Saturday, December 22, 2012
Join the national conversation in the top stories of the week.
This column is designed to offer a platform to discuss national stories on a local level. Share your opinion in the comment section. ----- The NRA has called for a surge of gun-carrying "good guys" around American schools in a recent press conference. The conference was interrupted by activists calling for a ban on assault weapons, along with tighter regulations. Members of CodePink, an antiwar organization, shouted that the NRA is "killing our kids" and "the violence begins with the NRA." "The NRA is there with a stack of propaganda statements, so we are there to speak for the millions of people who dissent from their opinion," CodePink member Joan Stallard said. ----- John Kerry, who currently chairs the Senate Foreign Relations …
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Join the conversation on this week's hot topics.
This column is designed to offer a platform to discuss national and global stories on a local level. Share your opinion in the comment section. ----- Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a ... computer in my eye? Apparently a contact lens with a computer screen could be available in as little as five years. They could potentially show things such as text messages and road maps, according to Jelle De Smet, the chief researcher on the project. Other advances have been made in the contact lens field. For example, scientists have discovered a way to repair the human cornea by using stem cells in a contact lens implant. According to RT.com, "stem cells have the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and differentiation into a …
Monday, November 12, 2012
Join the national conversation about the past week's Hot Topics.
This column is designed to offer a platform to discuss national stories on a local level. Share your opinion in the comment section. ----- We're sure you've heard by now that David Petraeus, director of the CIA, resigned over an extramarital affair. Reports have surfaced that the affair was discovered by investigating his e-mails. Questions arise, but we should find out more about who, what, when and where. The Chicago Tribune reports the woman was a journalist and his biographer. While the public has questioned why he would resign over an affair — when even presidents have had affairs and remained in office — the FBI expected him to resign "rather than risk the possibility that he could be blackmailed to give intelligence secrets to …
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Join the national conversation on this and other topics in this week's Hot Topics column.
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Sunday, November 4, 2012
While the matter of foreign officials monitoring U.S. elections was more of a prominent story last week, it got pushed to the side when Hurricane Sandy blew through the northeast. So, in case you missed it, an international group is sending a very large delegation of officials -- over 100 -- to oversee the elections. It's the largest contingency to ever visit North America during elections. Why? Because of alleged intimidation practices by Republicans who want tighter voter ID laws, according to Fox. Civil rights groups, including the ACLU, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the NAACP. In an effort to dispel myths about the election monitoring, the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) issued a few …
Friday, October 19, 2012
Join the conversation in this week's hot topics as we discuss the biggest scandal the Boy Scouts of America have ever faced, as well as the world's oldest father and a New York appeals court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act.
Allegations of child sexual abuse have been made against 97 Georgia men who were in leadership roles from the '60s through mid-'80s. They make up a small portion of the total number of men — over a thousand — recently outed by documents released Thursday by the Boy Scouts of America. The number of boys molested by these men is more than 4,000. Forty-four Scout leaders from the metro-Atlanta area were named, including men from Stone Mountain, Lithonia, Woodstock and Marietta. These men were not reported to authorities, but kept in a file to prevent them from volunteering with the organization again. Some, however, continued in the roles. The files are known as the "ineligible volunteer" files. After one Pennsylvania man admitted to "acts of…
Friday, October 5, 2012
Join national conversations as we discuss this week's Hot Topics.
A senior lawmaker is calling for an investigation after a lawsuit claims that the Environmental Protection Agency conducted illegal experiments on humans. Some asthmatic patients were allegedly exposed to carcinogens, like diesel exhaust and fine particulate matter, according to Foxnews.com. The person filing the lawsuit, Landon Huffman, participated in some of the experiments. It wouldn't be the first time the U.S. has experimented on people. Earlier in September, according to the Daily Mail, China began an investigation into experiments done on its children by the U.S. that involved genetically modified rice. The lawsuit that followed, filed by Greenpeace, claimed that the U.S. Department of Agriculture exploited rural Chinese children …
Saturday, September 29, 2012
The man behind the film that inspired riots all over the world has been arrested. In Libya, however, the attacks and protests were different. So what's really going on? Join the conversation as we discuss this week's hot topics.
By now, we've all heard about the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that resulted in the deaths of four Americans. It was the first in a series of riots and protests that swept through a big chunk of the world, including Pakistan, Sudan and Egypt. At first, we were told the riots were in response to a video that depicted Islam's Prophet Muhammed as a depraved child molester and womanizer. Others, like Sen. John McCain, said it had nothing to do with the movie but were the result of a premeditated attack sponsored by a terrorist organization. In other words, terrorism. So the question is, was it preplanned or spontaneous? The White House continued to assert it was spontaneous and tied to the film, despite claims by Libyan officials and…
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Join the national conversation about earthquakes, hantavirus and Paul Ryan's stance on marijuana.
Paul Ryan believes legalizing medical marijuana should be up to each state. "My personal position on these issues has been let the states decide what they want to do with these things," he explained in a Colorado television interview. "This is something that is not a high priority of ours." (Pun intended?) Although he personally doesn't believe marijuana should be legalized, he believes it should be decided on the state level rather than the federal. Romney, on the other hand, said he would fight legalization "tooth and nail." --- Earthquakes in southeastern China on Sept. 7 have killed 80 and injured 731 so far, according to CNN.com. More than 6,000 homes have been destroyed and nearly half a million damaged. “It is scary. My brother …
