The Vanderbilt Torch

Torch Debate: Will Conservatives Rally Around McCain?

He'll Need Reinforcements
The Mac is undoubtedly back. Currently, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for President, Senator John McCain, has received endorsements from former Presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, former President George H.W. Bush, and countless current and former state governors and members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. With a lead in the polls in each of the states that are holding primaries in the next few weeks, it is merely a matter of time before McCain goes from being his party’s presumptive nominee to its actual one. So while the Democrats are still struggling to pick their presidential nominee and may have to wait until their convention in August to determine who it will be, McCain stands ready to be the face of a united party. However, whether the party will truly unite behind him is still up for debate.

Torch Debate: We Like Mike

Despite spending months in the single digits of nearly every poll of likely Republican voters in Iowa and being outspent 20 to 1 by former Massachusetts governor and political rival Mitt Romney, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee garnered the support of 34% of the state’s Republicans, securing him a win in the first caucus in the nation. This first place finish certainly brought Huckabee some much desired national attention, but also left millions across the nation with the question, “Who exactly is this guy?” Many are now claiming to have the answer. 

MoveOn, Gray Lady

It took just 286 words and a black and white photograph of the senior American military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, to place The New York Times, the nation’s inimitable “Gray Lady,” in the center of a heated controversy over the current penchant in politics for personal attack ads and the ethical standards of modern media. 

CA: Flunking Out of the Electoral College

The state with the largest amount of electoral votes could soon be changing the way in which those votes are awarded to candidates on election night, just in time for the 2008 presidential election. The Republican-backed group Californians for Equal Representation has recently submitted a proposal to include an initiative on the June 3, 2008 state ballot that would replace California’s current winner-take-all system with one that allocates electoral votes based on the popular vote in each congressional district. 

ERA: Isn't That Cute?

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. If this definition is correct, then one should certainly begin to question the reasoning powers of Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, and Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who recently announced their plans to introduce the Women’s Equality Amendment, which is merely a new name for the failed Equal Rights Amendment, in the United States Congress.

No Undergraduate Left Behind

Say the phrase “standardized testing,” to practically any one of the millions of students on college campuses across the nation and you will surely get a look of contempt and irritation. After all of the PSAT, SAT, ACT, AP and IB exams that students must take just to gain admission to college, most students have had enough. And it would seem that continuing to test students in such a manner once they entered an institution of higher learning would be pointless; students would likely be inundated with generic general education requirements whose sole aim would be to prepare them for upcoming standardized tests. It seems obvious that this would be nothing but a tremendous waste of time. Unfortunately, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and her Commission on the Future of Higher Education are of a different opinion, as shown by a recent report issued by the Commission.