Opinion

Marlize, you are absolutely right. The thesis became clear to me about halfway through the article (published yesterday): all politicians are corrupt, some more than others. Ultimately, all politicians are corrupt to some extent. The ones that were funded the least, however, have less favors to hand out upon reaching the White House.

In a recent report in Environmental Health News, UC Davis researchers have concluded that California’s sevenfold increase in autism cannot be explained by changes in doctors’ diagnoses and most likely is due to environmental exposures. The scientists who authored the new study advocate a nationwide shift in autism research to focus on potential factors in the environment that babies and fetuses are exposed to, including pesticides, viruses and chemicals in household products.

Imagine, if you will, a man such as this: charming, clever, with the power to influence and the skill to make connections wherever he goes. He keeps his friends close and his enemies closer and always has a disarming smile ready from behind the podium. The perfect politician, in other words.

A big shadow has been cast over the magic of the sun. Someone stole the solar panel, control box and steel holder that powered a fountain at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden.

This was a project carried out by volunteers with the keen help of the children who attended Plant Family Camp.

As we emerge from the hectic first week of school, we breathe a collective sigh of relief as the stress of finding classes, buying books and getting acquainted with new schedules is behind us. Or is it? We are all aware of the incredible lack of classes available each quarter and the disappointment of being at the end of a long waitlist.

There is a kind of girl that aspires to become a princess. This girl longs for the day when she will have sovereign power over the people around her and acts as though her genealogy takes root in a royal family. She is prim, precise and finicky.

You may be more familiar with the title we have given to our particular breed of princess: “Poly Dolly.

People on the Central Coast know Leon Panetta as an honest and good man. That is exactly what we need at the CIA today: a man who sees the big picture, who will bring our country back into the world of nations that honor the Geneva Convention and international law.

What world are we living in, where a career political hack, Leon Panetta, can make his way to an Obama appointment as the Director of the CIA? I contend, we are in a nation that has forgotten. Forgotten how far we’ve come and the resolve it takes to defeat Islamic fascist extremists bent on the destruction of Western civilization.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. published an article titled “The Party of Tomorrow” Tuesday in which he discusses the state of politics in America, more specifically the future of the Republican and Democratic parties.

Both political parties are electing new chairmen and thus both stand to reinvent their party’s public discourse.

Focus on moral intentions of both sides in the Gaza conflict

Despite a cease-fire, Hamas fired almost 2,000 rockets into Israel in 2008. Israel responded by targeting Hamas in order to defend itself. Israel announced that it was in favor of extending the cease-fire, provided that Hamas adhered to its conditions.

In the battle to prove or disprove the existence of anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming (AGW), a battle which often orients along the cultural left and right, I must confess that I have little vested in furthering either side’s campaign. I contentedly join the ranks of elite weathermen everywhere in my unequivocal conviction that tomorrow’s weather will be the same or different.