Will Apple's newest gadget change the way we attend college?

There’s a futuristic scene in the movie The Time Machine in which an elementary school, circa 2030, is on a field trip to the New York Public Library. The students aren’t carrying pad and paper though, or even one of those audio devices for guided tours. Instead, each has what looks like a glass pane (we’re told later it’s really a “microscanner”) strapped over his or her shoulder roughly the same size of…well, of an iPad.

The impact that Apple’s latest gizmo will have on education is yet to be seen. But barely two weeks since we got our hands on a device, its clear that the iPad has the potential to fundamentally change how students attend college.

The concept behind the iPad has been tried before, with little to no success. Other computer companies introduced swiveling tablet PCs years ago, targeting the college market with features meant to make note taking and other academic endeavors easier. But none of them took hold.

Apple’s foray into the market is different. For starters, it’s Apple. The company’s younger, loyal fan base and aggressive marketing of college students is what led to their line of laptops becoming as omnipresent as Frisbees and Obama stickers on our nation’s quads.

The iPad also benefits from incredible technology. I don’t know enough about microprocessors and megawatts and gigawhatevers to speak authoritatively about the technical aspects of the iPad, but having used one for two weeks now I can report that it feels fast, its easy to use and can do just about everything I need it to do in a classroom.

Universities are quickly adjusting to the new market of tablet devices as well, and are taking a wide range of approaches. Princeton University made headlines when they publically banned the iPad within its ivy gates, citing potential issues with their wireless network. Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania will be handing out iPads to their entire incoming freshman class this fall, and George Fox University will give students an option between a Macbook and an iPad for their freshmen.

Both schools have expressed hope that devices like the iPad will reduce the number of textbooks needed by students and make other common academic necessities—PDF files, PowerPoint presentations, online components like Blackboard—available all in one place.

The textbook question is probably the most uncertain. If there is going to be a killer app on collegiate iPads, it is going to be whether the largest producers of textbooks embrace the new format.

So far, the process has been slow. Barnes & Noble, the biggest seller of textbooks in the world, runs many of the nation’s largest university bookstores on college campuses, including here at Stony Brook. They have offered digital textbooks since before the rise of digital eReaders like Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony eReader.

“We have sold digital textbooks since the early 2000s,” said Jade Roth, the Vice President of Books at Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. “But there has not been a great deal of sales.”

Over the last few months, the most prevalent issue in the national political discussion has been President Obama’s crusade to reform our broken health care system.  As one of the only developed industrial nations without a universal health care system, the United States ranks shockingly low on many international health rankings.  Whether one is a single parent, a small business owner, or a college student, the fight to provide suitable health care coverage is a salient issue for most Americans.

The Stony Brook University Medical Center is home to the best ideas in medicine, save for one: universal health care. At least not yet.

Fortunately, legislation has recently been proposed in Congress to remedy this problem.  Although not perfect, the proposed health care bill recently put forth by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nevada) would expand coverage to 94% of all Americans, and would simultaneously reduce the federal budget deficit.   Rather than fit the stereotype of an intrusive liberal program, this bill allows those Americans who are happy with their coverage to keep it as is. This bill will clearly be a boon for our federal government, for many Americans struggling to provide their families with proper health insurance, and not least of all for businesses weighed down by the overwhelming costs of providing their employees with health coverage.  Here at Think, we wonder whether these expected positive results will also translate to college campuses.

Many of the uninsured are college students or recent college graduates.  Currently, college students are usually covered by their parent’s health plans, but upon graduating they are left to fend for themselves.  The proposed health care bill would extend the aforementioned privilege to include young adults as old as twenty-six.  This would ease the burden on college graduates, who are one of the most susceptible demographics to health care problems.  Already saddled with student loans and the pressure of finding gainful employment, the news that health care will be provided for college graduates is a good sign that the Obama administration has remembered that even college graduates need assistance at times.

While it is true that many young Americans do choose not to purchase health insurance, believing themselves to be invincible, this is not as widespread a phenomenon as the opponents of universal health care would like the public to believe.  To hear conservatives tell it, the vast majority of the uninsured are arrogant young people in their twenties who distort national statistics by refusing to purchase coverage that they could easily afford.  In fact, a majority of the uninsured truly are those who cannot afford it, including a great number of college graduates who do not possess the financial means to insure themselves.  Furthermore, there are an unknown, but substantial, number of college students who are electing to intentionally delay their graduation in the hopes of remaining on their parent’s insurance.  The resulting glut of college students has had a negative effect on the college experience, most palpably felt by students who are now struggling to find housing on campus.  Many of these older students have conditions that can only be treated using the health care available to them as college students.

