Letters to the Editor (Editorial Policies)
Posted on October 23, 2006

Goodlatte brings his quest to end Internet gambling to the Valley

The Internet-gambling business has become a $12 billion industry this year alone, with $6 billion of that going to unregulated, offshore businesses. Gambling is currently illegal in the United States, except for in those states that allow and regulate it. The sudden boom of Internet gambling has allowed for a form of gambling that is unregulated by any authority and often untaxed, due to the fact that a large portion of the money goes to businesses offshore. Rep. Goodlatte (R-6th) helped introduce a bill to Congress, H.R. 3125 or the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act, to curb illegal Internet gambling. Therefore, Internet gambling would fall under the same regulations as other gambling. This bill has even been supported by the major sports organizations, including the NFL, NBA, MLB and NCAA, due to the fact that they are concerned by the recent rise in gambling rates. For students who are interested about learning more about the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act, Representative Goodlatte will be discussing this bill, along with other issues pertinent to college students, today at 7:30 p.m. in HHS room 1302. He will host a question-and-answer session afterward so that students may have their questions about recent events and issues answered.

Kathryn McAbee, senior political science and English major

Getting back to the issues means the race-bating needs to stop

I find it very ironic that Mr. Riedel titled his article “Webb is a racist,” and then closed it with asking campaign to get “back to the issues.”

First off, Mr. Riedel tells the story of Webb and his fellow ROTC at USC in the early 1960s, and then asks us the reader, for “substantial evidence” of something Allen did “even close to this severity?” Well, maybe Mr. Riedel missed the recent articles in the Washington Post outlining, in detail, a story about a much younger Allen. One time while Allen was hunting with a group of friends, he asked where the nearest black neighborhood was. Then he proceeded to cut off the head of one of the deer he shot and placed it in the mailbox of a black family.

But maybe Mr. Riedel and I can agree on one thing: let’s get back to the issues. The thing to note is not what happened 30 years ago, but rather what is happening right now. What Riedel called a macaca “gaffe” in regards to the comment made by George Allen in August is more than that. It took Allen 10 days to apologize to S.R. Sidarth. What makes it worse is the fact a month later, Allen was attending a campaign rally and brought up the “gaffe” incident and then laughed about it.

The facts are these: Allen has voted with President Bush 96 percent of the time and is more interested in serving his party than the people of Virginia. Jim Webb is a decorated war veteran and a former Secretary of the Navy under the Reagan administration. He will vote with Virginia’s best interest in mind and promise to serve Virginia for all six years as a senator, rather than having presidential ambitions in 2008.

Jessica Killeen, senior Spanish and political science major

Fearmongering is the truly hypocritical election tactic

A myriad of thoughts crossed my mind after reading Craig Finkelstein’s column “Hypocrisy at its best,” from the Oct. 19 issue of The Breeze. Mr. Finkelstein throws out numerous unsubstantiated claims such as accusing Democrats of “voting to ensure that America is less safe than before Sept. 11” and opposing “the use of any methods America has enacted post-Sept. 11 to prevent another major attack from happening.” Without specific examples, these accusations look very much like what they are — politically charged jargon, void of any real meritorious value. I would recommend that the next time he attempts to make such loaded statements that he have some semblance of a body of evidence to back them up.

He also calls into question the media circus surrounding the Mark Foley sex scandal, and essentially equates the actions of Mark Foley (those being at the very least attempting to illicit sex from minors, pedophilia, if you will) to Bill Clinton’s notorious adulterous affair during his stay in the Oval Office. Most would agree that any sort of moral judgments passed in the rest of the piece would be null and void after making no moral distinction whatsoever between sex involving two consenting adults and sex between an adult and a child. I think Mr. Finkelstein made this move deliberately and it was somewhat disappointing considering he clearly has a handle on the use of the English language and should have been able to make himself clear.

Finally, I also noticed that the focus of the piece went from analyzing the Bush-hating of the Democratic Party, to attempting to scare people into voting Republican. It felt both irresponsible and detrimental to the political dialogue to dodge any sort of statement about issues and cut towards using fear as a tool. And after all, at its heart, using fear to motivate the actions of groups of people is the very definition of terrorism. Oh, sweet irony.

Jonathan Baker, junior philosophy major