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CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY

Thursday, January 7, 2010 www.mustangdaily.netVolume LXXIV, Number 56

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Judge wants same-sex marriage trial to be broadcast online.

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Will Taylormustang daily

A Cal Poly aerospace engineer-ing graduate and flight test pilot earned an international award last fall for his role in developing air-craft for the fledgling space tour-ism industry. The award put him in a select group that includes famous pilots John Glenn and Neil Arm-strong.

Peter Siebold, who completed his degree in 2001, received the Iven C. Kincheloe award at the 53rd Annual Symposium for the in-ternational Society of Experimen-tal Test Pilots (SETP). The award is given after aeronautical companies nominate pilots whom they think have made a significant contribu-tion to flight test through develop-ment, performance and testing.

“It’s without a question the most prestigious award a test pilot can receive in his career,” Douglas Shane, president of Scaled Com-posites and Siebold’s boss, said. “It’s likened to a Heisman Trophy in football.”

Siebold won the yearly award specifically for his role as chief test pilot and on the Model 348 Whi-teKnightTwo plane, from the first flight through subsequent testing and modification processes.

“I’m humbled to be in the company of significant contribu-tors to flight testing,” Siebold said. “It’s hard to see yourself as equal to some of those folks that have re-ceived the honor previously.”

Siebold may feel humble, but his work speaks for itself. WhiteK-nightTwo is part of billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s dream for the potential space tourism industry. WhiteKnightTwo would act as the carrier and take-off platform for Virgin Galactic tourism space ships at an elevation of 47,000 feet, Sie-bold said. Basically, WhiteKnight-Two would fly with a space ship attached, get to the appropriate al-titude and then act as the take-off platform.

WhiteKnightTwo is three times the size of any aircraft Scaled Com-posites had ever designed or built and is the largest he has flown, Sie-bold said. Despite the size and scale of the project, he said it continues

to exceed expectations.Siebold’s confidence and suc-

cess with WhiteKnightTwo might be attributed to his experience and versatility. He flew his first solo flight, gaining his pilot’s license at 16, the youngest age that a person can do so. He later taught flight classes at the San Luis Obispo Air-port, while a student at Cal Poly and has now logged about 2,500 hours of flight time in 40 different types of fixed-wing aircraft.

Siebold is not only an experi-enced pilot, but also a capable en-gineer.

“Engineer and pilot are a per-fect combo of those two interests,” he said. “As a test pilot, you need to understand the engineering as well as how things work.”

Siebold said employees of Scaled Composites are encouraged to be multi-talented and work in differ-ent areas. Siebold has, for instance, worked with computers managing avionics and simulation develop-ments. The mid-size company fo-

cuses on innovative designs and technology within the industry.

Terry Tomeny, president of SETP and director of flight test operations at Calspan Bicycleworks at the Mojave Airport, said that the Scaled Composite philosophy is admired throughout the industry.

“They’re a very unique compa-ny that does a lot of groundbreak-ing work with very new airplanes,” Tomeny said. “They’re very confi-dent and efficient compared to the big companies who develop slower and spend more money.”

Siebold said that his Cal Poly education prepared him well for work at a unique company like Scaled Composites.

“My education gave me two things: a toolbox of knowledge to do the work and, more important-ly, it fostered the creative spirit and can-do attitude,” he said. “Scaled is a very similar place where we’re always looking for people who try something new and learn from their mistakes.”

Poly graduate earns test pilots’ highest honorSiebold advances goal of space tourism

By Howard Mintz

san jose mercury news

SAN JOSE, Calif. — As Israel Gonzalez-Reyes recently stood before a San Jose judge for sen-tencing, his case had all the ingre-dients of the most common crime in the nation’s federal courts over the past year.

The 39-year-old defendant had been deported to his native Mexi-co on eight separate occasions, re-peatedly returning to the United States before winding up in jail, usually charged with a variety of state crimes ranging from burglary to drunken driving. Federal pros-ecutors had had enough — this time around, Gonzalez-Reyes was charged under criminal immigra-tion laws forbidding the illegal re-entry of a deported alien back into the United States.

More than ever, federal prose-

cutors are using such felony charg-es and the threat of serious federal prison time to make lawbreakers think twice before making another trip across the border. In 2009, the U.S. Justice Department filed nearly 92,000 immigration-related crimi-nal cases in the federal courts. The record-breaking trend accounted for more than half of all new feder-al prosecutions in the country, ac-cording to Justice Department data maintained at Syracuse University.

Spurred by the relentless surge of illegal immigration in border states such as Texas and Arizona, where immigration prosecutions total in the thousands, the federal government has concluded that simple deportation is no longer an adequate response to repeat offend-ers with criminal records. Experts attribute the steady rise in prosecu-tions to several factors, including an

Record number of immigration crimes charged in U.S.

see Immigration, page 2

virgin galactic

A conceptual sketch of WhiteKnightTwo, the plane Cal Poly graduate Peter Siebold tested releasing SpaceShipTwo.

“A City Asleep”by Ryan Sidarto

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News editor: Kate McIntyre

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Thursday, January 7, 20102 Mustang Daily

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Alfredo Corchadothe dallas morning news

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — In 2009, the hit men didn’t take a break, not even for holidays.

The trail of blood left by the gun-toting sicarios stains the entire city, but especially here in Barrio Azul, where families grieve for children lost.

“In this block alone, all the teens were either killed or disappeared,” said Pedro Reyna Diaz, 46, whose two stepsons were among those swept up in the drug cartel warfare waged in this neglected neighborhood. “An entire generation was lost.”

As the Mexican and U.S. govern-ments prepare to shift their strategy in the drug war, from military and police support to a “softer” approach em-phasizing jobs and education, neigh-borhoods like Barrio Azul are prime candidates for the new effort. The idea is to lessen the lucrative lure of drug cartels by creating jobs and edu-cational opportunities in vulnerable areas, much like efforts in Afghanistan and Colombia.

It’s in neighborhoods like Barrio Azul where President Felipe Calde-ron’s war could be won or lost.

“What struck me most after the short time I was in Juarez was not the threat of the violence but what occurs if you lose a whole generation,” U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual said after a tour of Juarez.

He and a senior Obama adminis-tration official both indicated in in-terviews that, going forward, the U.S. and Mexico will plan to focus less on a military response to drug violence and more on rooting out the problems that have left generations of Mexico’s young vulnerable to unscrupulous cartel members.

Since January 2008, Ciudad Juarez has been a city on the brink — ground zero in Mexico’s war against violent drug cartels. In two years, more than 4,200 people have been killed in this city of 1.5 million people across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Two of Mexico’s most powerful cartels are battling for control of the city, a gate-way for drugs going to the U.S. as well as a growing domestic drug market.

In 2009, the city’s 173 slayings for every 100,000 residents made it, by some estimates, the murder capi-tal of the Americas, if not the world. Baghdad had 48 violent deaths per 100,000 residents, according to the Citizens’ Council for Public Security, a nongovernmental organization in Mexico City.

Overall, more than 15,000 people have been killed in drug-related vio-lence across Mexico since December 2006, when Calderon began deploy-ing security forces to several troubled regions of the country, including 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 federal po-lice in Juarez.

Next year the military is expected to gradually pull out, replaced by a newly trained Juarez police force and federal agents. But few believe the violence will end.

“You hear it on the streets that capos would rather set the city on fire than give an inch to their rivals,” said Alfredo Quijano, editor of the newspaper Norte de Ciudad Juarez. “And that’s literally what they’re do-ing, setting the city on fire, burning

everything from vehicles to businesses, homes, to even people alive.”

