Opinion In Brief
Kaine wins, Deeds who?
An important aspect of Tuesday’s election results that was buried under the headlines of Democratic victory is the close nature of Virginia’s Attorney General race. Between Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell, the latter is currently leading by 1,581 votes, a margin of less than one percent.
Kaine wins, Deeds who?
An important aspect of Tuesday’s election results that was buried under the headlines of Democratic victory is the close nature of Virginia’s Attorney General race. Between Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell, the latter is currently leading by 1,581 votes, a margin of less than one percent.
While it may seem a minor position compared to that of governor, the Attorney General’s office is equally important among the triumvirate of statewide elected officials who are responsible for leading the state. In 2003, for example, then-Attorney General Jerry Kilgore joined on behalf of Virginia a multi-state lawsuit to support the loosening of EPA reglations on power plants, allowing for more pollution.
Pollution isn’t the first thing on people’s minds when they think attorney general, but the case highlights the ability of the officeholder to represent Virginians on a national scale and have a wide-ranging effect on policy, just as a governor might have.
Nearly 40,000 people who voted for governor didn’t make a selection for attorney general. Just 1 in 25 of these voters could have swung the election either way.
Evolution retribution
Voters in Dover, Pa., yesterday ousted the school board that was responsible for watering down their students’ biology curriculum by providing a disclaimer that evolution is “only a theory” and offers Intelligent Design as an alternative. The same thing happened to the Kansas Board of Education in 1999, when it tried to remove evolution from the curriculum entirely.
In the trial that has resulted from Dover’s disclaimer, it has been found that the book referenced by the disclaimer, “Of Pandas and People,” simply replaced references to creationism with Intelligent Design after a 1987 Supreme Court ruling prohibited the teaching of the Biblical story of creation in public schools.
Rather than an avenue to inject preconceived ideology, science education should focus on sound, appliciable theories that have been tested in the real world. So far, it seems the voters agree.
E-mail blues
Despite an e-mail sent to students Nov. 2 offering fixes for the university’s new e-mail system, problems continue to persist. External e-mail clients still have trouble receiving attachments, and some students just have trouble receiving e-mail in general.
Perhaps the easiest fix of all would be to reinstate the ability to forward e-mails for those who wish to escape the hassle altogether.
