Caitlin Hurwit
Number of articles: 27First article: September 11, 2009
Latest article: May 4, 2012
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Southpaw: GOP austerity measures hurt everyone, especially college grads
As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out in his April 29 op-ed "Wasting Our Minds," the unemployment rate among young Americans under 25 is low—16.5 percent—but only when compared with places like Ireland or Spain, where those same figures soar as high as thirty and fifty percent, respectively.
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Southpaw: ‘Hunger Games’ exposes American racial tensions
The lines were long, the theaters packed, and the total earnings were $248.5 million. In opening weekend sales, "The Hunger Games" has surpassed the staid love triangle of Bella, Edward and Jacob (sorry, Twihards), although "Harry Potter" and "Batman" remain at the head of the pack.
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Southpaw: Santorum: clueless and alienating
"I don't believe in an America where separation of church and state is absolute...To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you makes you throw up." (February 26, "This Week with George Stephanopoulos") "And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age?" (August 29, 2008, Ave Maria University)
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Southpaw: How Southern comfort food builds bridges with the North
Can lemon chess pie solve all of America's problems? It might be just a teeny-tiny stretch, but anyone who's eaten a slice of this heavenly pie would not discount it.
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Southpaw: Closing the distance between readers, the media and the legal system
When the entertainments of a long break run dry—"Hugo" seen (in 3-D), cookies baked (and eaten)—what is a liberal young woman to do to occupy herself for the rest of a five-week break? Download NPR podcasts, obviously, and catch up on back issues of The New Yorker.
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Southpaw: ‘Homeland’ corrects Jack Bauer’s bias
What does the enemy look like? If you were to ask Jack Bauer, of "24" fame, he could tell you any number of things, but his response would likely focus on a few key characteristics: dark, shifty and Muslim.
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Southpaw: 7 billion humans? We may have a problem
It is hard to blame doomsday predictor Harold Camping for believing the world was coming to an end on October 21, 2011.
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Southpaw: Better treatment for U.S. political prisoners
On Wednesday, September 21, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal met their families in Muscat, Oman, after being released from Evin Prison in Iran following two years of imprisonment.
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Southpaw: Obama has not delivered on 2008 promises
Dear President Obama, As much as it pains me to admit it, Sarah Palin may have been right about one thing (but really, only one thing): this hope-y, change-y stuff isn't working out too well for us. Your sweeping, poetic campaign platform of political reform and investment in the American people could have altered the fabric of the country, as difficult as it may have been to implement and as idealistic as it was.
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Southpaw: Bin Laden’s death provides limited resolution
Just over two years into his term in office, President Obama is finally having his moment. He circumvented the state laws in Hawaii last week to release his long-form birth certificate, a major coup against the birther contingent that had been gaining momentum again through the inane ramblings of Donald Trump. A trump card indeed.
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Southpaw: Preventing sexual assault in the military
At the beginning of April, Newsweek magazine ran an exposé on the so-called "secret shame" plaguing the military: in 2010, 50,000 former servicemen tested positive for sexual trauma sustained while in service, up from 30,000 in 2003. In the wake of the repeal of that legal abomination "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," this scandal represents another dimension to the issue of homosexuality in the military: the danger of being openly out while in service comes just as much from the members of one's own unit as it does from commanding officers.
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Southpaw: Representative Michele Bachmann is ‘Sarah 2.0’ of the 2012 Presidential race
In the highly likely event that Michele Bachmann, member of the Tea Party movement and Congressional representative from Minnesota's sixth district, announces her 2012 presidential candidacy, a number of statements are certain to follow. Verbal fumbles, one might call them, are in particular completely unacceptable coming from a current leader and a future potential President of the United States. While speaking before Iowans for Tax Relief this last January, Bachmann spoke of the disparate backgrounds and ethnic identities of our forefathers, and slavery as an unfortunate yet undeniable facet of American history. These are commendable words, to be sure, especially considering the vitriol with which many of her fellow Tea Partiers have reacted to President Obama's skin color and the manufactured case against his American birth.
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Southpaw: Censored expedition reveals societal issues
Last Sunday, the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. closed one of the most controversial exhibits in its 40-year history. The Institution, sponsor of Hide/Seek, which addressed sexuality and sexual identity in American art, drew the ire of art critics and LGBTIQ activists when it made the decision to remove David Wojnarowicz's video installation, "A Fire in My Belly," due to a seconds-long segment of the film depicting ants crawling over a crucifix.
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Southpaw: The government should enforce greater gun control
January was a busy month. Tunisia and Egypt challenged their autocratic governments; the Chinese President Hu Jintao paid a visit to the White House; and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, from Arizona's Eighth Congressional District, was the target of an assassination attempt by Jared Lee Loughner, a mentally unsound twenty-two year old with dubious political affiliations and motivations and one of the most terrifying mug shots in recent memory. The violence at a suburban Safeway near Tucson, Arizona, became a rallying point for pundits on the both the left and the right.