Slums like Barrio Azul represent fertile ground for recruiting cartel foot soldiers. The neighborhood is a microcosm of the city’s social ills, with poverty and rampant crime. In recent years, cartels have recruited teens on the U.S. side as well, in Texas cities in-cluding El Paso, Laredo and Browns-ville. Kids grow up to become thugs, and many end up in cheap tin cof-fins.

In Barrio Azul, an area encompass-ing a couple dozen rundown blocks, residents said in interviews that they attended as many as 30 neighborhood funerals in the past year alone, mostly for teens. One of them, Eduardo Vil-lalobos, 16, was among nine young men and one woman gunned down at a rehab center known as Annex of Life.

The year before, as cartel violence spiked, Villalobos’ 19-year-old son, Alberto, was gunned down. She now keeps her three younger children at home.

“We’ll keep losing kids unless we can provide them with jobs, an edu-cation, anything to keep them away from trafficking drugs or killing peo-ple,” said Reyna, stepdad to the two Villalobos boys.

Today, an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, freshly painted on the side of a Barrio Azul home, overlooks nearly deserted dirt streets. The neigh-borhood is desolate, with stray dogs, piles of trash, and abandoned homes marked with graffiti. A young boy pretends he’s a hit man, waving a toy gun.

“It’s all gone,” Reyna said, “a whole life disappeared, as people died or fled.”

Two blocks away, young kids play soccer on an unpaved street, stir-ring dust clouds as they kick the ball, someone’s Christmas gift. Parents and siblings keep a close eye on them. Among them is Alma Nayeli Villegas,

18, watching from behind a white steel fence. Others warm themselves over open fires outside cinderblock homes.

“The youth are the most vulner-able, easy prey,” Villegas says as she watches her 13-year-old brother, Juan de Dios, a brown rosary dangling from his neck.

Is he religious?“No, he just wants to believe in

something,” she says, “especially after what happened to our neighborhood this year. He wants to believe that someone or something will protect him from the evil.”

Each of the eight children playing soccer, including two brothers from El Paso, knows someone who was killed in the past year.

Around the corner is Abarrotes Oralia, the only grocery store still open in the neighborhood. Owner Oralia Rocha, 56, says her competi-tion — three stores and a tortilleria –— disappeared after they failed to pay the $1,000 monthly extortion fee. She, too, shut down for three weeks and then reopened under an “ar-rangement” that she refuses to discuss for fear of reprisal.

Rocha says that aside from jobs and schools, what residents in neigh-borhoods like Barrio Azul need most “is renewed faith in our community, in ourselves.”

Thousands of people have fled neighborhoods like Barrio Azul for El Paso or other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Albuquerque and Dallas-Fort Worth. They include the family of Ricardo Bolivar, 42, who sells pirated CDs and DVDs near the international bridge. A few months ago he sent his wife, Angelica, and four children to live in North Texas, joining their old-est son, 19-year-old Richie, who was born in Fort Worth. Bolivar hopes that Richie, as a U.S. citizen, can “fix our papers so we can all live in Texas.”

“Mexico,” he says, “is no longer a place for young kids.”

increase in immigration and border patrol agents during the Bush ad-ministration, and greater emphasis on prosecuting cases that are often easy to prove.

There is ample doubt that crim-inal enforcement can put much of a dent in the nation’s illegal im-migration problems. And critics worry that many routine immigra-tion matters are being transformed into federal felony charges with in-creasingly lengthy sentences. There is also concern about a dispropor-tionate impact on Mexican nation-als. A San Jose Mercury News re-view of 52 immigration cases filed in the San Jose federal courts be-tween January and October found every defendant was from Mexico.

“It’s riding and walking while Hispanic,” said Barry Portman, the Bay Area’s federal public defender, whose office typically represents immigrants too poor to pay for their own lawyers.

Supporters of the tougher en-forcement approach say the pros-ecutions are needed to target il-legal immigrants with criminal backgrounds who keep re-entering the country. Indeed, the review of the San Jose cases shows these de-fendants are often unsympathetic. They have typically been deported numerous times, and they carry rap sheets that run the gamut from drug and robbery charges to do-mestic violence.

In some instances, they have even been prosecuted before in federal court, serving time for im-migration crimes before being de-ported, only to return to the Unit-ed States. One San Jose defendant charged this year, Esequiel San-doval-Ramos, has been deported eight times and was convicted four separate times in San Diego federal court on illegal re-entry charges before his most recent arrest here,

court records show.Prosecutors say they must de-

ter illegal immigration by those with criminal records, which is driving up the numbers.

“Does it always work? Of course not,” said Brian Stretch, chief of the criminal division for the Bay Area U.S. attorney’s office. “But it’s important to keep trying.”

Advocates for tighter immi-gration enforcement say such prosecutions are overdue, but they caution criminal charges are only part of dealing with the sprawling immigration issue.

“We need to have these pros-ecutions, but they are not the silver bullet,” said Mark Kriko-rian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Stud-ies, which advocates stricter measures such as curtailing the ability of illegal immigrants to secure jobs here.

For defendants such as Gonzalez-Reyes, the aggressive prosecutions mean a long prison stay before deportation. In Oc-tober, a defense lawyer argued that Gonzalez-Reyes’ sentence should only be about a year because he had returned to the U.S. this time to earn money for a prosthetic for a child who’d just lost a leg in an accident.

But Gonzalez-Reyes’ record was too disturbing for U.S. Dis-trict Judge James Ware, who sentenced the defendant to 37 months in prison. The question now, as with the tens of thou-sands of cases being prosecuted in the federal courts, is whether the system will see him again.

“It seems to me like we’re putting a finger in the dike,” said Kevin Johnson, a Universi-ty of California, Davis, law pro-fessor and immigration expert. “These prosecutions are more a gesture than a meaningful at-tempt to deal with the immi-gration problem.”

Immigrationcontinued from page 1

alfredo corchado the dallas morning news

Dionisia Villalobos Jacquez, a resident of the Barrio Azul neighborhood of Juarez, Mexico, shows a picture of her 16-year-old son Eduardo, killed during an attack on a rehab center in September 2009.

Slums are front lines in Mexican drug war

News

www.mustangdaily.net

Wire Editor: Jennifer TitcombThursday, January 7, 2010 3Mustang Daily

News

Word on the Street

“If you could travel anywhere in space, where would you go?”

compiled and photographed by jennifer titcomb

“The Milky Way would be cool to go in and see, or Pluto.”

-Linsey Stahowski, psychology senior

“Probably Neptune, because it’s as far as we know out there.”

-Kurtis Kobara, agribusiness senior

“Saturn, because everyone always talks about the rings and how beautiful it is. It looks peaceful.”

-Donna Mena, architecture sophomore

“Orion’s Belt, because you can’t tell what’s behind it.”

-Nathan Phelps, aerospace en-gineering junior

“I’d go to Mars and see if there are any aliens there.”

-Kyle Mohamed, construction management sophomore

“Mars, because they did it in ‘Total Recall’ and that’s an awesome movie.”

-Ryan Mazzuca, agribusiness senior

WHAT’S YOUR

RANTYOU WRITE IN.mustangdai lywire@gmai l .comWE INVESTIGATE.

Once riding high, Democrats now see disaster loomingSteven Thomma and Da-vid Lightmanmcclatchy newspapers

WASHINGTON — What a dif-ference a year makes.

Last January, Democrats were streaming into Washington eager to celebrate not just the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, but also their party’s ascendancy from coast to coast.

