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    Food stamp restrictions, new labels, restaurant and movie theater calorie display proposals – all of this, and more is part of what should be called "ChubGate" - the continued crackdown on any and all elements which appear to be contributing to the obesity epidemic.

    Recently, the Grocery Manufacturers Association announced new front-of-package food labels aimed toward simplifying the information for health conscious consumers. Food packaging has changed in recent years- hilariously. Check any cereal aisle today, and you’ll find the most sugar-laden cereal emblazoned with the promising "Made with whole grains!" Yes, Cocoa Puffs may well indeed contain grains, but the claim is largely counterfeit – it’s still a chocolate cereal. But, if individuals want to have a bowl for breakfast (which would actually contain fewer calories than a bowl of organic granola) they should be able to do so. Of course, General Mills can afford to make these changes to their packaging. What about the smaller food companies that can’t?

    Few contemporary political issues are more divisive than airport security. There are primarily two conflicting fears running through travelers’ minds: that of being humiliated publically by a TSA agent and that of being caught up in a terrorist attack. Those for whom the former outweighs the latter are demanding less intrusive security despite the possibility that it will increase the likelihood of a terrorist attack. Those on the opposite side of the issue call for more rigorous security measures even if they will cost more tax dollars and infringe on flyers’ privacy. President Obama, for his part, acknowledged that the TSA’s new security measures can be frustrating, but that they are the only type of procedures effective in countering the kind ofthreat seen in the failed Christmas Day Bombing attempt of 2009.

By Elena Novak

    Think of the word "feminist" for a moment. What connotations does it conjure up in your political brain? Disgust? Tingly feelings? Nancy Pelosi? Sarah Palin? It's most probable that you were thinking of feminists in the liberal sense: women who are pro-choice and push for equality in the home and workplace.

    These things are all well and good, but have you ever considered the word in the conservative sense? Most likely, you haven't, and that's because it sounds like an oxymoron.

    What conservative feminism is, however, is a movement promoting the figurative rights of women to be housewives, to reject abortions, and to respect their husbands. These values isolate conservative feminists from the liberal feminists' "battle of the sexes." However, both promote the intellectual and emotional strength of women and push for women to strive for great achievements.

By Alan Brooks

    Since the year 2000, there have been 33 shootings on college campuses in the U.S. All of the campuses had something in common: they are gun-free zones. Sixty people were killed in these shootings. All the victims had something in common: they were unarmed.

     The most notorious of these shootings was the Virginia Tech Massacre in which Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people and wounded fifteen others. Police responded to the first incident where Cho shot two students in a dorm, but two hours later Cho barricaded himself in a lecture hall and proceeded to kill 30 more students and faculty and leave 15 wounded before killing himself. Cho also injured ten other people while they were trying to escape.

   The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is a creature of legislation. Unlike a species developed by years of market selection, the TSA can be compared to a laboratory creation that stays alive by intravenously sapping the blood from non-laboratory species. It doesn’t react in a nimble fashion to the changing environment of customer demand and even when it gathers fewer nutrients from its environment than it consumes - it doesn’t die. It’s a zombie--just like all creatures of legislation. We expect frightful behavior from zombies and as such, we should expect frightful policies from bureaucratic institutions such as the TSA.

   One of the most deceptive refrains amongst proponents of immigration control is, “It’s the law!” Used in defense of barriers to the free movement of people across borders, this emotionally-charged slogan is revealed to be utterly fallacious upon even the most cursory analysis. The phrase consists of nothing more than pointing out what existing law is. It is a red herring designed to lead the discussion away from why opponents of free immigration desire to have these laws in the first place. Fearful of being discovered as protectionists and xenophobes, they shroud themselves in the law in a desperate attempt to maintain a haughty air of superiority.

By H.E. Whitney

     At no other time has the justification for maintaining the human disciplines been more of an untidy affair than now. When I refer to the “human disciplines,” I include English literature, history, philosophy, religion, theatre, classics, anthropology, etc.: those fields of study that are primarily concerned with the criticism of the formation, propagation, and interplay of rituals, ideas, beliefs of culture as they occur in historical or literary texts and artifacts. 

“if we dissolved English literature departments, it does not follow that canonical or representative works of our culture would disappear from culture and that people would stop reading or stop appreciating the works of our culture.”

By Richard Benson

    Some towns and smaller cities often deal with automobile gridlock just as much and as often as a larger metropolis would. However, due to a smaller tax base, they choose to make minor adjustments to road networks instead of building mass transit. If they are working on mass transit, then money is typically thrown at buses, an often problematic endeavor. A better approach to solving our transportation woes is to move towards a type of mass transit that is dynamic enough to accommodate the ever changing needs of individual citizens.

    As a crucial election season heats up yet another time, so, too, does the intensity of the enthusiastic political activists on campus that insist on relentlessly harassing each unsuspecting passerby with pamphlets and platitudes about exercising their right to vote. Although this type of in-your-face marketing strategy would most likely never be tolerated from any of the social or partisan organizations on this campus; for some reason, the majority of the student body seems to passively accept these routine houndings as a necessary and normal part of the democratic process.

    During this election cycle many individuals will be deciding whether or not they will vote. However, there are many groups that are or have been ideologically committed to not voting or to supporting a third party alternative to the major political parties.  Today, this age-old trend in American political life is specifically apparent among market libertarians.