Samuel Alito, Consitutionalist

President Bush came through on his campaign promise to appoint well-qualified judges who will not legislate from the bench when he chose Samuel Alito to be Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

Stanford’s United Disaster Relief Effort

According the BBC, the South Asian earthquake of October 8 killed over 55,000 people, 17,000 of them children. In the United States, 973 bodies have been recovered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Damages are estimated at over $125 billion – the most expensive disaster in United States history.

Looking For Some Context in Scooterville

Lewis “Scooter” Libby is, it would appear, down on his luck. So much for his status – and his job – as Vice-President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. So much for $161,000 a year, so much for any normalcy of life and everyday existence. We can safely observe that things aren’t going so well in Scooterville.

Better, But Not Quite There:
Reviewing the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center

“Mens sana in corpore sano”: a healthy mind lies in a healthy body. So wrote the Roman satirist Iuvenal. Stanford Students certainly are a healthy bunch. The comparatively warm and sunny weather entices us outside to run, bike and compete against each other. But if we truly want to develop our bodies to complement our minds, odds are we’ll have to see a yoga mat or the inside of a gym or from time to time.

Losing the Fight in Venezuela

“I’m scared, I’m very scared; I have three kids.”
These are the words of Maria Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s fight to save its democracy, on the prospect of spending up to 28 years in prison if President Hugo Chávez silences her through a phony trial.

Turkey and the EU - Counterpoint

In the previous issue of the Review, Boris Hanin wrote a scathing article (“Bad for Turkey, Bad for the EU”, 10/21/2005) criticizing Turkey’s membership negotiations and its prospects for EU membership. Mr. Hanin first criticized the economic viability of integrating relatively poor Turkey into world’s largest economy, and went on to suggest that polls both in the EU and Turkey opposing Turkish membership will ultimately derail the process.

Students to ResEd: Let Our Voices Be Heard

After two years of Residential Education’s strict enforcement of the no door-to-door distribution policy, many students want the university to consider altering the prohibition. Despite a vote from the student body in support of changing the policy last year and the passing of a corresponding ASSU Senate advocacy bill, Residential Education (ResEd) has failed to take action.

Another Chance

The nomination of Harriet Miers seemed like a nightmare for conservatives everywhere. Our President had wasted a chance to put an openly-constructionist jurist on the bench and had instead given us a person who we knew nothing about. But now we can wake up with relief; Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the Supreme Court, citing that she was “concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interests of the country.”

Ancient History?

In 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on “the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf.” Two years later, he co-signed a statement with other Islamic terrorist leaders that read in part: “The Arabian Peninsula has never…been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts.”

Fair and Flat: the European flat tax revolution

A new specter is haunting Europe. It is the specter of tax reform. And this is one revolution fiscal conservatives everywhere will be happy to see. It began in 1994, in the former Soviet satellite of Estonia. Prime Minister Mart Laar, inspired by the writings of Milton Friedman, proposed a flat income tax of 26 percent and, over the objections of the International Monetary Fund and his own finance minister, pushed the proposal through parliament.