They’d gained ground in once-Republican turf such as the Moun-tain West and the Border South, added to their majorities in Con-gress and topped it all by seizing the presidency. “Yes, we can,” a trium-phant Obama trumpeted, and the country seemed to cheer in agree-ment.

Now, the country seems to be yelling back, “No, you can’t,” and putting the Democrats on the de-fensive heading into this year’s elec-tions, when the entire House of Representatives, 37 seats in the Sen-ate and 39 governor’s offices, are up for election.

The president’s poll numbers have dropped. The party’s top do-mestic agenda item, health care, is unpopular. Its candidates lost key statewide races in New Jersey and Virginia in November, and now high-profile Democrats such as Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and Con-necticut Sen. Christopher Dodd say they’ll retire rather than risk losing in the fall.

Whether it’s caused by a backlash against the Democratic agenda or the natural swing of the pendulum against the party that’s in power at a time of economic struggle, the result is the same: trouble for the Democrats.

“The fact that we’re seeing Democrats bailing, in an election year, suggests maybe it’s a tide that’s turning,” said Gary Rose, a professor of politics at Sacred Heart Univer-sity in Fairfield, Conn. “People are starting to feel promises were not fulfilled. Expectations were high, but what have we really seen?”

Clifford Young, a pollster for Ip-sos Public Affairs, sees a normal turn against the party in power, saying the Democrats overstated the signif-icance of the 2008 election results.

“It was basically an election for change, so it favored the party out of power,” Young said. “But it didn’t say anything about a major shift in values. We didn’t see a huge shift in values that would favor the Demo-crats in the long term.”

Either way, the Democratic Par-ty’s push to build a durable political majority is stalling.

That’s evident in national polls, such as a recent Gallup survey that found an average of 49 percent of Americans calling themselves Dem-ocrats last year, the first time in four years that the party has dropped be-low the majority level. That was still better than the Republicans, but the Democratic edge was shrinking, not growing.

It’s also clear in battleground states.

Colorado, for example, was one of the places Democrats highlight-ed as proof that they were gaining support in swing states, as well as in regions such as the Mountain West,

that once were friendlier to Repub-licans. The Democratic National Committee held its 2008 conven-tion in Denver to showcase the suc-cesses.

Ritter stumbled in office, howev-er, and voters have turned on other Democrats and him. Polls also sug-gest that Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., is at risk of losing his bid for re-election.

One reason, Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli said, is that voters are weary of the recession and blame the party in power. Another is that they don’t like the Democratic pro-posals to overhaul health care, a plan that he said had energized Repub-licans and turned off independent voters.

“The collapse of Colorado ... demonstrates the immense shift that has taken place over the last year in the fortunes of national Democrats and the impact it’s had on this swing state,” Ciruli said.

Colorado isn’t the only state in which Democrats have lost support among independents.

mcclatchy-tribune

The charts show the current bal-ance of power in the House and Senate above a table that portrays the number of members leaving Congress at the end of 2010.see Democrats, page 5

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Thursday, January 7, 20104 Mustang Daily

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Dawn Turner Tricechicago tribune

CHICAGO — Some consider the word “injun” to be as offensive as the N-word, but apparently Republican National Chairman Michael Steele didn’t know that when he tried to underscore a point earlier this week by saying, “Honest injun on that.”

Steele was on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Monday night promot-ing his new book, “Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda.”

“Our platform is one of the best political documents that’s been writ-ten in the last 25 years,” Steele told Hannity. “Honest injun on that. It speaks to some core conservative principles on the value of family, faith, life, economics. Those principles don’t change.”

Susan Power, 85, the last liv-ing founding member of Chicago’s American Indian Center, said she was offended by Steele’s comment.

Judge favors broadcasting upcoming federal trial over same-sex marriage Maura Dolanlos angeles times

SAN FRANCISCO — A fed-eral judge in San Francisco said Wednesday that he wants the fed-eral trial over the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 to be videotaped and distributed over the Internet.

“This certainly is a case that has sparked widespread interest,” U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker said during a hear-ing Wednesday. The nature of the case and its importance warranted “widespread distribution,” he said.

If Walker’s view is endorsed, as expected, by the chief judge of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the legal battle over same-sex marriage will become the first federal trial

in nine Western states to be video-taped in its entirety for public view-ing, according to Thomas Burke, a media attorney.

“It is a rare day and a lot of de-cades in coming that a federal court allows cameras in the court — even its own cameras,” Burke said.

In addition to running the entire proceedings on YouTube hours af-ter they occur, the court videotape would be broadcast live at several other federal courthouses, Walker said.

Supporters of Proposition 8 op-posed public dissemination of the trial video and argued that witness-es would be intimidated by having their testimony watched by millions of people. The Proposition 8 cam-paign also objected to live feeds at other courthouses.

Walker noted many of the cam-

paign’s experts who will testify are “academics — people who stand up before classrooms all the time.”

But Michael Kirk, represent-ing the campaign, said a classroom talk was substantially different from being asked “to testify across the county and across the world” in a “contentious and highly politicized” case. Kirk said that supporters of Proposition 8 have been harassed.

“The risk is just unacceptable,” he said. Kirk later refused to say whether the campaign would ask a higher court to overturn Walker’s decision.

Opponents of Proposition 8 fa-vored courtroom cameras. Theo-dore Boutrous, a lawyer for two same-sex couples who have chal-lenged the measure, told Walker the videos should be released to the public “as close to simultaneously as

possible.”“What happens in the court-

room is public property,” Boutrous said.

Burke, representing a media coalition, asked Walker to permit a professional media company to broadcast and provide the public “instantaneous access.”

Walker rejected that request. He said it was important for the “pro-cess to be completely under the court’s control.” The judge said he would be able to stop the video at any time.

Although the members of the media did not get what they want-ed, Burke called Walker’s decision “historic” and “a really important first step” to televising federal trials.

The trial is scheduled to start Monday and is expected to last two to three weeks. Walker’s decision on

Proposition 8’s constitutionality is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The California Supreme Court already has upheld Proposition 8 as a valid amendment of the state con-stitution. The federal case is based on federal constitutional challenges.

The videotaping of the trial is part of a pilot project launched by the 9th Circuit last month. The Ju-dicial Council of the 9th Circuit, the governing body for federal courts in the West, approved the use of cameras in civil, non-jury cases on an experimental basis.

“We hope that being able to see and hear what transpires in the courtroom will lead to a better public understanding of our judicial processes and enhanced confidence in the rule of law,” 9th Circuit Chief Alex Kozinsky said when he an-

RNC chairman criticized for remark

mcclatchy-tribune

Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Steele attends a post-election news conference in Washington on November 4, 2009. He has come under fire for his use of the word ‘injun.’

see Remark, page 5

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Thursday, January 7, 2010 5Mustang Daily

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HILLAH, Iraq (MCT) — Dazed and blood-spattered, an Iraqi woman stumbled among the bodies of her relatives Wednesday on a strip of highway south of Baghdad where a U.S. military convoy had struck a passenger van in a deadly accident.

Badriya Hussein whispered prayers over the blanket-covered bodies and then looked at the strick-en American soldiers standing near-by. “Why?” she asked. “Why?”

Iraqi forces and witnesses at the scene said the U.S. convoy was driv-ing in the wrong lane when the ve-hicles collided, killing five members of one family and injuring seven more Iraqis and three American sol-diers.

• • •LONDON (MCT) — North-

ern Ireland’s largest Protestant para-military group announced Wednes-day that it had finally surrendered all of its weapons, more than a de-cade after the historic Good Friday Agreement formally ended violent sectarian struggle in the province.

Independent monitors confirmed that the Ulster Defense Association’s arsenal of guns and bombs had been put out of commission, meaning that the main armed organizations on both sides of the loyalist-republican divide have been disarmed.

