It's 1:30 AM and I just finished last-minute packing. Tomorrow, a few friends and I leave for New York City for 5 days of our spring break. I'm really looking forward to returning to the city for the second time in my life; the last time I was here was almost exactly 3 years ago when I came with my high school theatre department.
This time I'm traveling with a "local", so hopefully she'll have some interesting sights to show us. It should be a great week and I'll post some pictures when I get back!
NYC, here I come!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Senator Max Cleland
Today, my class met with a extraordinary individual at the headquarters of the American Battlefield Monuments Commission in Arlington, Virginia.
Max Cleland is a veteran who lost his leg and his arm in an explosion in Vietnam. He is a former U.S. Senator whose term spanned through Clinton's impeachment proceedings, 9/11, and the vote to give President Bush the authority to invade of Iraq (a vote that he said haunts him to this day). He was given the honor of introducing John Kerry at the Democratic Convention during the 2004 campaign. Last year he was appointed by President Obama to head of the American Battlefield Monuments Commission--the agency charged with caring for our battlefield cemeteries around the world.
Craziest of all, he got his start as a participant in the Washington Semester Program--the same program I'm on--in the 1960s. He said he didn't have any direction when he went into the program at the age of 21. He had just changed his major for the third time and didn't have any idea what he wanted to do with his life. While he was here, though, he said he got the famous "Potomac Fever" and knew he wanted to go into public service.
While he was here on the program, his class got to go into President Kennedy's oval office and he was able to see the President's famous desk with the trap door. Then a week later, he was walking on the quad--the same quad I cross every day--when he heard the news that the President had been shot. He said that moment changed his life.
He told another story about the day, many years later, when he gave the speech introducing the man of the hour--then presidential-nominee John Kerry--at the Democratic Convention in the 2004 election. He wanted to look good for the television cameras so he went onstage without his glasses. Turns out, the teleprompter was set up so far out into the audience that he couldn't read "a damn thing" on it! It was lucky for him that he had spent the whole previous week practicing his speech.
It was a truly amazing and inspiring talk. He ended the hour by telling us all to "just go for it" in whatever we do. After all, we are in our 20's, and that's what this age is all about--taking risks and experiencing life. We have the rest of our lives to live with all the risks we take, whether they be bad or good, so we might as well just take them.
Max Cleland is a veteran who lost his leg and his arm in an explosion in Vietnam. He is a former U.S. Senator whose term spanned through Clinton's impeachment proceedings, 9/11, and the vote to give President Bush the authority to invade of Iraq (a vote that he said haunts him to this day). He was given the honor of introducing John Kerry at the Democratic Convention during the 2004 campaign. Last year he was appointed by President Obama to head of the American Battlefield Monuments Commission--the agency charged with caring for our battlefield cemeteries around the world.
Craziest of all, he got his start as a participant in the Washington Semester Program--the same program I'm on--in the 1960s. He said he didn't have any direction when he went into the program at the age of 21. He had just changed his major for the third time and didn't have any idea what he wanted to do with his life. While he was here, though, he said he got the famous "Potomac Fever" and knew he wanted to go into public service.
While he was here on the program, his class got to go into President Kennedy's oval office and he was able to see the President's famous desk with the trap door. Then a week later, he was walking on the quad--the same quad I cross every day--when he heard the news that the President had been shot. He said that moment changed his life.
He told another story about the day, many years later, when he gave the speech introducing the man of the hour--then presidential-nominee John Kerry--at the Democratic Convention in the 2004 election. He wanted to look good for the television cameras so he went onstage without his glasses. Turns out, the teleprompter was set up so far out into the audience that he couldn't read "a damn thing" on it! It was lucky for him that he had spent the whole previous week practicing his speech.
It was a truly amazing and inspiring talk. He ended the hour by telling us all to "just go for it" in whatever we do. After all, we are in our 20's, and that's what this age is all about--taking risks and experiencing life. We have the rest of our lives to live with all the risks we take, whether they be bad or good, so we might as well just take them.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
This is harder than I thought.
Here's a speech I just turned in for my speechwriting class. We had to write a speech for and against lowering the drinking age to 18. Here's my case for leaving it the way it is. This side of the debate does not necessarily represent my personal views on the issue, which made this speech a bit of a challenge. Interestingly enough, I ended up writing a more effective speech for this side of the issue than the side I agreed with.