I recently spoke with Dr. Raymond Goldstein to discuss the Baucus health care bill and its prospective effects on college students, and on the country as a whole. The following are a summation of his thoughts on the issue, prompted by three overarching questions I asked him during my interview with him.

What effects, if any, will the proposed health care bill have on college students?

The health care bill as it stands right now will not do enough to remedy the current situation.  Rather than excise the harmful inclusion of insurance companies in our health car system, the Baucus bill will be a windfall for these same companies who have so badly harmed our nation.

In regards to college students, Dr. Goldstein’s prognosis is hardly more promising.  Although he predicts that the stipulation in the bill that young adults can remain on their parent’s coverage until the age of 26 may result in short term improvements for our demographic, he believes that this is only on the margins of our age group, and that this part of the bill will also help the companies.  The lack of regulation in the bill will allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums for the young adults remaining on their parent’s plans.

Dr. Goldstein believes that real reform would be a boon to college students, but that any bill without a strong public option included will do nothing to alleviate any current or potential suffering that we experience.  Without a public option, or at least clear regulations on predatory practices by insurance companies, this bill may exacerbate current problems in our system, rather than cure them.

Does the University Medical Center have an official position on the proposed legislation?

The University has not officially weighed in on the issue, although the individuals in the medical center obviously have their own strong opinions.  Dr. Goldstein referred to Dr. David Brown as being a strong proponent of a single payer system, although he assured me that most doctors on campus are opponents of any progressive health reform.

Are there any common myths and misconceptions about health care that you would like to dispel?

It is important to stress that Americans should look to Western European health care systems for guidance, rather than demonizing them for simply being “un-American”.   Dr. Goldstein thinks that our pervasive ideology of what he calls “rugged individualism” has harmed us in this area, and that this mode of thinking is responsible for the insurance companies being able to maximize their profits at the expense of public welfare.  In an interesting side note, he also submitted that the current state of our health care system in relation to Western Europe’s is a definite contributing factor in the continuing weakness of the US dollar compared to the Euro.

Think Magazine sat down with former university president and science advisor to George W. Bush, John H Marburger.

Think Magazine scored an exclusive, hour-long interview with former Stony Brook University President and former science advisor to President George W. Bush John H. Marburger.

In Think’s office, he discussed a wide range of topics, from the planned hotel to his time in the Bush White House. Watch the videos here, only with Think.

The 2009 elections offered up mixed results for progressives.

While some would claim otherwise, the 2009 elections were hardly a landslide for either party. Both Congressional races were won by Democrats — one in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat in a lifetime — while both gubernatorial races, in states won last year by Obama, went to Republicans. A rich Democratic incumbent lost a governorship, but a rich independent incumbent right across the river kept the mayoralty of a city more populous than most states. Voters in one state rejected same-sex marriage but reaffirmed their approval of medical marijuana, while those in another seem likely to have approved “marriage-like” unions for same-sex couples, but only barely. And as much as Republicans would like it to be the case, the successful Republicans don’t seem to owe their wins to anti-Obama sentiment; on the other hand, neither did the “Obama factor” help the Democrats he campaigned for in high-profile, high-stakes races, even in the most Democratic part of the country.

But that doesn’t mean there are no greater implications for the races that took place yesterday. There’s something to learn from every election. And wonks like me just love analyzing elections. So let’s take a look at some of this year’s big ones:

Republicans Take Governorships in New Jersey and Virginia

The gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia were undoubtedly the most talked-about races across the nation yesterday. And here, the news for Democrats was terrible: Republicans won both races in states whose governorships had been held by Democrats for eight years, and which President Obama won last year.

Both races had some things in common: lackluster Democratic candidates and Republicans who stayed away from hot-button, culture-war social issues and crafted campaigns carefully designed to win independents. But the two losing Democrats were as different as the two states.

Virginia is a state that would vote solidly Republican were it not for urban and suburban voters in the state’s north, part of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Essentially, northern Virginia is the northeast, while the rest of the state is the south. Northern Virginians propelled Obama to victory in the state last year, but most couldn’t get enthused about “country lawyer” Creigh Deeds, a conservative Democrat from the ultra-rural west of the state whose down-home style would mostly have appealed to conservative rural voters who would never vote for a Democrat anyway. Meanwhile, Republican Bob McDonnell, who grew up in northern Virginia, campaigned largely on economic issues, casting himself as a moderate and staying away from social issues that would alienate independents. The result: McDonnell won some of the northern Virginian counties that had been the state’s Democratic strongholds in recent years, and came away from the race with a commanding win over Deeds, garnering 58.7% of the vote to Deeds’ 41.3%.

