Calm before the storm
In our nation’s capital, legislators on Capitol Hill are preparing for an all-out smackdown of the ages -on two fronts. One, Senate Republicans are ready to get rid of the filibuster – a long-standing Senate tradition – in the name of confirming their most controversial judicial nominees. Two, House Democrats are refusing to convene the House Ethics Committee in response to the majority Republicans’ having changed the committee’s rules so that either party can block an ethics investigation.
Regarding House ethics, Republicans claim Democrats are pursuing a partisan agenda. Regarding the nominees, Republicans accuse Democrats of violating the Constitution’s “advice and consent” clause for presidential nominees.
While that may be the case, this isn’t the first time the Senate has fulfilled its “advice and consent” duty by failing to provide consent in the name of advising. In the House, meanwhile, the idea behind ethics investigations was that a partisan agenda shouldn’t be able to block investigations, regardless of how they were started.
Democrats in the Senate have threatened to hold up Senate business by other means if the filibuster is eliminated, while Republicans will undoubtely attack Democrats for being “obstructionist” – a line that seemed to work well in the previous election. But if majority rule is allowed to become so absolute that opposition of any kind becomes unacceptable, what’s the use of having a minority?
The battle, it seems, is just beginning.
Apple vs. Microsoft
On Friday, Apple will release its latest update to its Macintosh operating system, Mac OS X “Tiger.” The release marks an upping of the ante on the part of Apple in the operating system wars, with Microsoft dismissing the latest Apple upgrade as “an iPod peripheral.”
Still, the OS features some powerful tools like instantaneous Desktop Search that won’t be available in Windows until its next scheduled release comes out Christmas 2006 – or beyond:the OS has been delayed before, and may be delayed again.
In the meantime, Apple users have just that much more reason to be glad for – as a 1998 ad campaign once put it – “thinking different.”
Study all night
Just a reminder for those of you who may have missed Thursday’s issue – the library is now open 24 hours a day, 5 days a week for the rest of the semester. From 11 a.m. Sunday until 9 p.m. Friday, you can study to your heart’s content for the next two weeks.
Be sure to take advantage of this pilot project if you’d like to see longer hours at the library next semester. And, of course, a little studying for next week’s finals couldn’t hurt either.