The step was hailed as a milestone by the British government, which had imposed a Feb. 9 deadline.

InternationalDETROIT (MCT) — A federal

grand jury in Detroit indicted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab Wednesday in the Christmas Day terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.

Abdulmutallab was charged with six counts: attempted use of a weap-on of mass destruction, attempted murder within the special aircraft ju-risdiction of the United States, will-ful attempt to destroy and wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft ju-risdiction of the United States, will-fully placing a destructive device on an aircraft and two counts possession of a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence.

The attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction charge is punish-able by up to life in prison.

• • •MIAMI (MCT) — It was a

landmark year, good and bad, for Florida manatees.

The endangered mammals suf-fered the deadliest year on record in 2009 as state wildlife biologists documented 429 fatalities, a mark boosted by a trio of all-time highs for boat strikes (97), newborns (114) and cold stress (56).

The totals, announced by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conser-vation Commission on Wednesday, ended a year that started brightly with an annual aerial survey tallying 3,807 manatees, which topped the previous all-time high by 500.

NationalVENTURA (MCT) — An

environmental group has taken the first step in filing a lawsuit against the city of Ventura, claiming it does not adequately treat the effluent it dumps into the Santa Clara River estuary.

“Decades of paying the mini-mum penalty to pollute as a cost of conducting business, instead of implementing feasible solutions to safeguard public health, resident well-being, the steelhead, and the Santa Clara River ecosystem” must stop in favor of government action to protect the public interest for current and future generations, said Jason Weiner, Ventura Coastkeeper’s associate director and staff attorney, in a press release.

The city has a permit to put about 9 million gallons of effluent it treats at the nearby sewage facility into the estuary. It is one of the few places in the state with a permit to discharge into an estuary.

• • •LOS ANGELES (MCT) —

A 51-year-old contract worker convicted of accidentally touching off a wildfire on Catalina Island in 2007 was ordered Wednesday to pay nearly $12 million in restitution.

The hefty financial wallop is in addition to $4 million in restitu-tion that Gary Dennis Hunt was ordered to pay at his first restitution hearing last summer.

State

Briefs

won both U.S. Senate seats in recent years and then took the state in the presidential race for the first time since 1964, they’ll have to watch from the bleachers when Republican Bob McDonnell is in-augurated Jan. 16.

He won the seat in November in large part because independent voters turned against the Demo-crats, who’d held the governor’s office for two terms. Republicans also took back the governor’s of-

fice in New Jersey.If health care hurt Democrats

in Colorado, it also could damage several Democratic senators else-where.

In at least seven states in which Democratic senators now hold seats, opponents of the Democratic health care proposals tend to out-number supporters.

In North Dakota, where Sen. Byron Dorgan shocked support-ers Tuesday by announcing that he wouldn’t seek re-election, one poll found the state’s likely voters opposing the health care proposal by 2-1 — and Dorgan trailing Re-

publican Gov. John Hoeven by 22 percentage points.

In Arkansas, Sen. Blanche Lin-coln, D-Ark., is facing a difficult re-election campaign and reluc-tantly became the last, crucial vote needed to allow senators to con-tinue the health care debate this fall.

“Arkansans are not yet sold on the need for health care reform,” warned Janine Parry, the director of the Arkansas Poll. While unin-sured people are interested in the issue, she said, “The rest of us, ap-parently, are afraid of losing what we’ve got.”

Democratscontinued from page 3

“I’m really disgusted with him,” said Power, a longtime activist and member of the Dakota nation. “He’s an intelligent man and I know he’s probably kicking himself all over his office for saying it, but he should know better. It would hurt if he were white, but it hurts more because he’s black. How can you be so stupid?”

She said that “injun” is one of two words — the other is “squaw” — that should never be used because they are throwbacks to a time when Native Americans were defined almost ex-clusively by negative stereotypes.

“Are we so unimportant that he couldn’t have caught himself?” she said. “I would never use the N-word. I know not to. This man must know nothing about native people. That’s what’s so hard about this. Native Americans know everything about everybody else, but there’s so little in-terest in knowing who we are.”

Power said that Steele needs to make amends.

“I don’t think he did it on pur-pose,” she said. “But now that he does know, he should apologize.”

The Republican National Com-mittee did not respond Wednesday to the Chicago Tribune’s inquiries about Steele’s comment.

Suicide bombing in Russia’s Dagestan kills 5 police officersMegan K. Stacklos angeles times

MOSCOW — A suicide bomber targeted a traffic police headquarters in the restive Russian republic of Dag-estan on Wednesday morning, killing five officers and injuring 19 more.

As the small, Russian-made SUV careened toward the building at about 8 a.m., a team of police rammed their truck into the bomber’s vehicle. The explosives went off on impact, killing all of the policemen in the truck but preventing the bomber from reaching his target.

The death toll would have been much higher had the officers not intervened, officials in Dagestan said. The men were being hailed as heroes.

“He was stopped by a special op-erations group at the last minute,” an unnamed spokesman told Interfax. “The measures taken by these police-men stopped the terrorist from reach-ing the site where other police offi-cers prepared for duty.”

The bomber struck just as 50 traffic policemen were lining up at the head-quarters for a procession. In choice of target and timing, the attack bore a marked resemblance to last summer’s bombing of a police headquarters in nearby Ingushetia, another Russian republic racked by insurgent violence. That attack killed at least 24 people.

“They managed to prevent a ter-rorist attack with a higher death toll at the cost of their own lives,” the spokesman said.

Dagestan, a mountainous republic tucked on the western edge of the Caspian Sea, is an ethnically diverse and oil-rich region that has been rent by tensions from rising Islamism and

clan power struggles.Wednesday’s explosion shattered

windows and damaged roofs for more than a mile around. Investigators por-ing over the bomb crater concluded that the assailant had been carrying artillery shells equivalent to more than 200 pounds of TNT.

“When I woke up, ‘Bam! Bam!’ “ neighbor Patimat Aliyeva told Rus-sia 1 television, imitating the sound of the blast. “I couldn’t find my children. They were screaming, ‘Mama.’ But I didn’t see them because the house is filled with dust and there’s glass under my feet.”

Mukhu Aliyev, the president of the small republic, ordered budget funds set aside to compensate the families of the slain police. He also ordered the purchase of 15 new police vehicles.

Escalating bloodshed in the Cau-casus has remained a soft and vola-tile underbelly to Russian efforts to portray the country as a stable, cen-trally controlled hub of investment and tranquillity. Russian officials have threatened, denied and fired officials and vowed to do better in response to the string of attacks — but the blood-shed keeps coming.

A flare of disappearances and kill-ings in Chechnya, which suffered through two wars between 1994 and the early 2000s, and a swelling Islamist rebellion and raging clan warfare in Ingushetia and Dagestan all threaten to destabilize Russia.

The threat appeared particularly acute in November, when a bomb derailed a train on a popular route running between Moscow and St. Petersburg, killing 26 people and rais-ing the possibility that violence would spill deep into the heart of Russia.

Remarkcontinued from page 4

www.mustangdaily.net

Zach Lantzmustang daily

The Veritas Forum returns to Cal Poly next week; event orga-nizers said the event will inspire discussion around issues like truth, life and religion.

The annual event has been at Cal Poly since 2007. The Veritas Forum, which gets its name from the Latin word for truth, brings in educated speakers from all walks of life to pose their theories and questions to students to be scruti-nized and examined.

Aerospace junior and Veritas Forum club president Josh Cecca-relli said that Veritas has earned an honest reputation when it comes to life’s deepest questions.

