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Show Monday, Feb. I, 2010 Page 10 Views&Opilli011 Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.aggietownsquare.com OurVi ew A bou tik ALLWE KNOW IS 11-IAT SHE WAS ASSAULTED BY FIVE MEN IN BLACK ROBES CLAIMING TO REPRESENT THE FIRST AMENDMENT! Editor in Chief Patrick Oden Trying times call for trying measures News Editor Rachel A. Christensen Assistant News Editor Catherine Meidell W ith the new year comes a new round of legislative budget cuts affecting higher education and, in turn, USU. While the impending trimmings may not hold the same weight as last year's cuts, the fact remains that USU is in for a few more changes that will stall our progress and economic recovery. Students began the '09-'10 academic year with less staff teaching noticeably larger classes. Many faculty did not return after the summer months and certain details, both large and small, of everyday collegiate life seemed to have quietly disappeared. Adjusting to the additional cuts that we are likely to receive, the university will let go of more faculty, classes will swell to larger sizes and more of the subtle nuances of our institution will cease. That's the best case scenario. In the worst case, entire departments will have to be restructured, reorganized or simply eliminated from the breadth of university studies. It is not unreasonable to suggest that because the university is losing money every year, we will reach a point where certain majors can no longer be offered at USU. Students will have to alter either their career plans or their choice of institution for higher learning. These are dire times indeed, and we commend the university administration for its efforts in weathering the storm. Time and again USU President Albrecht and the central administrators have expressed their sincere desire and their ideas for preserving the caliber of education and employment offered here. Certain steps will have to be taken and sacrifices will be made. While students and staff alike will undoubtedly be negatively affected by the changes made, we hope everyone can remember that desperate measures must be taken in desperate times. An outpouring of negativity accomplishes nothing. ASUSU Executive Vice President Spencer Lee has encouraged the student body multiple times to take a productive initiative. We at The Statesman echo his sentiment. Contact your legislatures, voice your concerns through the appropriate channels. There are numerous resources available for expressing your position to those that can affect the outcome. It is only through action, unified and resolute, that we can expect to make a difference. Don't legalize it Los Angeles City Council's vote Tuesday to shut hundreds of so-called medical marijuana dispensaries was a welcome move, but the larger battle over pot has just begun. Across the country, lawmakers and residents of cashstrapped states are edging ever closer to legalizing - and taxing - marijuana. In California, the first state in the nation to pass a medical marijuana law, backers of an initiative to legalize the drug expect to gather enough signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot. And a Field Poll last year showed more than half of California voters would support such a move. Two beliefs drive this push to make pot legal: that new tax revenue will stave off deeper budget cuts and that marijuana is a relatively benign drug. Neither is true. Legalization almost certainly would bring with it additional substance abuse in the state, and the long-term public costs associated with that would vastly exceed the relatively modest amount of new revenue legal weed might bring in. Baby boomers who hazily recall their own experimentation with marijuana often are stunned to learn that the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol - or THC, marijuana's primary psychoactive substance - in domestic 11 See POT, page 11 Features Editor Courtnie Packer Assistant Features Editor Benjamin Wood Sports Editor Connor Jones Assistant Sports Editor Matt Sonnenberg Copy Editor Corporations, the high court and the Fourth Estate ho knew that decades-old campaign-spending limits threatened to prevent newspapers from opinionating on candidates for public office? That's the hideous boogeyman that Chief Justice John Roberts raised last week in justifying the Supreme Court's decision to toss restrictions Congress had placed on direct corporate spending to sway elections. In arguing to uphold the limits, Roberts wrote in a concurrence, the government put forth "a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasters, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern." That theory, he ominously warned, "would empower the government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations - as the major ones are." Roberts' concern for editorialists and the role we play in "the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy" is quite touching. But, in the almost four decades since Congress started requiring corporations to channel their advocacy spending through political action committees, has anyone seriously suggested that media conglomerates should have to pay for their election commentary through PACs? To echo Roberts' language, his claim is one that "I find quite perplexing." Editorialists debate among ourselves whether it's helpful or merely arrogant for us to recommend for or against candidates seeking election. We have resources to examine records and ask hard questions with the goal of providing an assessment that voters can add to the information they consider before casting their ballots. But some readers want just facts, not others' opinions; some say they don't want their newspaper "telling them how to vote." But that wasn't Roberts' concern. Even though federal campaign finance restrictions don't apply to newspaper editorials, opinion pieces or letters to the editor, he insists that's "simply a matter of