Like McDonnell, New Jersey’s Governor-Elect Chris Christie tried his best not to touch social issues, focusing instead on the economy, taxes and corruption. In liberal, highly urban and suburban New Jersey, strongly articulated conservative stances on issues like abortion and gay rights would have alienated even more voters than in Virginia, at least part of which is still in the conservative south. But his opponent, Governor Jon Corzine, was very different from Creigh Deeds. Despite his origins in small-town Illinois, the one-time Goldman Sachs chairman certainly lacked Deeds’ “country bumpkin” image. Unfortunately, Corzine came off as distant and uninspiring. The terrible state of the economy and New Jersey’s chronic problems of astronomical taxes and rampant corruption combined with Corzine’s lack of personal likability to make him a very easy target for voters’ anger about the terrible state of the state, and his attempts to portray Christie as a dangerous ideologue with close ties to George W. Bush seemed not to stick. (This was a typically dirty New Jersey campaign, with allegations flying that Corzine’s campaign even made fun of the weight of his corpulent opponent.) Even the very public support of President Obama in this reliably Democratic state could not save the incumbent, whose campaign seemed to consist of, “I’m not doing as bad a job as you think — really! And that other guy will be even worse!” It was still a close race, Christie taking 48.8% of the vote to Corzine’s 44.5% and independent Chris Daggett’s 5.8%, but ultimately New Jersey voters decided to axe an incumbent seen by many as disconnected, ineffective and even duplicitous in favor of someone who at least might do better.

Republicans, of course, would like to portray these races as manifestations of a backlash against President Obama, but polls show that voters were largely focused on local issues and that for most President was not a major factor in their decisions. What they do show is that Republicans can still win, at least on a state level, if they stay away from controversial social issues and stick to economics, where their message still resonates with many.

Bloomberg Wins in NYC — Barely

For many (certainly, for me) the surprise of the night was the slimness of the margin by which Mike Bloomberg won his third term as Mayor of New York City. In an election with low turnout, Bloomberg took only 50.6% of the vote to Comptroller Bill Thompson’s 46%.

Given the dynamics of the campaign, Thompson did better than anyone could have reasonably expected. The billionaire Bloomberg had essentially unlimited resources, and did not hesitate to use them, setting spending records. Against the huge financial resources and impressive organization of the Bloomberg campaign, Thompson, an earnest but bland candidate who largely criticized Bloomberg rather than advancing his own agenda, and who seemed to have little coherent vision for how the city should change, should have fared terribly. But no small number of voters were angry with Bloomberg for getting the City Council to overturn term limit laws that the voters themselves had enacted in referenda, and the enormous amounts of his personal wealth left a bitter taste with many as well. According to exit polls, those for whom these two factors had an effect went overwhelmingly for Thompson, perhaps helping to account for his surprisingly good performance. But while a substantial minority did care about these issues, most New Yorkers did not — and those voters by and large went for Bloomberg.

That said, it may perplex many that New York, a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a huge margin, will not have had a Democratic mayor in two decades by the time Bloomberg’s third term expires in 2014. Bloomberg is an independent now, but he ran on the Republican ballot line and was formerly a Republican (and, to be fair, a Democrat before that). But while most voters who considered Bloomberg a Republican voted for Thompson, the largest number of voters considered him an independent, and that group broke overwhelmingly for Bloomberg.

Ultimately, the main reason that Bloomberg won is that most New Yorkers are fairly satisfied with him. An astounding 70% of voters polled said they approved of the job Bloomberg was doing, even though 25% of those voters went for Thompson. Thompson won voters whose biggest issue was housing, but Bloomberg won on the three issues the largest numbers of voters identified as most important to them: the economy, education and crime. The economy in New York, as with most everywhere, is not good (and most voters said so), but it seems voters didn’t blame Bloomberg, and had little confidence that Thompson could do better or even as well. And Bloomberg won big on education and especially crime (though a small majority of parents of public-school students went for Thompson).

But perhaps most importantly of all, those who said they voted in favor of a candidate for mayor mostly voted for Bloomberg. Those who said they voted against the other candidate went overwhelmingly for Thompson. Thompson, perhaps, was unable to win because he didn’t convince New Yorkers why he should be mayor, and while his relatively strong performance indicates that many are not happy with Bloomberg, that discontent simply did not run deep enough for New Yorkers to jump ship en masse to a candidate who did not give them enough reasons to favor him.