“Students from any worldview and any kind of background in general can just come and have discussions on what it means to live a true life and gives them the chance to pursue some of that knowledge,” he said. “There are so many difficult questions out there and (at Veritas Forum) those ques-tions can be discussed in a safe, in-telligent environment.”

Discussion topics will range from an art exhibit to an origin of life debate, and will also include a documentary on modern-day slav-ery.

After each event, audience members will have the opportu-nity to learn more in a 45-minute question-and-answer period. Cec-carelli said this would ensure fair discussion.

Monday will feature an art

exhibit titled “Exploring Truth through Art” in which art will be submitted by current or former Cal Poly student.

Tuesday will feature a presen-tation by Kelly Monroe Kullberg titled “Finding God beyond Har-vard.” Kullberg is the founder and director of project development of The Veritas Forum, which she first organized as a graduate student at Harvard in 1992, according to the Veritas Web site. She also co-authored the best-selling “Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Christian Thinkers.”

A creationist, assisted evolu-tionist and atheistic evolution-

ist will debate the origin of life Wednesday.

“In the past, when we’ve had a creationism versus evolution de-bate, I haven’t really liked them because I think there is more of a spectrum of what people believe. I think it’s important to talk about that spectrum in a discussion,” said Chelsea Morrell, biomedical engi-neering senior and Veritas Forum vice president. “Instead of there is a God or there is no God and maybe he is (involved) in parts of evolution or not at all.”

All three speakers are profes-

Arts

thursday, january 7, 2010 arts & EntErtainmEnt Editor: cassandra kEysE

Veritas Forum comes to campus searching for truth

photographer name mustang daily

Veritas Forum volunteers pass out flyers Wednesday on Dexter Lawn. The event begins on Monday and lasts all week.

see Veritas, page 2

Theater performance portrays hardships of job-searchingDaniel Triassimustang daily

Sitting behind a nondescript office desk, the actress sighs, “Last count I’ve had 64 jobs. Now, I’m not 236 years old, so obviously some of them were for unusually short durations.”

So begins the opening scene of Melanie Marshall’s senior project performance of “Blown Sideways Through Life,” an autobiographi-cal play by Claudia Shear, which debuts tonight in room 212 of the H.P. Davidson Music Center.

“Blown Sideways Through Life” chronicles Shear’s life as an unstable employee. Shear’s résumé includes being an artist’s model, receptionist at a whorehouse, Bloomingdale’s sales associate and waitress at a restaurant called Bar Louis; all in search for an identity more sincere than any job de-scription.

Both Marshall’s parents were actors, so in a way she was literally

born to perform. At three months old, she was cast in her first diaper commercial. Marshall eventually was cut out of the commercial for crying too much, her first unsuc-cessful brush with show business. At seven years old, she began tak-ing her first acting classes.

“My parents would pull me out of elementary school, espe-cially six months before elections, because I was doing a lot of com-mercials (for ballot propositions),” she said. “(People would call ask-ing for) ‘students for the back-ground,’ and I was like, ‘I’m in!’”

Although Marshall realized her passion for theatre early on, many Cal Poly students aren’t as fortu-nate. Students end up switching majors because they must declare their intent when they are 18, Marshall said.

“I think that something this show really says is that you should find what you like to do, but you

daniel triassi mustang daily

Melanie Marshall plays Claudia Shear in the autobiographical one-woman-play “Blown Sideways Through Life.”

www.mustangdaily.net

BLOGM D

see Show, page 8

Arts

Arts editor: Cassandra Keyse

www.mustangdaily.net

Thursday, January 7, 2010 7Mustang Daily

Artsmustangdailyarts@gmail.com

beer column

Celebrate the new year with a pint of Celebration Ale

Hoppy New Year! Get it? Hop-py? Yes, well anyway, welcome back to another exciting quarter at Cal Poly. Now, I don’t usually have a New Year’s resolution, and of course when I do I rarely follow it, but this year is different. I have resolved to try at least one new beer every week of the quarter and then share my experiences with you, the reader of this article. Sounds awesome, right?

But wait, there’s more! Not only will you be able to taste vicariously through me, but I will also teach you a lit-tle about each beer and style I try. I’ll be touring the local brewer-ies and letting you know what is going on in the beer world.

Before all that, though, if you were like I was last year, or if this is your first year at Poly, you’re probably wondering what justification there is for letting a column about beer into a respectable publication such as this. How could it be at all im-portant?

I’ve put together a list of seven fun facts about beer — fun facts that would be perfect to whip out at a party, or to use in order to con-vince your parents that beer is re-ally OK to consume three or four or seven nights a week. These are just a few of the reasons why beer is worthy of being written about:

1. Beer is the oldest, most pop-ular beverage on earth (possibly dating back to the 6th millennium B.C.).

2. In ancient Babylonia, beer was brewed by priestesses, and some types were used in religious ceremonies (Babylonian gods ap-prove).

3. Monasteries were among the first organizations to brew beer as a trade (if it’s good enough for the monks, it’s good enough for me).

4. Saints Augustine, Luke and Nicholas are all patrons of brewing (Christian God approves).

5. I heard once on TV that the American people will elect the presidential candidate that they could “sit down and have a beer

with.” (just like Nixon, oh, wait ...)

6. You may have been conceived with

the help of beer (it doesn’t mean they don’t love you).

7. Beer makers were among the first to feature minorities in their television commercials (blazing trails for equality).

If these don’t convince you that this column is worthy, then how about this: They let that other dude talk about pube-shaving and that conservative fellow hate on every-thing that isn’t God. It’s only fair.

Also, as this is the first article, I’ll give you a little more knowledge about beer, namely a brief descrip-tion of how it is made and the dif-ferent types. First off, all beer con-tains water, hops, yeast and some sort of starch, usually malted grain. Many beers also have a clarifying agent that clumps together the sol-ids from the brewing process for removal.

The two main types of beer are lagers and ales. Lagers are brewed at lower temperatures using slow-acting yeast, while ales are brewed at high temperatures with fast-act-ing yeast.

Lagers are crisper and lighter than ales and encompass most of the more popular U.S. beers, such

as those produced by Budweiser, Miller, Coors and (I do hate to mention it) Pabst Blue Ribbon. Ales are more often local-styles, which for us include Firestone, al-most any local brewery and most beers by Sierra Nevada. Speaking of which, this week’s beer selection is Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale.

According to Sierra Nevada’s site, the Celebra-tion Ale is “Won-derfully robust and rich … dry-hopped for a

lively, intense a r o m a .” I n t e n s e is a great

d e s c r i p -tion of this beer. It is ex t reme ly

hoppy and if you enjoy a flavorful beer,

I highly recom-mend it.

The “intense” hoppy flavor is from the process of dry-hopping, which is when the hops are added to the wort (the sugary liquid that the yeast ferments into beer) after it is boiled, thus allowing the hop-py flavor to be much more promi-nent in the final product.

In order to give you a better idea of what the beer is like, I’ve decided to do a side-by-side com-parison with their quite popular pale ale. If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m no beer professional, but I’ll try and describe these brews from a layman’s perspective.

Obviously the Celebration is much “hoppier” than the ale. But hey, when beer’s hoppy, I’m hoppy! Get it? Eh, never mind.

In appearance, the Celebration is a slightly darker amber and a bit cloudier. The Celebration is more bitter than the pale ale. Don’t let this discourage you, though. It isn’t the bad bitter that Coors was bat-tling against with its “Bitter Beer Face” advertising campaign; it is a delicious bitter to accompany a full flavor.

This is a great IPA (indian pale

see Beer, page 8

Last year saw record music sales in U.S.

