIM the oppurtunity to continue selling blackberry, while collecting a portion of the profits that RIM gets from selling blackberrys. Everyone I know who has a blackberry is extremely addicted to the device. Over the lifetime of RIM, i am sure that NTP could get more then $126 million dollars, and in doing so would get their money and keep people happy.

One of my great discoveries over break was that fifty-three Frontline reports are online.

These I watched over break and suggest:
The Persuaders

ANNOUNCER: It’s everywhere you look.
BOB GARFIELD, Columnist, Advertising Age: You cannot walk down the street without being bombarded.
ANNOUNCER: They call it a “clutter crisis.”
NAOMI KLEIN, Author, No Logo: Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them, and after a while, it doesn’t work anymore. We develop immunities.
ANNOUNCER: And the multi-billion-dollar advertising industry is in a desperate struggle to break through.
JOHN HAYES, Chief Marketing Officer, American Express: We don’t just come forward with what we want to sell, we engage you with things that you want.
ANNOUNCER: Advertisers have blurred the line between programming and product.
SCOTT DONATON, Editor-in-Chief, Advertising Age: It’s advertising that people not only will tolerate but will actually go in search of.
ACTRESS: ["Sex and the City"] The way God and Madison Avenue intended.
ANNOUNCER: But how is advertising affecting our lives and the world around us?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER, New York University: Once a culture becomes entirely advertising-friendly, it ceases to be a culture at all.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE “
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, FRONTLINE Correspondent: “ask me this all the time. What about the environment?
ANNOUNCER: Correspondent Douglas Rushkoff takes you inside the changing world of The Persuaders.

Is Walmart Good for America?

ANNOUNCER: There’s never been a company like it.
Prof. GARY GEREFFI, Duke University: Wal-Mart is probably the broadest and most powerful company in U.S. business history.
ANNOUNCER: Its everyday low prices benefit millions of Americans.
BRUCE BARTLETT, National Center for Policy Analysis: Wal-Mart has really given an increase in income to every American.
ANNOUNCER: But some say it’s a bad bargain.
STEVE RATCLIFF: It’s putting people out of work, that’s what it’s doing.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, correspondent Hedrick Smith investigates how Wal-Mart is changing the American economy “
HEDRICK SMITH, FRONTLINE Correspondent: The Chinese guys bought the big machine?
ANNOUNCER: “following the trail of low prices in America to low-cost production in China “
DONALD HAY, Entrepreneur: I said, “Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. The next one’s China. I got to get here.”
ANNOUNCER: “tracking the nation’s growing trade deficit “
YVONNE SMITH, Port of Long Beach: Wal-Mart’s our number one customer.
HEDRICK SMITH: Wal-Mart’s your number one customer?
YVONNE SMITH: Number one customer.
ANNOUNCER: “and examining the growing controversy over the Wal-Mart way.
ALAN TONELSON, U.S. Business & Industry Council: The lowest prices have to lead to the lowest wages and to job loss and to lower living standards.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Secret History of the Credit Card

ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE: The average American family has eight.
JIM MUELLER: “Zero percent for life on transfer balances” ”
ANNOUNCER: Credit cards, plastic money, have become both a necessity and a ticket to a better life.
[television commercial]
ACTOR AND ACTRESS: Hawaii!
BEN STEIN, Actor/Author: A credit card is an extraordinary, unbelievably great convenience for the consumer.
ANNOUNCER: But the credit card industry plays by its own rules.
Prof. ELIZABETH WARREN, Harvard Law School: I don’t know any merchant in America who can change the price after you’ve bought the item, except a credit card company.
ANNOUNCER: Credit card banks earn record profits.
LOWELL BERGMAN, FRONTLINE Correspondent: MBNA’s profits last year ” one-and-a-half times that of McDonald’s.
EDWARD YINGLING, American Bankers Association: Well, McDonald’s didn’t do too well last year.
ANNOUNCER: But the profits come at a price.
ANDREW GUILE, Consumer: Now they’ve raised my rate to 19.98, and I have not been late ever.
PAT WALLACE, Bay Area Better Business Bureau: There are irritated, unhappy, dissatisfied customers in this industry.
Prof. ELIZABETH WARREN: They are the new loan sharks in America.
DUNCAN MacDONALD, Fmr. Citibank General Counsel: I certainly didn’t imagine that someday we might have ended up creating a Frankenstein.
LOWELL BERGMAN: Frankenstein? What do you mean, Frankenstein?
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman and The New York Times investigate the secrets of your credit card
.

