The Minuteman

CROSSING THE CONSERVATIVE WIRES

By Robert Nathan Eberhart
From the December 2006 Print Edition

Diversity Day

The Goldman School of Public Policy recently held its annual nod to the left-wing notion that racial identity equates to meaningful intellectual diversity. The so-called Diversity Day spent the day celebrating the inherent differences in people bred into them due to the color of their skin (a principle the Patriot vehemently rejects), and familiarizing underrepresented minorities with information on the application process. The event appeared to be a suspicious attempt to circumvent Proposition 209, a landmark civil rights bill prohibiting using skin color as a basis for judging the eligibility of a person for admission to public universities or the granting of public contracts. Unfortunately for the "progressive" administration at the Goldman School, democracy and the rule of law are more powerful in this country than attempts to equate character with skin color.

They were just researching, really

The Internet is a dirty thing; according to a researcher at Cal, though, it isn’t as depraved as you think. According to a federally commissioned study by UC Berkeley statistics professor Philip B. Stark, only about 1 percent of Web sites indexed by Google and Microsoft contain sexually explicit material. The study was done to provide the Department of Justice with information for its effort to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2004. Stark’s report includes details on how the study was conducted, including screenshots of Google searches for "Jenna Jameson."

Food for thought

Leave it to Berkeley politicos to find yet another way to undermine the joyous and family-centered American tradition of Thanksgiving. First we had to feel guilty about its celebration because it was a symbol of Anglo-Saxon military and cultural imperialism. Now the left is telling you to feel guilty about what you eat too. According to an article appearing in the Berkelyan, a daily mouthpiece for the campus administration line, titled "Celebrating Thanksgiving, Berkeley-style," we should all feel particularly bad about the "abominable conditions" typical of factory farms. Organic food has become a trendy way to eat on campus and sustainability looks to be the Camus buzzword of late. What these righteous gastronistas fail to realize is that if we all gave up the supermarket and only ate tomatoes grown from our back yards, half the population would starve in the streets. Poor or middle-class Americans cannot afford the premiums placed on organic food. Supermarkets are not symbols of our fall from grace since the pre-industrial days of sustenance farming; they represent the triumph of freedom and modern capitalism.

Belmont smoking madness

Belmont, a city just south of San Francisco, is considering the most restrictive smoking ban ... ever. The new law would declare secondhand smoke a crime, and outright ban smoking in all public places, such as parks, as well as multi-unit housing. In fact, even smoking in your own car with another person riding in it would be considered a public nuisance. The Belmont law follows similar laws in other California cities such as Dublin and Calabasas, which made secondhand smoke a public nuisance. If this law is passed, the only place it would be legal to smoke would be inside of your home if it is a single-unit building, or in your car by yourself with the windows rolled up. The rapidity with which these laws are being passed suggests that this is a tangible trend, likely to spread beyond California and into a red state near you.

Dhimmis in action

This picture shows members of the group Students for Justice in Palestine participating in a so-called die-in. They were pretending to be dead (a better form of protest than their ceaseless chants) to commemorate the Nov. 8 incident in which some Palestinians in Beit Hanoun were accidentally killed in an Israeli air strike intended to stop the firing of rockets into Israeli towns. While some criticism of Israel for the accidental deaths is justly placed, and the deaths of the civilians are tragic, the events were just that — an accident. One wonders, where are the SJP die-ins when Palestinian terrorists kill innocent women and children, deliberately?

In Early November, the group remembered the deaths of Palestinians by lining Memorial Glade with dozens of Palestinian flags.

Protest everything

Demonstrators gathered on UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on Nov. 20 to protest what they considered the "torture" of Mostafa Tabatabainejad at the hands of UCLA’s campus police.

Tabatabainejad’s tasering on Nov. 14 was caught on camera and posted on the popular video Web site Youtube. It has since gained national attention. Protesters also used the incident to speak out against the war in Iraq, the USA Patriot Act, and privatization.

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