The media is not spreading the good news

By Joshua Steinman / January 9, 2006

Mainstream media in the United States is misreporting what is going on in Iraq, and it is doing a disservice to our nation and our soldiers. To understand how coverage of the conflict is skewing the national perception, we need only examine three major events in Iraq over the past few months: the recent elections,...

Want to liberate Cuba? End the Embargo.

By Alec Brandon / January 9, 2006

Luckily for the United States and the people of Cuba, Fidel Castro is mortal. Soon the dictator will enter his eighth decade of life. When he dies you can expect a rush of Cuban exiles presently in Miami to storm Havana to liberate their homeland. You can also expect Fidel’s brother and deputy, Raúl, to...

Following Randel

By Maroon Editorial Staff / January 6, 2006

The Trustees and faculty members sitting on the Presidential Search Committee are nearing their final decision. As we enter a new academic quarter, we come close to the end of President Randel’s tenure at the University, and closer still to the announcement of Randel’s successor. By now, the search committee is almost certainly dealing with...

Losing Marshall Field’s is a loss for Chicago

By Samuel Rosenberg / January 5, 2006

There is something very sad about the passage of time in a city. Nowhere else in the national spectrum does one see things rise to such heights and then fall to such lows. In terms of urban change, one could conceivably talk about the Union Stock Yards or the fall of the steel industry, but...

Fighting the idea of comparative comfort

By Andrew Hammond / January 5, 2006

This is the first article in a series that will focus on the rhetorical framework of poverty as a political issue in the United States. In its Christmas issue, the formidable British weekly The Economist published an article on poverty in America and Africa. The article used the stories of two men, one, an unemployed...

The real war is the War on Christmas

By Patrick Hogan / January 5, 2006

Despite the peaceful spirit of love and joy allegedly pervading the holiday season, the final weeks of 2005 shall be forever marked in the history books by the scourge of war, a period of celebration punctuated by chaos and anguish. As anyone skimming the cable news channels or the pages of the odd newspaper must...

Harper Court’s loss

By Maroon Editorial Staff / November 29, 2005

With the recent opening of the Checkerboard Lounge and news of soon-to-come fine-dining establishments, the idea of a revitalized Hyde Park has been a topic on University and community members’ tongues. It is then with the sadness that comes with a missed chance, that the Maroon reports the University’s decision to abandon its search for...

Let’s consider a casino in Chicago

By Samuel Rosenberg / November 28, 2005

How come every time I am trying to find the Bears highlights, I can only find middle-aged men playing poker? Now, I see nothing wrong with poker, but it just seems to be everywhere. Additionally, there has been no shortage of literature (or personal experiences) that point to the increasing popularity of the game. The...

Cheese eating and other unmentioned rights

By Laura Hamilton / November 28, 2005

In an earlier column, I wrote: “If tomorrow California passed a law forbidding people from eating cheese on Tuesdays, that law would be perfectly constitutional.” It was one of the mildest and most defensible sentences in my article. In his editorial “The Strict Constructionists Are Dead Wrong,” (11/18) Harry Schmidt argued that such a law...

Take a stand

By Maroon Editorial Staff / November 22, 2005

This fall marks the fifth year that Chicago Friends of Israel posters have been defaced on campus—and the fifth year that the administration has not officially responded to what has become a pattern of defacement. In response to recent complaints, the administration sent its annual e-mail on academic freedom to the University community earlier than...

The blue bag recycling program is misguided

By Teage OConnor / November 21, 2005

Chicago’s Blue Bag recycling program is a major catastrophe. While the City brags about a 30 percent participation rate (not much to brag about), the Chicago Tribune reported in March of 2005 that the number was closer to 13 percent and that the City has been cooking its books to make the program appear more...

Hamilton’s depiction of the bird flu is horribly flawed

By Joel Lanceta / November 21, 2005

After researching the H5N1 virus, the strain currently causing concern about an avian influenza pandemic, for the past three weeks, I read Laura Hamilton’s latest article “Fears of a bird flu epidemic are overblown” and had the distinct feeling of getting beaten with a club labeled “misinformed antipathy.” I admonish the MAROON for allowing this...