Karl Rove– The Architect

ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE: Karl Rove had a master plan.
MIKE ALLEN, The Washington Post: He was the architect. His hand was in all of it.
ANNOUNCER: It took 40 years, but he changed the political landscape.
POLITICAL OBSERVER: Karl Rove came to town with one goal, and that was this massive Republican realignment.
ANNOUNCER: How did he do it? And what does it mean for America?
POLITICAL OBSERVER: Karl Rove wants a permanent Republican majority.
POLITICAL OBSERVER: He’s the God inside the machine.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, FRONTLINE and The Washington Post examine Karl Rove: The Architect.

The Torture Question

ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE: There was a lot of soldiers that had digital cameras at Abu Ghraib, and they would take pictures of literally everything that they would do.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, the story about what really happened in cell block 1A.
Spc. ANTHONY LAGOURANIS, Interrogator, US Army, 2001-’05: Part of it is, they were trying to get information, but part of it is also just pure sadism.
ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE: They felt righteous in doing it, and that’s what made it really dangerous and diabolical.
ANNOUNCER: With exclusive interviews ”
ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE: And this escalated all the way to make them fear that rape could be performed on prisoners.
ANNOUNCER: ”and never before seen footage.
GI: [home video] We’re all mad! We’re all mad!
ANNOUNCER: How high did it reach?
Gen. JANIS KARPINSKI, Cmdr., 800th MP Brigade, 2003-’04: General Sanchez put his finger in Colonel Pappas’s chest and told him he wanted the information.
ANNOUNCER: And what does it reveal?
Gen. RICHARD MYERS, Joint Chiefs Chairman: We’ve dealt with that. If it was only the night shift at Abu Ghraib, it’s a pretty good clue that it wasn’t a more widespread problem.
Sen. JOHN McCAIN (R), Arizona: This isn’t about who they are, this is about who we are.
ANNOUNCER: Where else did it spread?
Spc. ANTHONY LAGOURANIS: It’s not at Abu Ghraib, it’s all over Iraq. The infantry units are torturing people in their homes.
ANNOUNCER: FRONTLINE exposes the dark secrets behind “The Torture Question.”

Comments have often lent life to the blogsphere. Blogs like DailyKos and TPMCafe allow everyone not just to comment, but to keep personal journals. Here at TwoDems, we currently do not have enough users perhaps to be greatly concerned about this, but there are often great debates whether to allow or disallow comments. Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy (a group law blog) is one of the larger blogs I know with no comments section. He summarizes his rationale for no comments as follow as follows:

1. The first is esthetic, which sounds frivolous, but esthetics of a certain sort matters a lot to writers and editors. I feel that The Conspiracy is a coherent product that I help put together. I intentionally lack complete control over it, because of the participation of my cobloggers; and I find this esthetically pleasing (as well as functionally useful in various ways), since it lets me enjoy the pleasant surprise of interesting things being posted that I couldn’t have even thought of posting. But that’s so because I have a very high opinion of my cobloggers, and have tried to select them based on their quality.

It would annoy me a lot if this coherent product also included some postings that I very much dislike, from people whom I never explicitly invited. Even if people didn’t think less of me for those postings, it would still bother me. Maybe this isn’t entirely rational; many esthetic preferences aren’t rational. But it is pretty strongly felt, as are many writers’ and editors’ views about “their babies.”

2. The second is reputational. Rightly or wrongly, consciously or not, some people’s perception of the blog and its bloggers will be molded by what the commenters post as well as by what the bloggers post. Some people will infer (not implausibly) that because (A) some dreck is posted, (B) I have the power to delete it, and (C) I don’t delete it, therefore (D) I must agree with it or at least not entirely disagree with it.