NY-23: Conservatives Reach Too Far

Parts of New York’s 23rd Congressional District, in the very rural far north of the state, haven’t elected a Democrat since 1851. (No, that’s not a typo; the district’s largest city, Watertown, hasn’t been represented by a Democrat for 158 years. The Republican Party didn’t even exist in 1851; back then, the Democrats were opposed by the Whigs!) But the Republican nominee for this seat’s special election, Dede Scozzafava, chosen by New York Republicans for her broad appeal, was deemed by many national Republicans to be “too liberal.” Enough national Republicans, lead by Sarah Palin, endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and attacked Scozzafava that the Republican dropped out of the race, allowing the Democrat, Bill Owens, to win what should have been a very safe Republican seat.

The lesson here is pretty simple: those who demand absolute ideological purity should be prepared to lose often. Imagine if the Republican candidates for governor in Virginia and New Jersey ran explicitly ideological, hard-right campaigns….

Maine Voters Like Pot Better than Gays; Washington Voters Seem to Have Approved “Marriage-Like” Partnerships

I like Maine. Or at least I used to. It’s got a nice coastline, produces some really nice boats and mail-order clothing, and McDonald’s sells lobster there, which is at least good for a laugh. Unfortunately, 52.8% of Maine’s voters decided their gay and lesbian neighbors just don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else, which is no laughing matter and doesn’t leave me with very warm feelings toward the state. This continues same-sex marriage’s unbroken record of being rejected every time it has come up for a popular referendum — now in 31 states. Worse, this scourge has now entered the northeast, the region hitherto most friendly to same-sex marriage, and for the first time, voters have overturned their elected legislators’ decision to grant equality. (On the other hand, unlike the other 30 referenda, Maine’s didn’t take the form of a constitutional amendment. But that is not much consolation.)

On the other hand, 58.7% of Maine voters did decide to expand the legal usage of medical marijuana. That’s nice; maybe I can get some to make me feel less depressed about the bigotry of the majority of Maine voters and its absurd political system that makes the rights of minorities subject to the whims of the majority.

Meanwhile, voters in the State of Washington appear to have likely approved, by a slim margin, a measure establishing domestic partnerships that would be like marriages, except not. Right now it’s still too close to call, but while I hope the measure does pass, the fact that the voting is so close (currently 51.6% in favor), and that if it does pass, it will still create a “separate and unequal” status for same-sex couples means that still wouldn’t be much of an occasion for celebration.

Long Island: No Real Winners

And at last, we turn to the dull but important business of local Long Island politics. Or this year, maybe not so dull.

Long Island, where high taxes and corruption are chronic problems, looks very similar politically to that other home of NYC’s inner suburbs, New Jersey, but its voters don’t have an entire state government to play with. Instead, similar politics play out on a local level. (New York’s Westchester County, where most of the remaining inner suburbs are located, has similar problems and politics to those of Long Island and New Jersey, and Republicans made big gains there this year.)

Nearly every office in Nassau County was up for election this year, and here voters seemed evenly split on who they want to run the county — or at least those who cared enough to vote, with low turnout signaling a general feeling of apathetic discontent. In spite of, or perhaps because of this low turnout, Election 2009 has turned out to be quite a spectacle in Nassau: more than 24 hours after polls closed, Democratic County Executive Tom Suozzi still doesn’t know whether he’ll keep his job! Right now he appears to have defeated Republican challenger Ed Mangano by an astonishing 237 votes out of more than 245,000, but it could be weeks before a winner is declared. It’s Bush-Gore, Long Island Edition.

It’s not just Suozzi on whom voters were evenly divided; Democratic Comptroller Howard Weitzman lost to Republican challenger George Maragos by 576 votes out of over 230,000 cast. And the County Legislature has been re-taken by Republicans, raising the prospect of governmental gridlock with the Executive and Legislature constantly at odds. Yet District Attorney Kathleen Rice, a Democrat, won by a respectable margin; so did County Clerk Maureen O’Connell, a Republican. Town and city races were mostly won by incumbents of both parties. If anything, Nassau voters don’t seem to care, and those who do are divided astonishingly evenly in what was, when I was growing up there (and my parents before me!), an impenetrable Republican fortress.

Things in Suffolk County were not so edge-of-the-seat exciting. There were no contested county-wide offices; the incumbent District Attorney and Sheriff (Democrats) and Treasurer (a Republican) all ran uncontested. Democrats will keep control of the County Legislature. But town elections show that, like their neighbors in Nassau, Suffolk’s voters are mostly apathetic, and those who aren’t are divided. In the largest town, Brookhaven (home of Stony Brook), Democratic incumbent Mark Lesko, who in March won a special election to replace fellow Democrat and now State Senator Brian Foley, won his first full term as Town Supervisor. But every incumbent on the Town Council will remain, giving Republicans a majority that will continue to encumber Lesko’s ability to carry out his agenda. In other towns the picture is much the same with, as in Nassau County, incumbents largely winning in this low-turnout election, though Democrats picked up the position of Town Supervisor in Southampton, and lost it to Republicans in East Hampton and Riverhead.