Todd Martenslos angeles times

Overall U.S. music purchases hit an all-time-high in 2009, as sales of albums, singles, digital tracks and music videos topped 1.5 billion for the second consec-utive year, according to year-end data released today from Nielsen SoundScan. Total music sales were up 2.1% over those of 2008, but the figures capture an industry still in transition.

Album sales took another double-digit drop in 2009, down 12.7% to 373.9 million. Mean-while, digital track sales reached another milestone, up 8.3% from 2008 to more than 1.1 billion in 2009.

What’s more, Nielsen Sound-Scan reports that 89 digital songs exceeded the 1 million sales mark in 2009, compared with 71 songs in 2008, and 2009 marked the first time a song broke the 4 million sales mark in a single year. The lat-ter was achieved by four singles -- “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Got a Feeling” from the Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” and Flo Rida’s “Right Round.”

More distressing for the indus-try, however, is the fact that the rate of growth has significantly slowed.

Though overall music purchases set a record in 2009, the 2.1% in-crease is a fraction of the growth spurt the industry experienced in

2008. That year, overall music pur-chased jumped more than 10%, up from 1.3 billion to 1.5 billion, and digital track sales experienced a major 27% increase. Additionally, although digital album sales were up 16% in 2009 to 76.4 million, they shot up 32% in 2008.

Digital music accounted for 40% of all music purchases in 2009, up from 32% in 2008. Digital album sales, meanwhile, made up 20% of total album sales in 2009. In 2008, digital album sales accounted for 15% of total album sales. An ap-proximate 5% growth rate is con-sistent going back to 2006.

Vinyl continued to be an in-dustry bright spot, although over-all vinyl sales are minuscule in the grand scheme of the industry. Sales of vinyl were up 33% in 2009 to 2.5 million, a new vinyl record. Though vinyl has seen a resurgence in recent years, there are signs that even that market is maturing. For instance, vinyl sales experienced a nearly 90% increase in 2008.

Retailers also took a hit in 2009. Sales at mass merchants accounted for 36% of all album sales, down 1% in 2008. This is, however, the third year in a row that sales fell at mass merchants. Nielsen Sound-Scan reported last year that mass retailers experienced year-to-year growth from 2002 to 2006. Else-where, chain outlets comprised

see Music, page 8

mcclatchy-tribune

The Black Eyed Peas had two of four songs (“Boom Boom Pow” and “I Got a Feeling”) that broke 4 million sales in a single year.

www.mustangdaily.netAlways in color

Not Your Grandma’s Coupons!

Arts

www.mustangdaily.net

Thursday, January 7, 20108 Mustang Daily

Arts

ale) seasonal beer to go out and try. And if you like it, look for other IPAs, like Firestone’s Union Jack IPA or the many, many others that can be found at our local liquor stores.

Next week, along with the gen-eral beer talk, I’ll be sampling an un-determined pilsner, a pale lager style beer, for those of you who prefer to stay away from the ales and darker beers. From there, I’ll make my way to the darker side of beers, ending with a porter, which happens to be my favorite style of beer.

If you too are a lover of beer, which you must be if you made it this far, I encourage you to try the beers I do and let me know what you think by commenting on the posted article at mustangdaily.net.

Well, as we near the end of the beginning, I want to leave you with a few final thoughts. I would like to thank the Internet, Wikipedia.org specifically, for furthering my knowledge about beer.

Also, as Montell Jordan does on Friday nights when he feels alright, and the party is here on the west side, if you’re going to drink, then be responsible: “So I reach for my 40 and I turn it up, designate a driv-er take the keys to my truck.”

And finally, if you’re under 21 years of age, please do not read this article, for I do not want to be the cause of temptation to break civil and moral law.

Adam Plachta is a business adminis-tration senior and Mustang Daily’s new beer columnist. “Beer Me” will run ev-ery Thursday.

Beercontinued from page 7

at different universities; the fo-rum’s organizers wanted to feature people of similar scientific back-grounds and intellectual levels.

A documentary titled “Call and Response” will be shown in Chu-mash Auditorium at 8:45 p.m. on Thursday. The documentary aims to inform that “there are more slaves today than ever in human history” according to the Veritas Web site. The documentary spans from India to Cambodia portray-

ing modern-day slavery like child brothels and slave brick kilns.

“A lot of people will say this shouldn’t be happening, but then it’s like what do we do about it?” Ceccarelli said.

The last presentation of the week is a speech is titled “Why Does a Good God Allow Suffer-ing?” that will be given by Greg Jesson, Ph.D.

Computer engineering senior and Cal Poly Brights club presi-dent Nichola Utschig said that students will probably want to de-bate the topic all night.

“It’s a lot of fun, and that’s al-ways a good debating topic, and I

expect the questions to run long past (the allotted) time on that topic,” he added. “It’s a novel ques-tion that’s been going on for cen-turies.”

All events are open to the pub-lic. At the documentary showing, priority will be given to students.

Although the event promises to draw strong opinions, organizers said it will be a positive learning experience for all.

“It’s not something where dif-ferent religions are going to be pushed or different ideas are going to be proven right or wrong but just a place where dialogue can be had,” Ceccarelli said.

Veritascontinued from page 6

29% of all album sales, com-pared with 33% in 2008, and in-dependent retailers amounted to 6% of overall album sales, down 1% from in 2008.

Customers also stuck with the familiar. The top-selling album of 2009, Taylor Swift’s “Fear-less,” was one that was released in 2008. Of 2009’s top five sell-ers, only Susan Boyle and Andrea Bocelli released their albums in 2009, and both benefited from holiday-timed release dates.

Though Swift’s “Fearless” was 2009’s top-seller, it didn’t take that title by much. The al-bum tallied 3.2 million sales, just 100,000 more than Susan Boyle’s “I Dreamed A Dream.” Boyle can boast that her “Dream” was the best-selling album that was re-leased in 2009, and was the year’s top-selling “Internet album.” The latter denotes that it sold the most physical copies from digital retailers (405,000), as opposed to digital downloads.

Swift was 2008’s top-selling artist, and she would have repeat-ed this year were it not for the sudden death of Michael Jack-son. The King of Pop racked up a total of 8.2 million album sales in 2009, significantly more than Swift’s 4.6 million. But Swift was still on the rise. Last year, she sold slightly more than 4 million cop-ies.

Jackson’s “Number Ones” was the year’s third-best album with 2.3 million sold. The year’s other top-selling albums were as follows: Lady Gaga’s “The

Fame” (2.2 million), Bocelli’s “My Christmas” (2.2 million), “Hannah Montana: The Movie” soundtrack (1.8 million), Black Eyed Peas’ “The E.N.D.” (1.78 million), Eminem’s “Relapse” (1.73 million), Jay-Z’s “The Blue-print 3” (1.5 million) and Kings of Leon’s “Only By the Night” (1.39 million).

After Jackson and Swift, the Beatles were 2009’s top-selling artist, moving more than 3.28 million total units and benefiting from the much-hyped re-release of its catalog. Rounding out the year’s top-10 selling artists were Boyle (3.1 million), Lady Gaga (2.8 million), Bocelli (2.6 mil-lion), Michael Buble (2.28 mil-lion), Eminem (2.1 million), Car-rie Underwood (1.8 million) and the Black Eyed Peas (1.88 mil-lion).

Fashion-conscious pop star Lady Gaga was the year’s top-selling digital artist. She sold more than 15 million tracks in 2009. Last year, Rihanna won the honor, having sold more than 9.9 million tracks. Lady Gaga’s “The Fame” was the top-selling digital album of the year, moving 461,000 downloads.

