The Student Insurgent tonight asked the Student Senate for $850 in surplus funds in order to take eight members to the Eleventh Annual Anarchist Book Fair. This is their second special request of the year for funds to go on a trip, the first asking for $800 out of surplus to attend a conference. They wanted to bring eight people along on their trip, but it was quickly revealed that some of the people going were not fee-paying students. While the ASUO Executive deserves credit for bringing the issue to the attention of the Senate, it was Don Goldman who admitted when pressed that two of the people coming along were not fee-paying students. Who were the two people? One is unknown, but the other was John Walsh, the on campus NORML advocate who’s been a part of the Insurgent Collective for 12 years and is unfortunately not related to ASUO President Adam Walsh.

Considering that paying for non-fee students to go on trips is a gross violation of the spirit- if not the letter- of the Green Tape Notebook, the Senate ultimately voted to stop discussion with only Mike Filippelli dissenting.

The ODE is all in a tizzy over David Horowitz’s latest book, leading them to write the following in today’s editorial:

Some University professors do hold views that some would term radical, but as long as these professors allow students to disagree, we believe these so-called radicals contribute to a needed diversity of intellectual opinions on campus.

Yeah, there’s clearly a need for more far-left professors on this campus and in the Sociology department. Good call, ODE. I wonder if reporter Ryan Knutson asked Sociology department head Robert O’Brien how many socially conservative Republicans the department employs. Do they throw an office party on Reagan’s birthday? And how many “radical” right-wing professors are employed at the UO? I’d like to see that blacklist.

Anyways, here’s what Horowitz himself has to say about the book’s subtitle and message:

It was the publisher who actually gave The Professors its subtitle: “The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.” And this worried me. In writing the book, it had not been my intention to justify such a title. In fact, the adjective “dangerous” does not appear among the 112,000 words of its text. When my publisher proposed the subtitle, the book was already finished – the hundred odd professors already selected. The fact that there were obscure professors in the book like Marc Becker of Truman State, and moderate leftists like Michael Berube and Todd Gitlin, concerned me. I was sure they and other more culpable subjects would pounce on the phrase and claim, however absurdly, that it was a red flag signaling a “witch-hunt.” In other words, it would provide its enemies with an opportunity to make it look ridiculous and sinister at the same time (the contradiction would not bother them in the least).

[…]

A principal theme of my book (unmentioned by its critics) is that faculty radicals have transformed entire departments and fields into political parties whose agendas have little or no relation to any activity that could be called scholarly. Thus Women’s Studies are not about an academic inquiry into the nature, history and sociology of women. Instead, Women’s Studies is the Party of Feminism on campus.

While Horowitz’s insufferable self-obsession pisses me off to no end, he’s absolutely spot-on in the latter paragraph.

Personally I couldn’t care less if Prof. Foster is a Marxist or not– anyone who’s in the Sociology department knows its purpose is to act as an echo chamber, and Foster certainly plays his role well. But I must say that I’d prefer it if he were paid in wooden clogs, cheap vodka and dormitory housing rather than a bourgeoisie’s salary.

Tommy‘s been my favorite contemporary artist for quite some time, but it wasn’t until reading this today that I really grew a true respect for the man rather than the artist:

In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee’s wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman’s breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.

And then there is Kinkade’s proclivity for “ritual territory marking,” as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

“This one’s for you, Walt,” the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade’s company, in an interview.

We can always use more original artwork in the OC, and I know I can always stand to have a little more light glinting off my soul. If it all falls down, you know you have a home here at Oregon, Tommy. We will have to ask you to stop groping women, of course.

First of all, happy birthday to me.

 Secondly: Reason magazine and Reason Online are looking for internship applicants.  Come on, OCers, show them your chops.  Application deadline is March 26.

NBA fans know how good of a defender Andrei “AK-47” Kirilenko is. But they might not know much about his personal life. Here’s a peek:

Masha Lopatova, a former Russian pop star who has been married to the Jazz forward for nearly six years, understands the temptation NBA players are faced with as they travel around the country for seven months a year. And she believes that forbidding something only makes it more tempting. That’s why, she revealed in a story in the current issue of ESPN The Magazine, she allows Kirilenko an “allowance” of one night per year with another woman.

“What’s forbidden is always desirable. And athletes, particularly men, are susceptible to all the things they are offered,” Lopatova said before the Jazz’s loss to Charlotte on Wednesday. “It’s the same way raising children – If I tell my child, ‘No pizza, no pizza, no pizza,’ what does he want more than anything? Pizza.

Kirilenko insists he has not yet used his allowance. Is this the perfect relationship or the devil’s handiwork?

Worried that a political comic could attack you at any point? So are we.

Watch OSPIRG engage in strawman tactics to counter Gabe Bradley’s arguments. Oh, and here’s a gem:

These days, it is tough to create social change when true special interest groups, with lots of money to throw around, have so much influence over our state and national political process. OSPIRG provides an effective forum for students to create change.