3. And this brings us to the third, eminently practical reason. I’m swamped as it is, and I don’t have the time to deal with all this. “What time?,” people ask. “Just enable them and leave them be.” Yeah, right. Someone is going to start spamming the comments with ads for penis enhancement. Someone else is going to start a flamewar. Some jerk is going to decide that he violently disagrees with me — or, worse yet, that he agrees with me — and chooses to express himself in terms that are hard to just ignore. As I mentioned in the second point, the reputation of the blog will indeed be on the line.

The consequence will be that I’ll have to monitor the comments in some measure, which means a good deal of hassle — not just time-consuming work, since that’s often fun, but time-consuming hassle and obligation. That seems like something I’d much rather avoid right now.

Tyler Cowen experimened back in September with opening comments on various posts on Marginal Revolution. He learned 1, that comments increase page views and visits but not terribly usefully, 2, that keeping comments open too regularly dilutes them of value, and 3, that people are more helpful on questions like good chinese restaurants or continuity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer than the merits of evolution and intelligent design.

This all came out of a NYTimes The Faculty Blog of the University of Chicago Law School. I find that the community-type blogs like the ones above have the most useless comments whereas blog such (such as Crooked Timber, Matthew Yglesias, Daniel Drezner, etc. have smaller comments sections that prove useful.

Mostly I think it is related to size and blog goal. For now, and I imagine until we have more than 10,000 hits a day, I forsee our comments section being quite secure.

A Slate Article about the boring world of logistics. I would say they hit gold here, if Thomas Friedman did not dedicate whole chapters to this idea in his book, The World is Flat.

Since we are on the subject, I read the World is Flat last summer and might be the only person in the world who was disappointed. I enjoy Friendman’s op-eds. His genius lies in finding a compelling anecdote. This book, on the whole, could allows him the space and time to make a stronger case for his arguments, which can be weak in his columns, but he just really fails to do so. Instead of one anecdote, we get many, but neither amounts to extrapolated arguments in a good social science sense. Some of his anecdotes, such as his discussion of UPS, are very strong. Friedman has written is an excellent primer for the uninitiated to the world in which technology rewrites rules but little more.

By reading his book you would think cities like Bangalore are paradises. With empowered citizens basking in the modern economy. How many Indians speak English? Use PCs? Can afford a Dell? Want to answer phones for the rest of their life? Yes, Friedman acknowledges, there are problems: poverty, illiteracy, disease, and so on. Exactly how these problems interact with his glorious vision is hard to say. Friedman is so focused on India, China, Eastern Europe and the US that he forgets the rest of the world. Africa gets a brief acknowledgment, and no more. I don’t recall reading anything about South America. Actors in the global economy need to be thinking about interactions beyond those countries that are becoming technology havens. We need to think about a world where a rising tide truly raises all boats, not just the ones we care to think about this half-century.

When I arrived in DC last Monday for the new semester my family wanted to go see a few of the monuments, and we went to the Jefferson, which strangely my father had never been to. In the monument I was reminded of Jefferson’s writings that call knowledge the light to which we may peruse liberty. Reflecting upon that I read an article about UCLA’s newest alumni group which is encouraging student to help expose the most radical professors at the university.

The move has been so controversial that a controversial member stepped down when the program began:

News of the campaign prompted former Republican congressman James Rogan, who helped lead impeachment proceedings against former President
Bill Clinton in the U.S. House of Representatives, to resign from the group’s advisory board.

“I am uncomfortable to say the least with this tactic,” Rogan, now a lawyer in private practice in California, said in an e-mail resignation made public by the Los Angeles Times. “It places students in jeopardy of violating myriad regulations and laws.”

Of course the law in question here is the professor’s right to copyright over the lecture and materials they produce, and the program’s offer of $100 for recordings of these lectures.

As a college student, and as many readers of our site are also college students, I felt that a discussion on the topic of academic freedom would be appropriate. I should start by saying I do know people who have been affected by a denial of academic freedom. In this case because of the extracurricular choices of a persons activity were in conflict with a professor’s one student has had difficulty with the professor, and I’d be lying by omission if I also did not state that the professor in question is indeed a liberal. Equally a friend at a different university shared the same story with this professor being conservative. Both professors should hardly deserve to be allowed to teach if they allow their political views to rule over their academic obligation to allow students academic freedom to pursue their interests, and evaluate them fairly based upon academics.

