Just say no to … chick drinks?
With all the problems facing today’s teens – depression, suicide, who to ask to the prom – you wouldn’t think that Mike’s Hard Lemonade presents much of a problem. According to The New York Times, though, California state legislators are targeting “”alcopops”” (alcoholic drinks mixed with flavoring) as “”transitional, training beer”” that will eventually lead teens to harder alcohol. You can be excused if you’re as miffed as we are. Anyone who’s witnessed adolescent bacchanalia knows that teens need no “”introduction”” to alcohol before they start drinking. Besides, if these foolhardy lawmakers really wanted to ban anything that made it easier for teens to drink alcohol, they’d do well to ban Kool Aid, Coke and any number of fruit juices that blunt the burn of a stiff Scotch. Teen drinking can be a problem, but a piecemeal approach that likens Smirnoff’s Ice to a gateway drug is dead on arrival.
You’ve (lost) mail
In a Friday press conference that was almost as amusing as it was appalling, deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino admitted that the White House might have lost up to 5 million e-mails, some of which could have shed light on controversies ranging from the leaking of a CIA agent’s name to the bare-knuckled politics behind the firings of the U.S. attorneys. For an administration that prides itself on discipline, this blunder seems more especially insidious. While references to Watergate are both premature and hyperbolic, one can’t escape the fact that an average college student with even a casual acquaintance with technology could easily backup (and restore) something so simple as e-mail transmissions. The Bush administration has some explaining to do, and we have no doubt that Democrats will take delight in forcing it to do so.
A nail in the coffin?
When will they learn? Yesterday, The Associated Press reported that a Mathematica Policy Research Inc. study concluded that abstinence-only sex education still doesn’t work. According to the study, those who attended abstinence-only classes had similar numbers of sexual partners as those who didn’t, and they also first had sex at about the same age (14.9 years) as those who didn’t. You’d think that this latest report would sound the death knell for abstinence-only education, but the federal government is intent on throwing money down this rat hole – to the tune of $176 million. The “”culture of life,”” it would seem, is ignoring its own death.
Blood in the streets
In a brutal display of power that has stunned the global community, Russian authorities cracked down on protestors in Moscow and St. Petersburg this weekend with violent force. According to the British newspaper The Times, riot police let loose when an estimated 5,000 protesters broke through a police line in St. Petersburg, bludgeoning marchers as onlookers chanted “”shame”” and “”stop the beating.”” International outcry has thus far been relatively muted, but the unprecedented show of force only serves to underscore the degree to which Russian President Vladimir Putin has poisoned Russia’s political climate. Global leaders should denounce the beatings swiftly and without equivocation. Anything less would embolden this thuggish regime.
Opinions Board
Editorials are determined by the Wildcat opinions board and written by one of its members. They are Justyn Dillingham, Allison Hornick, Damion LeeNatali, Stan Molever, Nicole Santa Cruz and Matt Stone.