I would love to hear any feedback you have.
We Can’t Afford to Change the Drinking Age
Our streets, our college campuses, and our ditches are littered with the bodies of 5,000 children and teenagers. Bodies that carry the putrid stench of beer and booze.
5,000 children and teenagers—165 kindergarten classrooms, 330 little league soccer teams, 125 troops of girl scouts—are killed each year at the hands of underage drinking.
Some say lowering the drinking age to 18 could solve this devastating problem. They even suggest that lowering the drinking age could save lives.
The statistics on alcohol deaths are staggering, but they could be even worse. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the drinking age of 21 saves one thousand lives each year. Those are one thousand lives worth saving. One thousand lives is too high a price to pay to experiment with a new drinking age.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calls underage drinking a “leading public health problem in this country”. It is a problem that we must address in all its complexity. But we have a high drinking age in this country for a reason: because it actually saves lives.
To those who argue that lowering the drinking age will somehow improve the culture around underage drinking: I ask you to look across the world to New Zealand.
They too faced the deadly nightmare of underage drinking. But in 2000, New Zealand listened to the advice of the proponents of a lower drinking age. They decreased their drinking age from 21 to 18. And the results were disturbingly clear. After they changed their drinking age, alcohol-related crashes increased by 12%. In this country, that would mean 600 more kids dead on the road every year.
Changing the drinking age sounds like an easy fix to a complex problem. But this change would only add to alcohol’s rising death toll. Instead, we must combat underage drinking with efforts in the home, in our schools, and on our streets. Parents should be more vigilant about where their kids are going. Universities must be more open with their students about the costs of drinking. And every American should grow up knowing that drinking and driving will not be tolerated in this country.
But as long as our drinking age saves the life of even one child or teenager, we must keep it that way.
I would love to hear any feedback you have.
We Can’t Afford to Change the Drinking Age
Our streets, our college campuses, and our ditches are littered with the bodies of 5,000 children and teenagers. Bodies that carry the putrid stench of beer and booze.
5,000 children and teenagers—165 kindergarten classrooms, 330 little league soccer teams, 125 troops of girl scouts—are killed each year at the hands of underage drinking.
Some say lowering the drinking age to 18 could solve this devastating problem. They even suggest that lowering the drinking age could save lives.
The statistics on alcohol deaths are staggering, but they could be even worse. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the drinking age of 21 saves one thousand lives each year. Those are one thousand lives worth saving. One thousand lives is too high a price to pay to experiment with a new drinking age.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calls underage drinking a “leading public health problem in this country”. It is a problem that we must address in all its complexity. But we have a high drinking age in this country for a reason: because it actually saves lives.
To those who argue that lowering the drinking age will somehow improve the culture around underage drinking: I ask you to look across the world to New Zealand.
They too faced the deadly nightmare of underage drinking. But in 2000, New Zealand listened to the advice of the proponents of a lower drinking age. They decreased their drinking age from 21 to 18. And the results were disturbingly clear. After they changed their drinking age, alcohol-related crashes increased by 12%. In this country, that would mean 600 more kids dead on the road every year.
Changing the drinking age sounds like an easy fix to a complex problem. But this change would only add to alcohol’s rising death toll. Instead, we must combat underage drinking with efforts in the home, in our schools, and on our streets. Parents should be more vigilant about where their kids are going. Universities must be more open with their students about the costs of drinking. And every American should grow up knowing that drinking and driving will not be tolerated in this country.
But as long as our drinking age saves the life of even one child or teenager, we must keep it that way.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Speechwriting Job Talk
Here's a cool article from American University's website about a panel who came to my Speechwriting class and discussed their experiences in the Washington job market after taking the class.
It was an interesting discussion, and it got me excited about what's possible in the future.
It was an interesting discussion, and it got me excited about what's possible in the future.
