By Alexander Casendino Breakthroughs typically arise from strange beginnings. In his early years as a student at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg had no clue that he would forever change the world upon launching the “hot or not” website, FaceMash. The same concepts and software behind Zuckerberg’s sophomoric project would later be applied to the social media […]
Author: Staff
Damage Control: Continuous Resolutions and Continuous Setbacks for National Security
By Alexander Casendino “It is nevertheless remarkable that the world’s pre-eminent power so frequently fails to pay for its government on time.” -The Economist If any one political event could capture the corrosive state of contemporary United States politics, it is the shutdown. In just the first two months of 2018, the U.S. government has […]
GOP Going Green: The Power of Economics and National Security on Republican Support for Renewables
By Alexander Casendino On Feb. 26th, 2015, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, a climate change skeptic, decided to put an end to the global warming debate once and for all using a peculiar prop to convey his message on the Senate floor: a snowball. According to Inhofe, it was simply too cold outside for man-made […]
Missing the Mark: How the Intense Partisan Divide over Gun Control Impedes Solutions
By Alexander Casendino Despite a troubling and violent past, the shooter responsible for killing 26 worshipers in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on November 5th managed to elude authorities and carry out the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history. This horrific event captured the nation’s attention. In such a tragic moment, an outside […]
Soldiers of Fortune: the Rise of Private Military Companies and their Consequences on America’s Wars
By Alexander Casendino War and conflict are synonymous with human history, and where there is conflict, there are often mercenaries who reap the profits. These “armies for hire” appeared as early as Ancient Egypt and Rome, with rulers deploying paid auxiliary forces to supplement imperial armies. In present-day America, mercenaries have consolidated into one of […]
Convicts without Care: How the Privatization of Healthcare in the U.S. Prison System Fails to Protect Inmates’ Health
By Alexander Casendino United States of Incarceration “It’s a level of suffering that is unprecedented. The degree of suffering and the degree of harm to these patients is really the result of a system that is extremely, extremely broken.” No, the description above is not of a CIA black site or a sinister underground research […]
Prize for Parents: How Paid Family Leave has Entered the Spotlight and is Here to Stay
By Alexander Casendino “Today, we’re the only advanced country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers.” President Obama’s statement from his final State of the Union Address remains true; within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a consortium of 35 countries with developed economies, the U.S. […]
The UN Security Council Needs Reform, and Fast
The conflict in Syria has resulted in the greatest humanitarian disaster of recent times. In 1945, the global community said ‘never again’ to loss on such a wide scale. They said the same in 1999 after the Rwandan genocide. Despite the loss of over 140,000 lives, the UN’s only decision has been to […]
The Real Effects of Filibuster Reform
Last month, for the first time in its history, the Senate changed its procedure on filibusters. Though the majority party has threatened to use the nuclear option for years, Senate Democrats finally invoked it this time. This change to parliamentary procedure means that federal judicial nominees and executive appointments need only a simple majority to […]
Encore: Harvard “History” Professor Niall Ferguson Strikes Again
Harvard “history” professor Niall Ferguson said that John Maynard Keynes was short-sighted because he was gay and childless. Niall Ferguson is a stain on academia; we should not be surprised that he’s tenured at Harvard. Every elite university has its share of controversy. Torture memo author John Yoo still works at Boalt, here in Berzerkeley […]
While You Were Sleeping
Last night, holed up in the London Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange attempted once more to set the world alight with the release over 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic cables. This time however, the cables date from 1976, the conflicts and figures involved in the documents are no longer active, and the media, frankly, does not care. […]
Why April 1st? The Politics Behind April Fool’s
We all love the April Fool’s holiday, but how did it come to be? Different explanations abound. One explanation posits that New Year’s Day used to be March 1st in Rome before the Julian reform, and — given that it was a lunar system — this day fell at different points in the solar year […]
Devil’s Advocate: Should editorialists disclose political affiliations?
I wasn’t planning on writing another Devil’s Advocate so soon after the first one, but the combination of disgraced Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson‘s partisan lies about Obama making the cover of Newsweek as “editorial” and UC Berkeley’s own The Daily Californian publishing the anti-marijuana and anti-Rep. Barbara Lee lies of a non-expert named Roger Morgan […]