Dear Baylor student at the homecoming pep rally:
First of all, I applaud you for wearing your Baylor Line jersey and for showing Baylor spirit.
I feel it important that, despite our losing record, the fans still exhibit pride for the university. However, there were two things that I did not approve of and, frankly, found inappropriate for a pep rally.
Well, I sure got that one wrong.
Four years ago, on the eve of the last presidential election, I wrote in this space of how the country has spent much of the last three decades “re-litigating” the 1960s, arguing over the changes wrought in that decade.
On Nov. 4, 2008, the United States elected its first African -American president, Barack Obama.
Tuesday, after a tight race against Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, Obama was reelected to a second term as commander in chief.
With the 2012 presidential election around the corner, campaign ads and propaganda published by special interest groups have made national appearances on popular networks like CNN, FOX and even Animal Planet.
One particular ad has stirred up controversy throughout the Web.
Late last week, I contacted the “Political Science Young Guns,” a self-described nickname for three young professors in the political science department at Baylor.
There’s nothing like the sound of a good drum line to get you in the spirit of homecoming.
Even the most jaded of seniors and alumni find themselves drawn to the sound of the referee’s echoing shouts in the stadium, to the smell of funnel cake and corn dogs, to the sound of an unknown cover band singing in the night and to the giant pile of wood reeking of gasoline in the middle of Fountain Mall.
We were there. We all saw it. The colossal pillar of fire that is the long-lived symbol of Baylor homecoming.
Like many of you I am a frequent visitor to the beach.
I fell in love with Texas beaches in 1955. I was 6 years old when I built my first sand castle on Stewart Beach. I built my last one with Tori, my 6 year-old granddaughter, just a few weeks ago. Public beach access is very important to me. I want Tori to be able to enjoy our coast as much as I have. Every visitor to the coast should have that same opportunity.
“And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” — Richard Mourdock, GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Life is sacred.