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Senate Rules Committee
A couple weeks ago, I posted a blog about my class assignment to attend a meeting of a Senate or House committee. I ended up attending the Senate Rules Committee, and here is a summary of the meeting that I wrote for my seminar class:
On February 2nd, I attended a hearing in the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration entitled “Corporate American vs. the Voter: Examining the Supreme Court’s Decision to Allow Unlimited Corporate Spending in Elections”. One of the goals of the hearing, as stated by committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-New York) was to “listen to ideas in order to find a way forward” in the aftermath of the controversial Supreme Court decision Citizen’s United vs. Federal Elections Commission. The committee invited a variety of experts in order to help the Senators examine some of the implications and ramifications of the decision. The committee also wanted to hear from the panel of experts what steps would be legally and practically feasible for Congress to include in their response to the decision.
Aside from committee Chairman Chuck Schumer, the other key players in the hearing included the ranking member Robert Bennett (R-Utah), witnesses Senators John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), and the panel of other witnesses which included the Attorney General of Montana, Constitutional law professors, and representatives of two advocacy groups. A few other Senators from the Committee participated—all from the majority. Senator Bennett, the ranking member of the committee, was the only Republican to participate in the hearing.
From my observation, the hearing seemed to accomplish one of the goals stated by the committee Chairman, but not the other. The first goal of the hearing was to “find a way forward” from the Court’s decision. The hearing provided a forum in which the Committee could put forth possible responses to the decision, and the panel could give the Committee feedback on those proposals. The Committee was interested to find which various legislative proposals would be both legally available to Congress in light of the decision, and effective in limiting the influence of corporations.
The other goal of the hearing was to discover the implications of the decision; how exactly Campaign Finance law was affected by Citizen’s United. This goal was not accomplished as successfully because the members of the Committee (with the exception of the Republican ranking member) came into the hearing already expressing their belief that the decision had catastrophic implications for American democracy. Senator Schumer called the decision “disastrous and corrosive to our democracy”, Senator Durbin asserted that the judges radically overturned precedent in the decision, and Senator Feingold called the decision a “tragic error”. The panel of experts, on the other hand, seemed mixed in their assessment of the situation. An election law expert from George Mason University, for example, suggested that no one could be sure what the result will be, and that there might be little difference in the way that corporations participate in elections in the future. A professor of Law from Ohio State University said that the new precedent set by this decision “might not actually be that big”. Other panelists held the opposing view. In spite of this difference of opinion, the Committee did not seem interested in some of the experts’ view of the situation.
During the hearing, I saw the power that the Committee Chairman’s agenda had in shaping the proceedings. The Chairman spoke first and was able to set the tone of the hearing. He questioned the panel first, which gave him the first chance to pull information from the experts. The Committee came into the hearing with a clear agenda: to test out legislative responses to the Supreme Court decision that they already saw as dangerous for democracy. The hearing was dominated by Democrats—the other Republican members did not even bother to show up. The ranking Republican member, speaking right after the Chairman, put up a very weak defense of the decision and participated very little in the hearing.
The Rules Committee hearing gave me a small insight into how the Committee process of the Senate works. I saw how a Committee’s agenda can play out in the proceedings, how witness testimony can be used to further the member’s policy goals, and how some of the power dynamics of the Senate play out in the Committee setting.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Still Snowed In
Today is yet another day off from work, school, and general productivity. While wallowing in my sedentary existence, I found this blog post from Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), about how he creatively dealt with the DC storm. It's inspiring and a little bit endearing.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
More Snow Days!
Today was another day off of school. DC got another foot of snow combined with a windchill of 4 degrees, and 30-50 MPH gusts. We ventured out into the blizzard to try to get some dinner, and it was a mess out there. I'm still waiting to hear if I work tomorrow, they haven't announced whether or not the federal government will be closed for a 4th straight day.
Apparently, this afternoon, this storm dumped so much snow that they can officially call this the snowiest winter on record EVER for DC. We just broke a record set in 1835 or something. What a time to be here!
The bad side of all of this is we've missed out on a week of being able to go out and see the city, a week of classes and guest speakers, and potentially, two days of internship. I think I'm just ready to be un-stranded.
Apparently, this afternoon, this storm dumped so much snow that they can officially call this the snowiest winter on record EVER for DC. We just broke a record set in 1835 or something. What a time to be here!
The bad side of all of this is we've missed out on a week of being able to go out and see the city, a week of classes and guest speakers, and potentially, two days of internship. I think I'm just ready to be un-stranded.
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