Category: Opinion

The questions University of Wisconsin System leaders are asking might pertain to how higher education is funded in our state, but the ramifications are much deeper than the dollars and cents ultimately approved. They get to the heart of who we are and how we plan to economically compete now and in the future.

The DNA exonerations not only have corrected injustices on a scale previously unimagined, they also have provided an unprecedented opportunity to learn about the causes of and remedies for error in criminal cases. These cases reveal not isolated mistakes, but systemic flaws. They reveal that wrongful convictions have identifiable causes, causes that can be addressed. Because so much is at stake, they must be addressed.

The cases teach that the leading causes of wrongful convictions include eyewitness identification error, police interrogation tactics that produce false confessions, flawed forensic science evidence, false jailhouse snitch testimony, prosecutorial misconduct and inadequate defense counsel. [A column by Keith Findley, clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project and president of the Innocence Network.]

One crucial lesson from the BP oil spill is that measures to speed licensing, cut corners on safety and undermine regulation can lead to tragic consequences. Yet Congress appears on the verge of repeating mistakes that led to the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf. Federal lawmakers are weighing a BP-type deregulation of new nuclear reactors — the one energy source in which damage from a major accident could dwarf harm done by a ruptured offshore oil well.

(Dr. Jeffrey Patterson is president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. This column was provided by the American Forum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational organization.

….I?ve been biking to work for about seven years now. I?ve been honked at, yelled at, spit on, squeezed to the curb until I?ve lost my balance. I?ve been cut off repeatedly by right turners. Drivers sometimes stop at a stop sign, look straight at me as I pedal their way, then bolt, forcing me into a skid.

Quoted: David Noyce, associate professor of civil and environment engineering, and alumnus Bob Mionske

The use of animals in scientific research is a contentious and emotional issue. It is also indispensable, because of its life-saving benefits to human health, writes UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin.

Pardon me if I shed no tears over the death of Dwight Armstrong. As the Associated Press reports in todayâ??s Gazette, Armstrong was a heavy smoker and died Sunday at UW Hospital in Madison after battling lung cancer.

The new “Karate Kid” with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith has supposedly learned from the past, setting out to poke holes in some stereotypes about Asians.

Cystic fibrosis fills childrenâ??s lungs with infections. Duchenne muscular dystrophy weakens, paralyzes and kills boys. Huntingtonâ??s disease robs middle-aged men and women of their minds. For a decade, Oleg Verlinsky and colleagues at Chicagoâ??s Regenerative Genetics Institute created human embryonic stem cells marked with these diseases and others â?? made from embryos donated by suffering families â?? hoping to combat these illnesses.On Thursday, A National Institutes of Health panel ruled one sentence of legal language in the consent form used by RGI meant these hundreds of cell “lines”, or colonies, shouldnâ??t receive federal research funding. “They will remain frozen, or discarded, forever,” Verlinsky says. “Without federal support, no one will use them for research.”

Hereâ??s a partial list of federal agencies and academic groups that regulate if, how and when animals are used in research settings.

It was a remarkable event. Twenty million Americans came together in small towns and major cities to take action on April 22, 1970. The first Earth Day was the largest grass-roots demonstration in American history. Almost overnight, the right to a clean and healthy environment, championed across time and the political spectrum by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Rachel Carson, became the nationâ??s chorus. A decade of sweeping environmental legislation and reform followed.

Forty years later, coalitions of citizens – concerned about climate change, food security, health, energy supplies and clean water – still work to address local and global environmental challenges. As we celebrate this week the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the past informs our present and future. A column by Gregg Mitman, interim director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Eric Massa story predictably and mercifully has gone. Even Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh understood when Massaâ??s auditions were over, and they cut him loose. But our intrepid media folks always are on the hunt for something â??new,â? something â??hotâ? to fill their space.

Recently, the ABC evening news offered us the ultimately silly and misplaced story of Chief Justice John Robertsâ?? remarks about President Barack Obamaâ??s criticism of his courtâ??s recent ruling, which held that corporate campaign contributions fell under â??free speech,â? and could not be regulated. Once again, historical memory is sacrificed to the interests of a â??good storyâ?; we have what historian Daniel Boorstin described as a â??pseudo event.â?

Stanley Kutler is a UW-Madison professor emeritus of history

Part of me – the part thatâ??s been writing tuition checks for years to the University of Wisconsin for my kids – wanted to join in the protest at UWM over the cost of a college education. But I for sure would not be climbing any rain gutters to get to the chancellor. The number of police officers I want to push or pelt with snowballs on any given day is around zero. And count me out when the chanting turns this ridiculous: “No cost, no fees, education should be free.”

When a group of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students clashed with police and security outside a campus office last week, it was a reminder of the days when it was the norm for college students to protest.The use of pepper spray by police during arrests at the protest was criticized by some, including the American Civil Liberties Union. The UWM chancellor decried the actions of protesters while expressing his support for freedom of speech.

Politics are paralyzed. The minority party is motivated by a desire to have the president of the United States fail, while the squishy majority is in disarray, drawing into question its capacity to govern. Congressional leadership of both parties is inept and ineffective. The result is drift and inertia, a pathetic situation befitting a banana republic.

Divided government need not mean gridlock, however. Political history demonstrates that despite partisan differences and jockeying for favor, the system works.