So the picture on Long Island is pretty glum: Democrats’ headway in taking over this one-time Republican stronghold seems to have ended in a stalemate with many residents just sitting on the sidelines.

Maybe off-year elections aren’t that boring after all.

Certainly, social conservatives pushed hard against this legislation, arguing that LGBT people didn’t deserve “special rights” based on what they see as immoral, sinful or even evil behavior. But it is not merely the purveyors of hate who oppose hate-crimes laws. Others argue that these laws effectively criminalize certain thoughts or opinions, and that they undermine the principle of equality before the law. Those who argue this may be well intentioned and legitimately concerned about civil liberties and legal equality, but they ignore the fundamental purpose and nature of hate crimes. Hate crimes are not merely ordinary criminal acts; they are acts of terrorism.

Terrorism is commonly defined as the use of violence to instill fear among a population in hopes of achieving a political goal. This is why people assassinate presidents and monarchs and blow up office towers and train stations: the hope that the population will become so fearful and demoralized that it will submit to the terrorists’ will.

Hate crimes operate on precisely the same principle. The point of beating up or killing a member of a certain group because they are a member of that group is to instill fear in all the members of that group. If a white racist lynches a black person, it is in the hope that black people will leave town, or at least live in enough fear of white people so as not to attempt to gain equality with them. If someone murders a gay person for being gay, it is in the hope that gay people will be too fearful to live openly and fight for equality. The goal of a hate crime is not merely to harm the immediate victim of the crime; it is to send a message to everyone else sharing the same attribute that caused that person to be the victim in the first place, a message that they are not safe and they’d better not try to live on equal terms, “or else” — or else they might wind up in the hospital or in the grave.

While hate-crimes laws are usually seen in terms of protecting members of minorities, this is not exclusively the case. For example, protection against hate crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation does not just protect non-heterosexuals. Protection against hate crimes committed on the basis of race does not just protect non-whites. It is certainly true that a person is far more likely to be a victim of a hate crime because of being black or Jewish or gay than because of being white or Protestant or straight, but any victims of hate crimes based on whiteness or straightness or such will be protected too. It’s not the fault of the law that most hate crimes are perpetrated against certain groups of people. This law does not create groups of people who receive special treatment, inasmuch as just about everyone has a sexual orientation, a gender identity, a religion (or lack thereof), and so on. And contrary to popular belief, the law does not make any crime committed against a member of any group into a hate crime; the crime still has to be motivated by hatred. The cases of a black person and a white person murdered in the process of being robbed will be treated exactly the same way (i.e., not as a hate crime), and so would those of a gay person and a straight person. The law targets crimes based on motive, not on who the victim is.

The law also does not criminalize thought or speech. It is impossible to criminalize thought without being able to read people’s minds, and as for speech, it is still perfectly legal to stand on a street corner with a sign reading, “God hates fags,” even if that street corner is outside the funeral of the victim of a homophobic attack. So the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, which picketed the funeral of bill namesake Matthew Shepard, is safe, as are more mainstream hatemongers.

Indeed, perhaps the most valid criticism of the law is that it does not make anything illegal that was not already illegal, putting it in danger of being redundant. And it is true that it means certain resources will be dedicated to combating hate crimes that will not be available in the fight against other crimes. But if hate crimes are considered not as crimes but as acts of terrorism, dedicating extra resources to them seems eminently justifiable. And while it is debatable whether the law will actually help stop hate crimes, it does not seem likely to harm anyone either, other than the violent criminals who will be prosecuted under it.

After huge losses in the last two elections, could it get even worse for the GOP?

Whose left?

It’s a question that a lot of Republicans will be asking (or avoiding) in the coming months. Since President Obama took office in January, his approval ratings have remained astronomically high compared to his predecessor and the Republican members of Congress, while several prominent figures on the right have taken a beating. First was the admission of an affair by Nevada Senator John Ensign, then came the bizarre case of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and just this past Friday, news of Sarah Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska have left the once-vibrant field of possible 2012 candidates much thinner.

Palin of course has not ruled out a run for the presidency, but resigning from an elected position a full three years ahead of the 2012 election could hardly be considered a shrewd political move. And NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has reported that sources close to Palin say that her political career is over, less than one year after it really began.

Sanford was also considered a possible candidate for the next election, but a bizarre series of events involving his disappearance, the Appalachian Trail, a rendezvous with an Argentinean mistress in Buenos Aires and the subsequent unanswered questions that surround the whole episode has left his career in shambles.