However, the UCLA group isn’t out to find these professors. For all the noise they make it’s not the professors who are abusing their authority that are their enemy, but instead professors who have left-wing even extreme left-wing views. To punish a professor for their political views is the opposite of academic freedom. In my experience here at GW I have been fortunate enough to have professors of all political orientations, but not one of them has evaluated me unfairly for my deeply held and expressed convictions. I would not seek to name the conservative even the extreme conservative professors as evil, for the entire point of academic freedom is to pursue knowledge and understanding, and that road can bring different people to different conclusions about their values.

Academic freedom does not require that professors teach both sides of anything, unless the information is knowingly false. For example a history professor telling students the holocaust is a farce would be inappropriate. But if I have a professor tell me that abortion is wrong as he outlines his reasons then while I may disagree, and should have the freedom to engage him over this and still be graded fairly. But to say that he hampers my freedom by expressing his own views is a pretty fallacious argument being perpetrated here. College and upper level studies are often one sided, and that is what comes with years of research and writing upon a specific topic does to people, to ask them to be devoid of their opinions is to remove their own freedom to continue their research.

What alumni groups like this are after isn’t academic freedom, but academic sterility. They wish to sterilize our campuses from any view that they find offensive. High school is largely the place for open and balanced presentation of topics, in college it is you, and only you, who can now pursue knowledge. Academic freedom is the ability to pursue the light of knowledge that leads us to the liberty Jefferson dreamed of, anything less than that would be an offense to Light & Liberty.

According to Friday’s Hotline (subscription only) Tim Kaine, brand spanking new governor of Virginia is to give the Democratic response to the State of the Union. Kaine, of course is the new governor of Virginia, and someone I blogged about earlier in the year for endorsing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in the state of Virginia, as well as his opposition to civil unions.

VA Gov. Tim Kaine (D) “will deliver his party’s rebuttal to” Pres. Bush’s SOTU 1/31, according to Dem sources. “Kaine is expected to echo” nat’l Dem “charges that” GOPers “foster a culture of corruption at the highest levels of” gov’t “as well as speak about his party’s efforts on behalf of the middle class.” One Dem: Kaine is a “perfect choice” because “he is a” Dem “who was elected from a red state by focusing on the issues that affect all Americans and has a proved track record as a leader who successfully tackles the tough issues” (Preston, CNN.com, 1/19).

So, that’s the voice piece we want, a governor pandering to the ugliest discrimination to face America in years, and he’s our guy? Come on, please tell me we can do better.

As I had flu over December, I have been very busy taking my finals from last semester. The coming weeks are going to continue to be rough, with finals, five new classes to do reading in, fellowship and internship applications. However, we’re trying to make this site more viable in the long run. I am slowly, but perhaps steadily, recruiting guest bloggers that are hopefully going to represent much of the blog in the long run. Currently, we have Jon, who has been posting before and our newest addition Catherine. She is going to be blogging on environmental issues mostly, but also general things from time to time.

To follow up on Gary’s rare move into the world of culture I wanted to share an article from tomorrow’s NYTimes magazine on the lexicography of the text message. I am mostly extremely annoyed by this phenomenon, especially within the context of AIM conversations, where laziness rather than necessity lends to the brevity. Having said that I find many of the messages noted in the article to be difficult to decipher (my roommate and I took some time at it) and unlike the Chinese I would prefer someone just leave me a voice message. Nevertheless, what they say is true:.

This may be the universal attraction of text-messaging, in fact: it’s a kind of avoidance mechanism that preserves the feeling of communication - the immediacy - without, for the most part, the burden of actual intimacy or substance. The great majority of text messages are of the “Hey, how are you, whassup?” variety, and they’re sent sometimes when messenger and recipient are within speaking distance of each other - across classrooms, say, or from one row of a stadium to another. They’re little electronic waves and nods that, just like real waves and nods, aren’t meant to do much more than establish a connection - or disconnection, as the case may be - without getting into specifics.

Recently articles have been appearing about school administrators and potential employers checking Facebook profiles. In the case of school administrators such viewing has often been followed by judicial sanction. The debate over privacy aside, here at TwoDems, we want you to protect yourself.

Is it a total shame that people are doing this? Absolutely, but you publish the material, so no one is invading your privacy really. What you can do for yourself is set your privacy settings in Facebook. When you are logged in you can click on the left-hand side a link called “My Privacy”. Once in there you can select custom, and click on “Advanced Settings.” There you can fully customize your privacy settings. I have mine set to only allow my friends to see my profile, which means even if you go to my school, you can’t see my profile unless I allow you to. Why not take an extra step to cover yourself up?

While walking to the Metro today on my way to work I watched hundreds of urban denizens walking around with the noticeable iPod white headphones and it got me thinking. I started thinking about the murder of NY Times journalist David Rosenbaum, who lived here in DC. What especially got me thinking about it was that the neighborhood it occurred in, while not the same as mine, nor even that close, is in many ways similar. Here in Foggy Bottom we have quiet streets, lighted walk ways, and relatively quiet nights, at least as far as crime goes. The same could and is said about the neighborhood where Rosenbaum lived. The most recent details to emerge about this case include that Rosenberg was found wearing headphones.

The Cult of the White Headphones, they hold services at the Church of St. Jobs, caused me to think that perhaps these people, any person wearing headphones while walking in the city makes themselves nothing more than a target. This past summer there was the heartbreaking case of a young child killed in Brooklyn for his iPod, and it’s happened in other places as well. So I can only wonder, as they bumble down the street with their iPods or any other headphone based device are we just walking around oblivious with an advertisement around our necks for robbery?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my iPod, but I don’t use it when walking around, I tried it once during freshman year but I felt toolish and it just didn’t sit well with me. Now I don’t mean to sound like an alarmist or anything, the fact of the matter is if you go and wear your iPod you’ll probably be fine. But the recent death in a relatively quiet neighborhood had me thinking that maybe if he hadn’t had his headphones on, maybe if he hadn’t appeared to be ignorant of his surroundings he might not be dead. Perhaps he would have heard them coming and could have walked toward the front door of a house scaring them off, or he could have walked faster. Even still, perhaps if he seemed like he was aware and just walking around he wouldn’t even have been targeted in the first place. Of course we can only speculate, but it definatley seems plausible.

Murder and crime aside, the entire issue speaks to a different yet related trend. Why do we feel the need to walk around with these headphones on ignorant of our neighbors and society. Increasingly it seems like the iPod is coming to represent the best in technological advancement, but also a continued decline in community, at least when walking around in a city. I’ve sat in classes with students listening to their iPods, every where I go someone is listening to their music. I wonder if these people are even enjoying their music, or is it instead becoming a simple necessity, something to preoccupy ourselves with, while we ignore a world going on around us.

So, what is CNN exactly trying to do with their Headline News unit? Months ago they hired the incredibly annoying to listen to, Nancy Grace. And Nancy, while some of her views are meritorious largely disregards the simple things in the American justice system, such as innocent until proven guilty, or other trial rights. Now they’re expanding the line up of crazy bastards to include Mr. Glenn Beck.

Glenn Who? Beck is an extreme right wing radio personality and the farthest thing from a journalist. Some of his highlights include:

On families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: “[T]his is horrible to say, and I wonder if I’m alone in this — you know, it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims’ families? Took me about a year.”

On Hurricane Katrina survivors who remained in New Orleans: “And that’s all we’re hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones that we’re seeing on television are the scumbags — and again, it’s not all the people in New Orleans. Most of the people in New Orleans got out! It’s just a small percentage of those who were left in New Orleans, or who decided to stay in New Orleans, and they’re getting all the attention.”

Discussing disclosures from a caller who claimed to have tortured prisoners in U.S. custody: “I’ve got to tell you, I appreciate your service. … Good for you. Good for — I mean, good for you. Is it because you did it for the country? … I have to tell you, when all is said and done, I’m glad people like you are on our side.”

What the hell is CNN doing?