On the airplay front, Swift’s “You Belong to Me” and “Love Story” were the two most-played songs of 2009, according to Nielsen BDS. “You Belong to Me” was also the most streamed song over the Internet, accruing more than 10 million listenings. But Kanye West may be pleased to know that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” was the most-streamed video of the year (3.2 million), topping Swift’s “Love Story” by 1 million.

Musiccontinued from page 7

mustangdaily.net

shouldn’t be expected to know what that is right away,” she said. “That it’s okay to try things that don’t work out and fail.”

“Blown Sideways Through Life” is also an honest look at the life many of us live. During and after college, many people have jobs, not careers, working to make money necessary to live. A job has minimal impact on a future work life, while a career provides expe-rience and learning to fuel one’s future. Shear makes no apologies for the meandering work path she has chosen. Marshall instead retells Shear’s seemingly menial jobs with dignity and insightful humor.

“We all need jobs, and they’re not there. I think this play explores what we are willing to sacrifice to keep the job we need. How much of yourself are we willing to put away and smile with sand and shit in your mouth to have this job that sustains your livelihood and when is it just not worth it?” Mar-shall said.

One lesson the playwright has learned from all those dead-end jobs is that nobody is just a bus-boy or just a cashier; everyone has “at least one story that will stop your heart.”

Following the play’s rehearsal, senior theater major Ashley Mer-chak was drawn to the minimal-ism and the strong word choice fit for a monologue.

“The simplicity and bareness of the stage enables a stronger au-dience connection, focusing your attention more on her words than the scenery,” Merchak said.

On stage, Marshall empha-sizes self-empowerment. Through Shear’s voice, she finds joy in her everyday jobs.

Theater assistant professor Vir-ginia Anderson agrees the message is less about the visual aspects of the play and more about finding yourself through what you do and despite what you do.

“(The show is) a wonderful opportunity to share in the work of someone who, even in the thick of the college experience, allows us to genuinely celebrate what comes next,” Anderson said.

Marshall holds the stage, and our attention, for 45 minutes, and her energy and commitment to Shear’s storyline never wanes.

“Blown Sideways Through Life” will begin at 7 p.m. tonight and will run until Saturday. Tick-ets are available for $5 by phone: (916) 803-4530, email: mkmar-sha@calpoly.edu and a select few at the door.

Showcontinued from page 8

Op

9

opinion/editorialThursday, January 7, 2010

Editor in chief: Emilie EggerManaging Editor: Alex Kacik

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“You can wear your boobcup shaker thing.”

It’s been almost a year since President Obama took office, and almost a quarter of his first term has passed. But for better or worse, we also wave goodbye to a decade. Some are calling it “The Decade from Hell”— and perhaps rightly so. Whatever your politics, the pe-riod from 2000-2009 was certainly littered with difficult issues and controversies, which will flow into the upcoming election season.

The beginning of the previ-ous decade and the Bush admin-istration brought a new economic policy of trickle-down economics and deregulation, which led to the financial crisis we face today. Ar-guably, as a result of the Republi-cans’ mishandling of the recession and the economy, and the Bush administration’s neglect toward di-sasters like Hurricane Katrina and mishandling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama became the first black President of the United States.

The election of the first black President may not have changed the treatment of every minority in the United States or changed the

hearts of racists, but the clear de-parture from the stain of discrimi-nation on American history is cer-tainly a milestone.

However, when I reflect on 2009, which brought so much hope and promise in the sweeping, am-bitious agenda of Barack Obama, I don’t see it as the year of change that I thought I would. Nor do I view the actions of the Democratic Party — health care reform includ-ed — as reasons to celebrate.

2009 was dominated by the voic-es of the far right, despite the fact that Democrats currently control

all three branches of government. This is mostly because, as Washing-ton Post’s Harold Meyerson said in his Wednesday opinion piece, the conservatives managed to scrape together something liberals weren’t able to: a social movement. The Tea Partiers, led by FOX News’s Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, as well as Rush Limbaugh, are doing their politicians’ work to deconstruct the previously untouchable image of President Obama, and paint the Democrats as weak.

And, to some extent, I agree with that assessment

of Democrats. The Dem-

o c r a t s ,

Presi-d e n t

Obama in-cluded, have been far too lenient to-ward their

Republican counterparts.

I believe in the ideal of compromise

and reaching across the aisle to include the best ideas into

a bill, but in cases in which people’s lives depend on bold leg-islation, which stands in ideological opposition to the Republican Party — such as in health care reform — there’s no room for compromise. And Senate Democrats certainly compromised not just their objec-tives but their values in their ver-sion of the health reform bill.

The argument that Republicans will make this 2010 election season is that they have learned their les-son and will again adhere to their core principles of low taxes and

limited government. What they don’t understand is that the reason they lost the 2008 election is that Americans correctly identified those same conservative principles as the cause of the recession.

However, Democrats may lose the 2010 midterm elections for the opposite reason. If Democrats fail to adhere to their agenda of real health care reform including the public option, and if they do nothing to significantly lower the unemployment rate which is cur-rently around 10 percent (new numbers, which are projected to be more hopeful come out Fri-day), they deserve to lose Senate and House seats.

Referring to the pundit and media response to the attempted al-Qaeda attack on Christmas Day, New York Times columnist David Brooks said last Friday on PBS’s News Hour, “We should have some sort of steady, level-headed response. That is the sign of a resilient nation. We don’t have it. We have had the last week of the whole country going — or at least the punditocracy — going into semi-hysteria over this. And it’s just not the sign of a serious country.”

I think David B r o o k s ’

s t a t e -m e n t

applies to several aspects of American politics — not just

the reactions of the punditoc-racy, in the sense that much of what pervades American politics today is absurdity. This problem stems from an unhealthy emphasis on party beliefs rather than a con-cern for sound ideas and legisla-tion. If Democrats want to retain their legitimacy with the Ameri-can people, they need to fight for the middle and lower class again and take control of public dis-course by seriously acting on their campaign promises.

Stephanie England is an English senior and Mustang Daily political columnist.

Democrats need to adjust strategy to win in 2010

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Sports

Thursday, January 7, 2010 Mustang Daily

Sports11

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It was on this stage five years ago where the Longhorns came of new age as a program. Brown said Texas’ victory over Michigan in the 2005 Rose Bowl game “validated that we were going to be around awhile.”

Alabama (13-0) will win the national championship because it’s the better team, and anyone who thinks fate is involved probably be-lieves in flying saucers and sorcery.

Football games aren’t won with inspiring pregame speeches or be-cause “wouldn’t it be neat if Colt McCoy won four years after Vince Young?”

Football games are won when gigantic men and serious coaches implement meticulous plans.

Alabama Coach Nick Saban is king of “you’ve got to go through your checklist.”

Saban doesn’t care if you like him he may not fancy himself.

Disneyland to him is “clutter,” and that goes for three of the seven dwarfs.

Saban’s idea of fun would be putting barbed wire up around the practice field.

High-strung Urban Meyer very briefly resigned from Florida to take care of his health and spend more quality time at home.

Saban fits the mock headline once suggested for workaholic Tom Coughlin: “Coach quits family to spend more time with team.”

What Saban has done success-fully in Tuscaloosa is what he didn’t do for the Miami Dolphins: make

the NFL blueprint work.Alabama is an NFL team with-

out a salary cap. It was built from scratch, on a cinder block. The Tide rolls by running the ball and stop-ping the run. The Tide won three games this year without quarter-back Greg McElroy throwing for a touchdown.

“You want to make things simple for the players,” Saban said Wednesday.