Other candidates include former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who finished the 2008 Republican primary in third place, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and 2008 candidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

But of those four candidates, only Jindal would be a break from the old school GOP that has lost 54 seats in the House of Representatives and 15 in the Senate since 2006. And if the elections in 2006 and 2008 have taught us anything, it’s that looking backwards doesn’t win you elections.

There are a whole host of other potential nominees who have yet to step forward, and they certainly have plenty of time to do so. But if the Republican Party wants to remain a truly national party capable of winning elections in all 50 states (Democrats have at least one Congressperson in every state but Wyoming, Republicans will have none in all of New England when Judd Gregg retires next term), they need to stop putting their worst feet forward.

President Obama with his nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor

President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday morning to fill the seat on the Supreme Court bench that Associate Justice David Souter vacated several weeks ago.

Her selection did not come as a very big surprise, as Sotomayor had been on virtually everyone’s shortlist for potential nominees.

Besides her exemplary resume and overwhelming credentials accumulated during her time in the US District Court and US Court of Appeals in New York, Sotomayor fulfills President Obama’s desire to nominate a woman and an Hispanic, the first ever, to the Supreme Court.

Criticism of Sotomayor has yet to reach a fever pitch from the RNC, but conservative organizations and analysts wasted no time attacking Sotomayor and President Obama for what they call a “far left” nomination.

Much of the criticism stems from a 2005 statement she made at a panel discussion at Duke University.

“…the Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don’t ‘make law…”

Conservatives were quick to jump on the quote, claiming it signifies Sotomayor’s status as one of the “activist judges” that the right loves to demonize.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was less than subtle about how Republicans would be treating Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings.

“…we will thoroughly examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences.

My guess is that Sotomayor’s 17 years of experience as judge in Federal Courts has taught her how to “apply the law even-handedly.”

While Senate Republicans may object to Sotomayor’s nomination, there is little they can do to prevent her confirmation. Sotomayor needs only 51 yea votes in the Senate, and with 59 Democratic senators, that won’t be a significant obstacle. Republicans do have the power to filibuster her confirmation hearings, but again, with 59 Democratic senators, President Obama would only need to convince one Republican to end any possible filibuster.

Even more promising for Sotomayor is the fact that 7 current Republican Senators voted to confirm Sotomayor to the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in 1998.

More from THiNK Magazine on Sotomayor’s nomination:

Mike Huckabee versus…dermatologist Maria Sotomayor?

More on Sotomayor’s nomination:

The Daily Beast on what Sotomayor’s appointment will mean for Obama’s agenda.

Huffington Post on how GOP Hispanics will handle Sotomayor’s nomination.

The New York Times’ Caucus blog on the political risks of strong Senate GOP opposition.

Talking Points Memo asks: who will get seated first, Sotomayor or Al Franken?

Former Arkansas Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joined the far right fringe-dwellers this morning in attacking President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.

At least that’s what we presume Huck was trying to do.

Instead he launched a ruthless and full-fledged campaign against a poor woman named Maria Sotomayor.

THiNK Magazine was curious who this Maria Sotomayor was, since we like to keep up on news of whom the far right is baselessly attacking. So our crack team of researchers has put together a brief list of three of Huck’s possible targets.

Dr. Maria G. Sotomayor, M.D is a well-respected dermatologist in Tampa, Florida. According to her HealthGrades profile, Sotomayor ranks well below the national average in regards to ease of scheduling urgent appointments, but her office environment is described as very good. However, Huckabee’s main criticism of Maria Sotomayor was that “[she] comes from the far left…” This is true. Her office is located on Amberly Drive in Tampa, Florida, which, if you are traveling from the south, is a far left off of Plantation Oaks Drive.

Maria Sotomayor could also be the assistant principal from Los Angeles who was charged with failure to report child abuse last May. She and the principal both faced misdemeanor charges that carried a maximum sentence of six months in jail and fines of up to $1000. Huckabee suggests that “if she is confirmed, then we need to take the blindfold off Lady Justice.” I agree, Mr. Huckabee! If Maria Sotomayor, who pleaded guilty in November 2008, is confirmed as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Lady Justice should in fact be de-blinded. We should work together, Huck, to make sure that Maria doesn’t get confirmed.

The final possibility is Maria Sotomayor, the recent graduate of the IESE Business School in Spain, a nation that the Republicans still can’t quite locate on a map.

Her years spent at the liberal bastion of education (MIT) clearly instilled a sense of empathy that has no place in conservative America, where they make sure that human emotions NEVER interfere with policy positions. Maria Sotomayor’s appointment would “leave us with something akin to the ‘Extreme Court’,” says Huckabee. I’ll say. The confirmation of Maria Sotomayor, who is in her late twenties, would make her the youngest Supreme Court Justice ever.

