"When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right."

Although John Kerry looks funny, this quote is true and something that I think any person can stand behind.

Another quote that struck me today was said by Mickey Edwards when he said "Believe it or not, no Congressman has ever heard the terms 'trustee' or 'delegate'." These are two words that Dr. Alexander taught in Modern Political Conflicts 105 that it seems are irrelevant as a Congressman, but as a scholar are common terms.

Today's morning session from 11am to 12:20pm turned into a circus as there were people in the crowd who felt the way Mickey Edwards analyzed the Bush Administration and Bush's Iraq policy was anti-Bush, although Mickey clearly stated that he was in support of almost every Bush Administration policy choice. This caused somewhat of a fiasco during the rest of the morning session.

Other things which Mickey Edwards talked about was that Congressman are in the race for themselves, not for their parties. There are purposes for the political parties, however a candidate's only job is to get themselves elected, even if the rest of the people elected are from different parties. One specific purpose of the parties is to organize voting lists and dinners while the candidate's job to the party is essentially to raise money for the party. Now, is that what we were taught in political science classes? I don't remember ever being taught that in any political science class, but I guess that's because political science deals more with theory and how government is supposed to work, not necessarily how it actually does work.

Other topics covered during the morning session was the evolution of the presidency from 1861 to Bush's presidency. Although there have been ups and downs in the amount of power a president had during that time, the case was made today that President Bush has the most power of any President of any time during the the history of the United States. Bush has used the most signing statments of any president with over 1100 instances where he says that he does not have to follow the law, although everyone else does. With disobeying many laws, including the law requiring warrants for all wire taps, Bush committed an impeachable offense by conducting electronic surveillance in violation of federal law.

Also today, we had a tour of the Excel Energy Center where there is the largest HD television in the world, aside from the one used at the Olympics. Other figures used helped to put everything into a staggering scale, such as $50 million for security and $50 million for renovations and other costs to get the arena ready for the convention. Everything else in the convention hall and the statistics were also very impressive.

With the end of the day came a reception dinner where I conducted my first interview of an Augsburg adult student that is a Palestinian American who got his citizenship on September 11, 2001. This was probably the most interesting thing that I have done all week thus far and was intriguing beyond my expectations. My interview was about the topics of Islam and the Israel-Palestine conflict. I will elaborate at a later date though, because currently I am hungry and tired.

One more thing thing, the new language for today was "parochialism" in the context of politics, defined as a very narrow viewpoint.

That's all. I'm off to bed.

Technorati Tags: