Opinion

Jerry Brown announced his 2011 budget plan for California last Tuesday, with an assertive message asking for more sacrifices from Californians. As usual, those that are expected to deal with the heaviest burden are students.

The Tucson shootings in Arizona unleashed a media firestorm over the putative political motivations of the shooter, Jared Loughner. Progressives labeled him a far-right, anti-government Tea Partier, blaming Sarah Palin’s “crosshair maps” and invocations of the Second Amendment during the 2010 campaign season. Without missing a beat, conservatives accused liberals of intellectual dishonesty and mudslinging, unearthing the history of far-left political violence from the Weathermen to the Black Panthers as counter-examples to the stereotype that conservative rhetoric — and more importantly, conservatism — breeds violence.

When the United States Constitution was first amended to include the right to free speech and assembly, I do not think the authors of the document expected these freedoms to be used by oppressors. Unfortunately, in our society today, they have been.

There’s a broad strain of American political discourse that considers race a myth, an illusion that, if we work diligently to expose as false, will wither away into the dustbin of history. A greater and more pernicious one is the old myth of social progress; that racism is a musty old problem that, as time passes, becomes less and less of a vital issue.

In the recent (and strangely productive) lame-duck session of Congress, Democrats pushed through the Food Safety Modernization Act, which will lead to vital reforms in our nation’s food system now that President Obama has signed it into law. The bill grants important new powers to the Food and Drug Administration, finally giving it additional power to prevent the outbreaks of disease and death that are a direct result of the way we produce food in the United States.

We live in an age in which much of our social interaction takes place behind the safety of our computer screens. We are judged by the number of “friends” we manage to accumulate and the photo albums we upload documenting our seemingly enthralling lives. Perhaps the most telling indicators of our coolness are our tweets and Facebook statuses. We post our current annoyances, exciting updates and random musings, and within a millisecond, everybody in our social network is reading and analyzing our latest articulation.

The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to begin establishing greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution standards for factories and power plants in 2011 as mandated by the landmark Clean Air Act of 2011 and the Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007. However, concerns have arisen over the consequences of a showdown between the Obama administration and a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives over the EPA’s new responsibilities. Will the Clean Air Act of 2011 and its empowerment of the EPA achieve its intended aim of reducing greenhouse gases?

The phrase “Network Neutrality” is, like most political parlance, ambiguous. To examine the concept comprehensively is beyond the scope of this article, so instead I’ll focus only on the recent mandate voted in by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that is associated with this term.

Being a native of Northern California, Disneyland was always a distant adventure yet to be undertaken for me and my family. We had always heard stories about what a happy and joyous place it was, the self-declared, “happiest place on earth.” Then one summer between sixth and seventh grade, we made the six-hour trip down to Anaheim. The trip proved to be more than worth the cost. Today, after living in Southern California for over three years, I understand really how much Disneyland means to the people here. My friends are constantly saying how they are heading over to Disneyland over the weekend (every weekend) and how much fun they are going to have.

Six point four. As a score, it could mean a lot of things. A six point four out of ten on a test is a solid “D.” In the Olympics, a six point four score for a gymnast would be dismal. For Daft Punk, it’s the score Pitchfork Media gave to their best album, “Discovery,” in 2001.

The ever-present problem of parking for UC Irvine students, especially for those who live in on-campus communities like Vista Del Campo, Vista Del Campo Norte and the newest residential community – Camino Del Sol, has once again reared its ugly head.

Recently, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson ruled that forcing people to buy health insurance (or pay a fine) is unconstitutional. Although further judicial review is pending, and several courts have ruled differently, this decision just may be the death knell for President Obama’s plan to provide insurance for the nation’s uninsured. The judge’s ruling was as literal an interpretation of the Constitution as one can imagine. Had the health care bill used different words and levied a tax (of equal amount instead of the fine) on all Americans and provided a tax credit (also equal to the fine) for those with health insurance, nothing significant and of substance would have changed from the bill, and as a result the judge would have had no objection.