So, Mike Huckabee, which of these women should we be on the lookout for? My money’s on the dermatologist.

This article is reprinted from campusprogress.org

Coors Light may be the official beer sponsor of the National Football League at this year’s Super Bowl, but for years it has been the unofficial sponsor of right-wing causes across America. The company has a shady past, from the owners offering grants to rightwing organizations to policies of screening potential employees for communist sympathies. Lately Coors has been trying to make up for its checkered past, but it’s time for a trip down memory lane.

The Coors Brewing Company was founded in 1873 in Colorado and produces American favorites like Coors, Coors Light, Blue Moon, Killian’s Irish Red, and several refined Keystone varieties. Coors merged with Canadian brewer Molson in 2005, in hopes that both companies could boost their sales in the United States and Canada. In 2007, Molson Coors merged again, this time with beer behemoth SABMiller’s operations in the United States and Puerto Rico. Today, Coors Brewing Company is the third largest brewer in America.

Coors’ works hard to maintain a pearly, progressive sheen to hide its deep, conservative pockets. It was one of the first corporations in America to offer same-sex partner benefits, and it makes corporate donations to a variety of African American, Asian American and Hispanic organizations. This makeover, however, does not obscure Coors’s union-busting, minority-hating past. In addition to unleashing Zima on the world, the company grappled with a crippling boycott of its products after the union at the company’s flagship facility in Colorado went on strike and was subsequently broken by the company. As then-president of Adolph Coors Co. Jeff Coors said in a Los Angeles Times article agreeing to union demands is like “inviting the Russians in to take over America.” Until 1986, prospective Coors employees were sometimes required to take lie detector tests, answering questions about their sexual orientation, communist leanings, and how often they changed their underwear. (Yeah, really.) Hardly best business practices.

While the corporation itself doesn’t directly fund the massive right-wing infrastructure, Coors family members make donations with their beer-fed fortunes. The Adolph Coors Foundation, named for the brewery’s founding patriarch, was established in 1975 to help divvy up the family riches. Since some assets in that family trust can only be used within Colorado, Adolph Coors Foundation board members set up a new organization in 1994 that could spend unrestricted assets across the country. Through the Castle Rock Foundation, otherwise unspecified Coors family funds are used to finance national conservative organizations like Independent Women’s Forum and Young America’s Foundation.

The Coors family tree reads like a who’s who of conservative philanthropy—nearly all the men in the family work for the company, and nearly all share the same right-wing ideology. Adolph Coors, the founder of Coors Brewing Company, passed it down to his grandsons, brothers Joseph and William Coors. Joseph’s five sons—Joe Jr., Pete, Jeff, Grover, and John—all work in the Coors empire, and all of them are self-described born-again Christian fundamentalists. William’s son Scott also works for the family business.

In both the extremity of his conservatism and high levels of funding for conservative organizations, Joseph Coors set a precedent for the family. William affectionately called him “a little bit right of Attila the Hun.” Joseph was an active member on Reagan’s kitchen cabinet, funding the Gipper’s campaigns and providing him with unofficial counsel. Joseph gave right-wing godfather Paul Weyrich the founding grant for the Heritage Foundation, paving the way for decades of research, spin, and messaging by the country’s preeminent conservative think tank. And because one conservative think tank is never enough, Joe also gave a founding grant to Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation, which on its Web site asks the eternal question of our generation: “Will America return to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture?” If not, the organization asserts, the United States will become “no less than a third world country.”

Joseph Coors also funded the Council for National Policy, a secretive enclave in which influential conservatives discuss the future of conservatism in the United States. Several members of the Coors family regularly attend CNP’s meetings, rubbing elbows with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly. He donated an airplane worth $65,000 to the Nicaraguan Contras. In fact, it’s hard to avoid Coors money in the conservative movement: The foundation funds the John Birch Society, the Landmark Legal Foundation (aka the Ronald Reagan Legal Center), and Pat Robertson’s Regent University, among many others. Despite his legacy of supporting socially conservative causes, Joseph had a fairly public mistress throughout the late 1980s—an indiscretion that eventually led him and his wife to separate, according to his son Jeff Coors. So much for family values.

Though it didn’t bring familial bliss, Joseph’s conservative political advocacy inspired his son Pete Coors to join the fight. In 2004, Pete ran for an open U.S. Senate seat in Colorado against state attorney general Ken Salazar, whose popularity and progressive politics contrasted sharply with Coors family history. During the campaign, he battled the Coors’ family’s ultra-conservative legacy almost as much as his Democratic opponent, and tried to slap the same friendly face on his candidacy that the brewing company used to repair its image decades before. While his family and its various foundations continued to pour money into, for instance, litigation against environmental regulation, Pete tried to sell himself as a conservationist, leveraging his former presidency of Ducks Unlimited. Ultimately, Colorado voters didn’t buy Pete’s Coors Light image, and he lost the race. After election Salazar refused to support Bush’s proposed federal ban on gay marriage, and even became the target of one of Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family ads that asked, “Why doesn’t Senator Salazar believe every child needs a mother and a father?”