Ask Alabama senior nose guard Terrence Cody what it’s like to al-low an opposing runner 100 yards and he couldn’t tell you, it hasn’t happened in his two seasons.

Alabama isn’t a Hollywood’s

“Lean on Me;” it’s “Lean on You.”You side with the Crimson Tide

because it will erode Texas. It is the hungrier “organization,” having not won a national title in 17 years.

Alabama is still fed up over last season, when it was No. 1 before closing with losses to Florida in the Southeastern Conference title game and Utah in the Sugar Bowl.

The Utah loss was a rude awak-ening.

“We looked at a Utah team, and we were like, ‘it’s Utah,’ and we weren’t really ready to play,” All-American linebacker Rolando Mc-Clain conceded.

Alabama vowed it would never happen again.

Texas or Alabama, so which is it going to be?

The odds favor Alabama and a kicker being named MVP. The big fear is the two offenses won’t com-bine for 100 ... yards.

What’s it going to sound like when Alabama’s Heisman winner, Mark Ingram, hits a Texas chain saw defense that allows a nation-low 62 rushing yards per game?

When you crunch all the back-of-jersey numbers, what gives?

Texas has some nerve taking that shaky running game against an Alabama defense that tolerates 11 points a game. Moving Alabama’s defensive front is as tough as air-lifting an elephant.

Nebraska’s Ndamukong Suh, by himself, blew up Texas’ offensive game plan in the Big 12 title game, and Alabama’s defense is probably better.

So what are we looking at here ... 3-0?

Probably not, because crazy

things can happen, interceptions, fumbles, kick returns, safeties.

OK, let’s make it 16-15, or 18-17 or 21-19. Let’s say Texas wins but not believe it.

Maybe fate can carry the night for Texas. Or maybe it will be Ala-bama, as a matter of facts.

mcclatchy-tribuneIn Texas’ last bout in the Rose Bowl, Vince Young led the Longhorns to a 41-38 victory in the National Championship game in 2005.

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MUSTANG DAILYSPoRTSmustangdaily.net

Thursday, January 7, 2010

sports editor: Brian De Los Santosmustangdailysports@gmail.com

mustang daily staff report

The Mustangs have 19 wins to show for their past two seasons. Last season alone, Pacific notched 21 wins en route to the Big West conference tournament champi-onship — a milestone Cal Poly hasn’t reached since the 2005-2006 season.

Cal Poly has reached the cham-pionship twice but hasn’t tasted a Big West championship victory in its 13 years in the conference.

This Friday, Cal Poly (4-8, 1-0 Big West) will host Pacific (8-5, 1-0 Big West) in a Big West hard-wood showdown in Mott Gym.

The Mustangs look to build off their first Big West win and Pacific looks to build off a career perfor-mance by senior forward Joe Ford, in a 52-43 win against Cal State Northridge to open its conference schedule. But Cal Poly senior guard Lorenzo Keeler is coming off the game of his life as well, putting up 38 to lift the Mustangs over UC Irvine, 95-81, Monday night. His backcourt teammate Kyle Odister added 23 points, a season high for the freshman.

In their first season under new head coach Joe Callero, the Mus-tangs posted a 0-5 record to start the season on a five-game road trip. Cal Poly streaked with three-con-secutive wins following the winless drought, but was silenced by an-other skid, losing three games that started with a 90-42 loss to Big Ten powerhouse Wisconsin.

Big West conference play is its

shot at turning its losing record around.

In its first of two conference games this weekend, the second coming in a game against UC Da-vis Sunday, Cal Poly will battle a team averages 62.8 points per

game but has lost its last three of four contests.

Pacific streaked to seven wins out of the gates of the 2009-10 cam-paign, but since then has dropped five of its last eight games.

Forward Sam Willard, who is

averaging 10.5 points and 7.8 re-bounds per game, leads the Tigers on the offensive end. Behind him, guard Terrell Smith is averaging 8.7 points per game and center Michael Nunnally posts 8.2 points per game.

Ford adds 6.5 points per game and has been tagged as one of the most versatile players in the Big West. He leads the team in steals (13), blocked shots (14) and field goal percentage (66.7).

“Joe is an energetic guy that can play point or the three spot and he helps us in so many ways,” head coach Bob Thomason said on the Tigers athletic Web site. “Joe brings us energy and activeness right as the game starts every night. I think that Joe should be a starter for us either at the one spot or the three spot.”

Top-scoring accolades for the Mustangs fall on the shoulders of Keeler. On the season, Keeler boasts a 14.7 points per game av-erage.

Odister, who was not in the starting line-up to begin the sea-son, will carry his momentum and hot hand into Mott Gym, hitting 48.8 percent from downtown on the season.

“Kyle has a great perimeter shot,” Cal Poly head coach Joe Cal-lero said in a release. “(He) contin-ues to mature and late in the game, he helped seal the victory (against UC Irvine).”

Sophomore center Will Do-nahue is the only other Mustang to have a double-digit point per game average. Donahue is averag-ing 11.8 rebounds per game to pair with 8.8 rebounds per game, but he has failed to see playing time in his past two games.

Tip-off is set for 7 Friday night.

ryan sidarto mustang daily file photoAfter recording a 3-8 record in its early season schedule, Cal Poly kicked off conference play with a win against UC Irvine. The Mustangs will play conference games against Pacific and UC Davis this weekend.

Mustangs hope to stay undefeated in conference

At the end of the day, the national title game is up for grabsChris Dufresnelos angeles times

LOS ANGELES — Texas will win the national championship because, in La-La land, people like scripts that come full circle, hav-ing their fortunes told and Jupiter aligned with Mars.

There are too many coincidenc-es to think it can go any other way, at least that’s what the palm reader said.

Four years ago, at the Rose Bowl, Texas defeated USC to win the national title.

Before trotting onto the field to lead Texas on the game-winning drive, quarterback Vince Young turned to a skinny redshirt fresh-man holding a clipboard and told

him to pay attention because he was going to be in this position someday.

“Watch what I do,” Young told Colt McCoy.

And then Young went out and won the game.

Having paid close attention, McCoy has led Texas back to the national title game at the Rose Bowl.

“I tried to soak that all in,” Mc-Coy said this week.

One thing McCoy learned: “Your team has to trust you. The team has to want the ball in your hands.”

Young was 30-2 as Texas’ quar-terback; McCoy is 45-7, 13-0 this season.

“What both of them have done is given us a spark,” Texas Coach Mack Brown said. “They’ve given us the ‘it’ factor.”

Another parallel: Young was in-spired after losing the Heisman Tro-phy to USC running back Reggie Bush and got the chance to make his case against Bush’s team in the title game.

This year, McCoy lost the Heis-man Trophy to Alabama running back Mark Ingram and will get the chance to make his case against In-gram’s team in the title game.

Texas will beat Alabama Thurs-day night because its coach also has the “it” factor, as in: He gets

it. Brown knows how to work the room and enjoy the festivities.

His eloquent answer to Wednes-day’s final news conference ques-tion, “When you’re not sleeping to-night, what will be racing through your mind?” was the before-game

football equivalent to Rockne’s halftime speech.

On the awesome responsibility of setting the right tone with his players in the pregame meeting, Brown said: “I’ll have 122 sets of eyes looking at me.”

On what it means to be one of two schools, out of 120, to be on this stage: “You’re the best at what you do in the country and you’ve got 3 hours to prove it.”

mcclatchy-tribuneAlabama running back Mark Ingram, above, will be the sixth player to yield the Heisman Trophy to play in that national title game. No winner since Matt Leinart won the award in 2004 has won the national title.

see Title, page 11