legislative grace." And, you know, Congress could change its mind. Just like the court, I suppose. Roberts spent most of his 14-page concurrence in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission explaining that respect for precedent loses its importance when those precedents are just wrong. W "We must balance the importance of having constitutional questions decided against the importance of having them decided right," he wrote. The key offender was a 6-3 decision in 1990 upholding Michigan's ban on using corporate treasuries to promote or defeat candidates. That ruling included two "spirited dissents," Roberts said, and has been "the consistent subject of dispute among members of this court ever since." But it's through personnel changes that those dissenters - Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy - gained colleagues who also object to campaign finance limits. Justice Clarence Thomas joined the court in 1991, Roberts in 2005 and Justice Samuel Alito in 2006. Justice John Paul Stevens is the only member left from that 1990 majority - and he wrote a most spirited dissent in Citizens United. "The court operates with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel when it strikes down one of Congress' most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral politics," Stevens wrote. And, he said, "While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics." Roberts, for his part, said the court struck down limits on direct corporate spending only after careful consideration, two rounds of briefing, two oral arguments and 54 amicus briefs. I'm skeptical whether any of that influenced what he considered the right answer. Opinion writers will continue to opine on whether last week's ruling advances "uninhibited, robust and wide-open" public debate or further distorts the ability to influence electoral politics. We'll continue to explore what the appropriate responses should be from lawmakers, corporations, interest groups and voters. We'll continue to debate the use and abuse of judicial activism. But I doubt most of us imagined that the constitutional consternation surrounding "Hillary: The Movie" was about a potential government crackdown on opinion pages. This column by Linda P. Campbell first appeared in the Jan. 29 edition of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Campbell is a columnist and editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Readers may write to her via e-mail at Icampbell@star-telegram.com . James O'Keefe's latest caper and the new media F filmmaker James O'Keefe III is 25, meaning he was born about 13 years after five men were arrested for trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington. The subsequent scandal, which led to the resignation of the burglars' boss, President Richard M. Nixon, was fodder for history books by the time O'Keefe was old enough to read them. Chances are, he didn't. O'Keefe, the Internet "journalist" who became an overnight sensation after his undercover reports revealed unethical behavior by the liberal activist group ACORN, now finds himself in the middle of his own bugging scandal. He was arrested Monday in what the FBI alleges was a plot to "interfere with a telephone system" in the office of Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu in New Orleans. According to federal court records, O'Keefe admitted that he worked with three accomplices, two of whom entered Landrieu's office posing as telephone repairmen while O'Keefe recorded them with his cellphone camera. If convicted, the four face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. It isn't clear what the men were after or why they targeted Landrieu, who is one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. But the fact that they tried to access the office's telephone closet, where the wiring for the system is located, suggests that they may have wanted to tap Landrieu's phone network. O'Keefe was in legal trouble before now. When he and fellow conservative activist Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and a prostitute and secretly videotaped conversations with ACORN employees last summer, they may have been violating laws in several states, including California, that forbid surreptitious recordings. That didn't excuse the behavior they uncovered at ACORN, nor the organization's subsequent efforts to deflect blame and avoid taking responsibility for its internal problems. But it did mark the ascent of a new brand of online journalism employing methods that are at best unethical and at worst illegal. In an era of citizen bloggers and media fragmentation, old- fashioned standards of ethics and objectivity are breaking down. The right and left alike - but especially conservatives - celebrate that turn of events; resentment over a perceived bias by the "mainstream media" has sent them flocking to partisan news outlets and turning the likes of O'Keefe into folk heroes. Yet his latest stunt less resembles legitimate investigative journalism than the kind of illicit political dirty-tricks campaign that brought down Nixon. O'Keefe's fellow ideologues will no doubt continue to defend him, but embracing such methods won't improve his credibility, or theirs. This editorial column first appeared in the Jan. 28 edition of The Los Angeles Times. Mark Vuong Photo Editors Pete Smithsuth Steve Sellers Web Editor Karlie Brand About letters • Letters should be lim- ited to 400 words. • All letters may be shortened, edited or rejected for reasons of good taste, redundancy or volume of similar letters. • Letters must be topic oriented. They may not be directed toward individuals. Any letter directed to a specific individual may be edited or not printed. • No anonymous letters will be published. Writers must sign all letters and include a phone number or email address as well as a student identification number (none of which is published). 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