But Joseph and Pete aren’t the only family members getting in on the game. Joseph’s brother William infamously told a group of minority business leaders that the best thing slave traders did was “to drag your ancestors here in chains,” as recorded in a 1985 New York Times article. Not incendiary enough? He went on to note that Africans “lack the intellectual capacity to succeed.” He went on to sue the Rocky Mountain News for publishing his remarks, claiming they were taken out of context. In a later interview, though, he clarified his position, remarking that slaves came out on top by being brought to America—after all, he said in a 1988 Los Angeles Times article, “you don’t see Jesse Jackson, or any of these other blacks, making any mass exodus back to Africa, do you?” The company donated upwards of $750 million to African American and Latino groups after William’s tirade—so it’s no wonder he got shunted from the company to the Castle Rock Foundation shortly thereafter.

William’s son Scott is in on the act, too. He did a stint as Coors Brewing Company’s ambassador to gay consumers, traveling across the country shaking hands and donating to GLBTQ nonprofits. Does Scott see any conflict between him family’s socially conservative legacy and the equal rights organizations he visits? Apparently not: His father told him that if any of the organizations Coors’ foundations support “are blatantly contrary to the rights of gay and lesbian people, I want to know about it, I will investigate it and put a stop to it.” Such an effort would probably require shutting down major portions of the Heritage Foundation—not to mention the rest of the right-wing organizations sponsored by Coors—but it doesn’t seem that William’s made much progress in that area.

So when cracking open a cold one, remember to toast the things that make the Coors family great: union-busting, lie-detecting, Heritage-funding, double-talking and, of course, its beer.

Recently there has been much talk about ACORN, the community organization that dedicates much of its time in election years to registering new voters, especially minorities. Claims of voter fraud have already been made against the organization in key battleground states like Ohio, where there have been reports of registrations under names like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

The claims, unsurprisingly, are being made by the McCain campaign, half looking for a boogeyman with which to associate Barack Obama (especially since the Bill Ayers thing isn’t resonating with the public) and half looking for something to blame when John McCain loses the election, which is looking more and more likely every passing day.

Unfortunately, as with every facetious charge made by the McCain campaign, the ACORN argument has quite a few holes.

First, this notion of voter fraud. There is no fraud unless Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck actually show up at their local polling place and try to cast a vote. The likely explanation for faulty registrations is that ACORN, like many other organizations, pays their volunteers based on how many registration forms they have filled out. There is no willful deceit taking place, just individuals looking for a shortcut. Reprehensible? Sure. But it is certainly not the high crime against democracy that John McCain is making it out to be.

Second, John McCain himself was singing a very different tune about ACORN just two years ago. In fact, McCain was one of the most vocal supporters of ACORN, describing the group as “patriotic” and “heroic.” It is just another example of the shameless abandonment of his own morals and beliefs to satisfy the base of the Republican Party.

And thirdly, has nobody stepped back and looked at the bigger picture here? Yes, ACORN has taken in several faulty registrations but an overwhelming majority of the forms collected by ACORN have been legitimate voters looking to participate, likely for the first time, in an election. What the McCain campaign and the GOP are trying to do is not discredit Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, but discredit minority voters from turning out in the numbers they are expected to on election day. Why? Because minorities tend to vote for the other party. ACORN is not a threat to American democracy; it’s a threat to Karl Rove’s “permanent majority.”

And its not just ACORN the GOP is focusing on. In almost every swing state, the GOP has tried every voter suppression technique imaginable to keep voters, usually minorities, away from the polls. In Virginia, the local Republican Party sent mailers falsely telling voters that they could vote on Nov. 5 if it were to rain on Election Day. In Michigan, the GOP threatened to use recently foreclosed addresses to crosscheck the validity of new registrations, even though they know full well that foreclosure does not disqualify voters from registering there. Elsewhere, the GOP has warned voters, incorrectly, that creditors looking to collect on unpaid debt could apprehend them at the polling places on Election Day.

So when John McCain said in the last debate that ACORN’s democratic practice of registering as many voters as possible for the upcoming election was “possibly the greatest threat to our democracy,” what he meant was that it posed the greatest threat to his campaign and the GOP. Which in the end says a lot about Republican strategy in elections these last few years: The only way to stay in power is to silence the voice of the people.