While most students use the website to contact old friends or maintain current ones, others use it as a personal monument and post pictures of themselves drinking or overindulging at parties. Most don’t even stop to consider who might be looking at their page, just so long as they look. In an age where privacy is almost non-existent, students have willingly let their personal lives be privy to anybody.

The bad news is that some of the people looking at a student’s profile include businesses looking into a prospective employee’s background or police trying to bust a keg party. According to sources, businesses are actually rejecting students after seeing pictures of them drinking too much or being rowdy at events. Police are using the web site in order to crack down on campus crime conducted through the site’s social groups.

The dangers of Facebook are obvious, as even university officials, including campus patrol, are tapping into the network to pinpoint underage drinking in the dorms or find inflammatory comments about the school or instructors.

Many students would think this sort of scrutiny would be illegal or a violation of their personal lives, but the reality is that these authority figures have every right to look into how their students or employees present themselves and how they represent their school or business.

The problem isn’t what students do on their own time or who they are friends with. The problem is that students are attaching their names and the names of everyone they know to their behavior. Vanderburgh County Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, a congressional candidate in Indiana, is under fire after his 19-year-old daughter posted pictures of herself drinking at a party. Now he has to defend his daughter’s actions to his voters and the community.

The simple truth is that Facebook can incriminate a person, even unintentionally. Students at Dartmouth College were arrested after they had organized a run onto the field after the school’s Homecoming football game through one of the site’s social groups. The students who were caught thought they were safe, until police found out via the web site.

The message is clear to students: be responsible about the way you conduct yourself online. The world doesn’t need to know about how some cop or professor is out to get you or that you had a blast at a party and felt the need to post pictures of it later on. Keep in mind that there is life after college, and that what you do now can have a definite impact on the future. 

Slaughterhouses remain despite inhumane conditions
Christian McPhate 

“Hey man, nice gun…Hey man, nice shot…What a nice shot!”

God, I love that song.

However, I never thought that the political implications behind this popular Filter tune would come back around to haunt me.

Yet when it comes to our ultra conservative republican party, one can never tell.

On Saturday, Vice President Dick Cheney was out on a hunting trip with associate Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, when Whittington approached Cheney from behind and was accidentally shot by the Vice President who was aiming at a flock of quails.

Of course the republicans have been trying to downplay the whole incident over their conservative controlled media, stating that Cheney didn’t realize the man was approaching from behind, he didn’t announce that he was approaching, and he was just peppered with birdshot without any injury to his eyes!

Don’t Secret Service agents surround the Vice President at all times?

So why the hell didn’t they alert Cheney?

Furthermore, Whittington was shot in the face, neck and chest, which prompted the doctors at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial to admit the victim into the trauma-intensive care unit.

In addition, the Vice President did not report the incident to Texas Department of Public Safety until 24 hours after the event occurred.

If an “accidental” shooting occurred, one would at least notify law enforcement officials about the incident—I mean it was an accident.

I wonder what would happen to someone like me if I went out, accidentally shot someone, and then waited to report the incident to the police until 24 hours after the incident occurred.

I’d be hanging out in the MSU police department’s office, waiting for them to extradite me to the local jail until I was able to prove my innocence.

Because we all know that in the wonderful system that we call “justice,” you are guilty until proven innocent (unless, of course, you’re higher up on the monetary pyramid).

However, this is not the only injustice done to supposed “friends” of the White House.

On Tuesday, the department of Agriculture voted to continue the process on slaughtering horses for human consumption despite objections from congressional leaders.

What in the name of everything that the republicans represent is up with that?

Hell, I thought that a good ol’ country boy ultra conservative Texas cowboy George Bush would be against something like this.

After all, a horse is a cowboy’s best friend—next to a good cattle dog.

How could something like this happen?

Economics.

Did you realize that each year approximately 90,000 horses are sent to the slaughterhouse for human consumption?

That’s right, a cowboy’s closest companion is scheduled to meet the end of a butchers bat when there “economical advantage” is no longer in need. 

In addition, the only two horse slaughterhouses in the United States are right here in North Texas: the Dallas Crown Packaging of Kaufman, Texas, and Beltex Corporation of Fort Worth, Texas.

Rep. Toby Goodman, R-Arlington, tried to amend the bill by allowing the slaughter of only unfit horses.

However, the amendment was tabled since it would have changed the intent of the bill because the horses would not be suitable for food.

Congressional leaders did not try to ban the slaughter outright, but they did try to implement certain tactics that would have yanked the salaries and expenses of inspectors that inspect the horses.

But the Department of Agriculture wishes to use its own inspectors for the horses and stick the companies with the cost, which leads to more money in Big Brother’s pocket.

“The department is thumbing its nose at Congress,” Michael Markarian, an official of the Humane Society of the United States, said. “The lives of America’s horses, which have served us faithfully and provided us with companionships, are at stake.”

I wonder if our good ol’ cowboy rancher President has ever been to a slaughterhouse.

Horses bound for slaughter are not rested, fed or watered during travel. The horses are crammed together in double-deck trucks designed for cattle or pigs.

Under federal law, horses are required to be rendered unconscious before slaughter. This is usually accomplished with a device called a captive bolt gun, which shoots a metal rod directly into the horses’ brain.

However, some of the horses are not stunned in the correct way and are conscious when the butcher hoists them up by the rear leg to have their throats slaughtered.

Trust me, you do not want to even imagine the kind of screams that come out of their mouths when this happens. You can see the fear radiating out of the horses’ eyes before the event takes place.

My father owns a ranch out in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. He raises horses for a living there, and he was disgusted with this turn of events.

Hell, I grew up around horses my whole life. I know quite a bit about these exquisite animals, and I can promise you one thing—horses do have feelings.

Any horse lover or cowboy can tell you this.

So why is “Texan” George W. Bush allowing this inhumane process to continue for a cowboy’s best friend?

Economics

The Bush administration’s priorities do not follow the good ol’ country boys’ point-of-view on life like the conservative-controlled media would like us all to believe.