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Southpaw: IDP refugee education lacking in Sri Lanka
An island amid a sea of globalization: Puttalam, Sri Lanka is the largest center for IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) of Muslim background in Sri Lanka. During the initial years of the civil war, in 1990, Muslims living in the Northern province of Sri Lanka—considered by Tamil nationalists to be their cultural homeland—were evicted by Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam soldiers in an attempt at ethnic purification and unification.
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Southpaw: Arizona bill won’t solve immigration problem
How can we guarantee freedom for the hardworking, English-only-speaking American descendants of immigrants in an age of foreign-born, Muslim presidents and the threat of terrorism? Why, enact immigration reform that demands racial profiling, of course. The real threat to American security is, naturally, illegal immigrants. Thanks, Arizona, for showing the rest of us how it's done!
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Southpaw: The Palinator is back and can see nukes from her house
The Palinator strikes again. Following her appalling response to the passage of the landmark health care bill in which she stopped just short of explicitly encouraging physical threats against Democratic leaders, Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama's nuclear expertise into question.
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Southpaw: Political violence cannot be tolerated
Any celebratory moments for the Congressional Democratic leadership following the passage of the historic health care bill on March 21 were quickly staunched as death threats and harassing phone calls began pouring into the offices of senators and members of Congress who had voted for the bill.
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Southpaw: Patriotism without exceptionalism
In the past few years especially, since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the theme of American exceptionalism, first introduced to the cultural consciousness by Alexis de Tocqueville, has cropped up continuously. It has mostly been used by the leaders of the GOP as a justification for selfish and United States-centric foreign policy decisions, such as President George W. Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol and his decision to invade Iraq and "bring democracy" to the people living under Saddam Hussein. It has become a theme again in the past year as conservative pundits attempt to criticize and discredit the policies of the Obama administration.
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Southpaw: A presidency precipitously positioned
Aside from Rush Limbaugh, no one really wants the president of the United States to fail, whether or not one agrees with his positions. Five, 10, or 15 years down the line, it would be more than unfortunate if the greatest legacy of Obama and his administration were failed attempts at bipartisanship in place of important and historical bills.
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Corporations will dilute the power of ordinary Americans
In a landmark decision passed down on January 21, the Supreme Court repudiated an extremely important part of one of the most important examples of bipartisan legislation of the past decade. The McCain-Feingold Bill, passed in 2002 as a result of the efforts of Republican Senator John McCain from Arizona and Russell Feingold, a Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, limited the role of corporations and unions in campaign finance by prohibiting "issue advocacy ads" paid for by these groups; the Court, on the other hand, ruled that such a limitation is unconstitutional under the tenets of the First Amendment.
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Theology should play no role in the development of legislation
By encouraging Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) to refrain from taking Communion, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, the Roman Catholic bishop of Providence, has placed himself at a unique position in the current debate on the separation between church and state. After publicly criticizing the Catholic Church for threatening to oppose the current health care proposal unless it expressly prohibited government-funded abortions, Kennedy apparently received a letter from the bishop asking the representative to abstain from taking Communion.
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The execution of convicts is inappropriate, cruel and irreversible
I was 12 and in 7th grade in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Falls Church, Virginia when the infamous sniper attacks—later discovered to have been masterminded by John Allen Muhammed with the help of his protégé Lee Boyd Malvo—struck the area and suspended day-to-day activity. I waited inside for my parents to pick me up from school, instead of sitting on a bench outside with friends in the fall weather.
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Conservatives must realize they need socialist policies, too
Prepare yourselves, because everything you thought you knew about the politically liberal-conservative continuum is about to be refuted. Fascism, according to a book by conservative writer Jonah Goldberg, is quite paradoxically a facet of liberalism. I'm not buying it, because there is nothing remotely liberal about totalitarianism, just as the actual, tyrannical practice of Communism is not a recognizable continuation of far-left ideals.
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Obama ends age of empire building
For the first time in six years, the end is in sight. On October 12, 2009—six and a half years after President George W. Bush invaded Iraq under the pretense of disabling the country's non-existent nuclear proliferation plants—military spokesman Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza announced a definitive exit strategy for the 120,000 troops remaining in the country. By August 2010, there will be approximately 50,000 soldiers on the ground in Saddam Hussein's former country, training Iraqis to take over and overseeing peaceful operations.
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Right-wing lies bred by xenophobia
Political discourse is no longer about policy—it's a psychological power struggle predicated upon insider-versus-outsider tension. In his bid for the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama's selling point was a keen interest in change and a passion for social justice, portraying himself as a Washington newbie looking to reshuffle the deck of inside-the-Beltway political structures. To liberals, this honest sense of difference was a refreshing change to the good ol' boy antics of George W. Bush. To many conservatives, on the other hand, he was a bit too different. A foreign name, a preference for arugula and Dijon mustard, and black skin gave Obama outsider status—although perhaps not the cache he was looking for.
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Hecklers have nothing to contribute to health care debate
Vitriol, passion and the raised voices of the extreme conservatives have dominated the recent health care debate and the headlines on America's (dwindling population of) print newspapers.