A blog by Nicholas Solter about politics and everything else
Posted in Politics on Aug 6th, 2008
Bob Schaffer, who’s a Republican running for Senate in Colorado, was embarrassed this week by his son’s Facebook page. The page featured, among other failed attempts at humor, a bumper sticker with the text, “Slavery gets sh** done.”
I don’t think that a candidate for office should be judged by the Facebook page of his college-aged […]
Posted in Education on Feb 14th, 2008
Republican state representative Larry Liston apparently believes that he has an innovative method to prevent teen pregnancy. During a recent meeting, he said,
“In my parents’ day and age, they were sent away, they were shunned, they [young, unwed parents] were called what they are. There was at least a sense of shame… There’s no sense […]
Posted in Election 2008, Politics on Feb 8th, 2008
Although I still think the format is discriminatory, I enjoyed the novel experience of participating in a caucus last Tuesday evening. Sonja and I recruited her parents to baby-sit so that we could both attend our caucus at a local middle-school. Not knowing how many people would show up, we were pleasantly surprised to find […]
Posted in Civil Rights on Jan 22nd, 2008
For the past four years, a Colorado Springs middle school has been sending only black students to a district-wide MLK Day Celebration. Many in the news media have pointed out the incredible irony of segregating students in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. However, fewer have pointed out what I see as the critical district-wide […]
Posted in Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, Politics on Jan 16th, 2008
In the race for the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton did better in New Hampshire, which has a regular primary election, than in the Iowa caucuses. Granted, the sample size of two states is small, there are myriad possible reasons for the differences, and extrapolating from these results is probably not a good idea. […]
Posted in Election 2008 on Jan 14th, 2008
I don’t like caucuses. I haven’t yet attended one, but my animosity stems not from the specifics of what transpires in the meetings, but from the overall approach. If we were to design a system with the express intention of discouraging as many people as possible from participating in the democratic process, we’d be hard […]
Posted in Education on Jan 11th, 2008
Congratulations to health officials in the state of Colorado for rejecting $488,000 in federal funds for abstinence-only sex education. Abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work (links to PDF), but, nonetheless, it takes some courage to turn down almost half a million dollars. I’m glad the Colorado health officials had sense enough to join 13 other states […]