The Real Wackjobs in America? Birthers

In 2008, a presidential candidate faced accusations that he was not born in the United States, therefore was not a U.S. citizen, and finally was therefore not eligible to be president. Who was this man? John McCain.
McCain was born on a naval base outside of the U.S. Of course, McCain is a U.S. citizen and the naval base is considered U.S. territory. In response to these accusations, several members of Congress (including now-President Barack Obama) passed legislation legitimatizing McCain’s citizenship.
Of course, we know that Obama faced similar criticism in his campaign. In response, he produced his certificate of live birth, proving he was born in Hawaii, making him a U.S. citizen.
Case over, right? No. Since being elected as our 44th president, this questioning of his citizenship has only grown. Theories include that while his mother was pregnant with him, she traveled to Kenya (homeland of Obama’s father) and was unable to travel back to the U.S., and gave birth to Obama there, making him a Kenyan citizen. What? We have his birth certificate, we have newspaper clippings from Hawaii announcing his birth, what more do we need?!
Well, if you’re a birther and you decided, ok maybe he was born in the U.S., you might decide to stretch the theory even further. The claim here would be, yes he was born in the U.S., however his childhood stay in Indonesia naturalized him as an Indonesian citizen and stripped him of his American citizenship. What?
Look, I understand that people will always have political problems with our current president. I recognize that Republicans and conservatives will react to his more liberal policies. I also believe in the freedom of speech and believe these people have every right to speak out against said policies. However, to disregard hard evidence legitimizing our president’s citizenship is not just disrespectful to him but to our nation. When members of Congress in 2008 stood up and protected McCain’s name and citizenship, they protected our nation. Now in 2009, several prominent Republican Congressmen are perpetuating this myth about Obama and encouraging hate and lies to grow in this country.
It’s time to stand up, end the libel, and protect our nation and our president (even if you did not vote for him).

"This 'Green' non-sense has gone too far. "

Yesterday, I was reading the "Freakonomics" column on the New York Times website. The point of the article was the concept of working with a group where each person eat vegetarian for day of the week. The idea was this would have multiple good impacts including on the treatment of animals and the impact that shipping meat/livestock has on the environment.

Ok, I don't know how much help this "group vegetarianism" will do for the treatment of animals or the environment, but it's an interesting theory. But what really struck was one comment posted to the column, stating "Do as you please, however please don’t feel guilty about eating meat. This 'Green' non-sense has gone too far. Carbon Dioxide has NOT been proven to cause climate change." Wait...what!? "The 'green' non-sense has gone to far".. really? I always wondered, who are these people who don't buy into the green movement. Apparently, this commenter is one of them. But this leads me to question, how is this possible? How could someone truly not believe that humans are causing problems for the environment?

I know a large majority of the damage done to the environment has been done in ignorance. In the industrial revolution and beginning of the twentieth century, people did not grasp the impact of their actions on the environment. While the industrial revolution was not when people began to change the environment (it began with agriculture techniques centuries earlier), it is when the enormous changes to the environment began to start. As early as the late nineteenth century, various people began questionning what impact humans might have on the earth. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is niave to believe that we have no impact on the earth.

Of course, the earth creates natural changes of its own, but we also add to these changes. We have burned oil, coal, released chemicals into the air, soil, and water, and we continue to drill into the land. It is ludicrious to believe that these activities would not impact the environment. The earth is getting warmer, there is no doubt about that. We will continue to create waste, if we don't change our ways, there is less place to put all this waste. We continue to need transportation and to rely on oil is also niave. Even if we decided to destroy our beautiful earth to drill for oil, even if we were able to get all the oil there is available; it is still a finite resource. Oil cannot be recreated, we will run out. We should absolutely find different ways to create an energy for our vehicles. We should absolutely use resources/products that our closer to where we live, so that we don't need to use more energy to ship these goods.

That "green non-sense has gone to far" is an ignorant statement! The reality is that the "green non-sense" has not gone far enough. We continue to see animals go extinct, we continue to see cancer grow, we see the glaciers melt, we see the landfills pile up, and the list goes on and on. We only have one planet and we should be working to keep it our home for centuries to come.

Ruling in Favor of Hate

Today the California Supreme Court ruled to uphold the ban on same-sex marriage that was approved in the passing of Proposition 8. In a 6-1 decision, the court ruled that same-“sex couples still have the right to civil unions, which gives them the ability to ‘choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.’ But the justices said that the voters had clearly expressed their will to limit the formality of marriage to heterosexual couples” (“California Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Same-Sex Marriage” New York Times).
Yes, unfortunately the population of my state voted in November to ban marriage for same sex couples. Yes, the court decided to follow their will. However, isn’t the court’s responsibility to prevent laws based on hate? Didn’t the U.S. Supreme Court rule in Brown v. Board of Education, Tokeka Kansas that separate was inherently unequal? I don’t believe that separate only refers to facilities; I believe it refers to rules, laws, opportunities, marriage. The California Supreme Court’s ruling today upholds so many lies and furthers ignorance and hatred of same sex couples.
Marriage is not a religious word, it does not belong to any specific religion. Marriage is different from a civil union. Religions would not be forced to marry same sex couples, had Prop 8 been overturned. Same sex marriage would not be taught to children. Same sex marriage does not threaten heterosexual marriage. The Court is allowing these lies to be believed and spread.
I believe in equal rights. I don’t want a right to something that someone else does not have. I know that this battle does not end here. I know that we will continue to fight for equal rights. I look forward to a day in the future, that we will look back, embarrassed of our history when California decided to create a class of second class citizens but in this future, we will also be proud of the day when Californians rose up against hate and demanded the law see all people, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation, as the same. I look to be a part of that movement, to be a part of that day!