Opinion
 

Staff Editorial

Matthew Dulin        Ray Hafner       Geronimo Rodriguez
         Shaun Salnave          Cara Sarelli

Fair and balanced ?

 The decision of what freedoms of expression are allowed is a tricky thing apparently.
 A poetry symposium, organized by First Lady Laura Bush and scheduled for Feb. 12 was cancelled in late January when word got out that the invited poets were planning on performing anti-war pieces. 

 New York City has denied the organization United for Peace and Justice the right to assemble in an anti-war protest outside of the United Nations.
 A student at Klein High School is has to battle for permission to form a Gay-Straight Alliance club.

 But Bill OiReilly can refer to Mexicans as "wetbacks" on national television.
 On his show Feb. 6, OiReilly, in a pretentious spiel, shoveled his views of how illegal immigration could be prevented in the face of Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), who interestingly enough is Hispanic. 

 How does this man get on television? And with no less than his own show? OiReillyis moronic arguments spiraled further toward disgrace to modern Americans when he told Reyes, in defense of putting more patrols on the border, "We'd save lives because Mexican wetbacks, whatever you want to call them, the coyotes -- they're not going to do what they're doing now … we save lives, all right, and we seal it down and make it 100 times harder to come across."

 Wetbacks? Coyotes? Who in America is OiReilly representing when he states his viewpoints? He certainly doesnit speak for Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Glick appeared on the show Feb. 5 as one who signed Not in Our Nameis petition stating he disagreed with President Bushis actions in his War on Terror. When Glick stated his opinions on the war, and also his and his fatheris opinion that President Bush was not legitimately elected, OiReilly cut his mic off.

 Itis a shame that for a rich, white man with nothing to say to cut anotheris mic off and stifle something that many need to hear is a common occurrence. 
 A major TV network can pay a man to host a talk show where he will badmouth the fastest growing population of people in his own country, but Marilyn Nelson, Connecticutis poet laureate, canit read a poem at the White House. 
 

The environment was at the center of this controversy. Rather than tackle the true source of the problem (the fact that Houston is a mecca for refineries), the TNRCC elected to solve our environmental woes by dropping the speed limit by 15 miles per hour. Send comments to dccampus@mail.uh.edu