Republicans trying to keep students from the polls

Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote.

Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.

Seven states have already passed strict laws requiring a government-issued ID (like a driver’s license or a passport) to vote, which many students don’t have, and 27 others are considering such measures. Many of those laws have been interpreted as prohibiting out-of-state driver’s licenses from being used for voting.

It’s all part of a widespread Republican effort to restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs. On Friday, the Justice Department, finally taking action against these abuses, blocked the new voter ID law in South Carolina.

Republicans usually don’t want to acknowledge that their purpose is to turn away voters, especially when race is involved, so they invented an explanation, claiming that stricter ID laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. In fact, there is almost no voter fraud in America to prevent.

William O’Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are “foolish” and tend to “vote their feelings” because they lack life experience. “Voting as a liberal,” he said, “that’s what kids do.” And that’s why, he said, he supported measures to prohibit students from voting from their college addresses and to end same-day registration. New Hampshire Republicans even tried to pass a bill that would have kept students who previously lived elsewhere from voting in the state; fortunately, the measure failed, as did the others Mr. O’Brien favored.

Many students have taken advantage of Election Day registration laws, which is one reason Maine Republicans passed a law eliminating the practice. Voters restored it last month, but Republican lawmakers there are already trying new ways to restrict voting. The secretary of state said he was investigating students who are registered to vote in the state but pay out-of-state tuition.

Wisconsin once made it easy for students to vote, making it one of the leading states in turnout of younger voters in 2004 and 2008. When Republicans swept into power there last year, they undid all of that, imposing requirements that invalidated the use of virtually all college ID cards in voter registration. Colleges are scrambling to change their cards to add signatures and expiration dates, but it’s not clear whether the state will let them.

Imposing these restrictions to win an election will embitter a generation of students in its first encounter with the machinery of democracy.

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Facebook goes back to the past

Remember those karaoke videos from three years ago that somehow wound up on Facebook? They were embarrassing for the few hours they spent at the top of your Facebook profile, and then they were buried under a cascade of new updates.

But on Thursday, Facebook started rolling out a revamped profile design called Timeline that makes a user’s entire history of photos, links and other things shared on Facebook much more accessible with a single click. This may be the first moment that many of Facebook’s 800 million members realize just how many digital breadcrumbs they’ve been leaving on the site — and on the Web in general.

For better or worse, the new format is likely to bring back a lot of old memories. But going forward, it could also make it harder to shed past identities — something that people growing up with Facebook might struggle with as they transition from high school to college, and from there to the working world.

“There’s no act too small to record on your permanent record,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard who studies how the Internet affects society. “All of the mouse droppings that appear as we migrate around the Web will be saved.”

The old Facebook profile page shows the most recent items a user has posted, along with things like photos of them posted by others. But Timeline creates a scrapbook-like montage, assembling photos, links and updates for each month and year since they signed up for Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, introduced Timeline in late September during the company’s annual developer conference. He described it as a way to get a more comprehensive portrait of a Facebook user than by simply reading updates or looking at a profile picture.

Facebook said in a blog post on Thursday that users could either wait to get a notification about Timeline on their pages, or go to facebook.com/about/timeline to activate it immediately. Eventually all profiles will be switched to the new look.

Some tech-minded users have been able to access Timeline early using a workaround meant for developers. They say that while the design may be attractive, it is unnerving to realize just how much information they’ve been feeding into Facebook over the past few years.

Interesting article about religion, politics, and science: The Evangelical Rejection of Reason

THE Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.

The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.

Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary.

Fundamentalism appeals to evangelicals who have become convinced that their country has been overrun by a vast secular conspiracy; denial is the simplest and most attractive response to change. They have been scarred by the elimination of prayer in schools; the removal of nativity scenes from public places; the increasing legitimacy of abortion and homosexuality; the persistence of pornography and drug abuse; and acceptance of other religions and of atheism.

More information about the upcoming "Arrested Development" movie and mini-season

Credit: Fox

Captain Ahab had Moby-Dick; Linus van Pelt had the Great Pumpkin; and, in the five years since “Arrested Development” has gone off the air, fans of that underdog Fox comedy series have spent their lives pining for a film adaptation that would further the adventures of its deeply dysfunctional Bluth clan.

Mitchell Hurwitz, the creator of “Arrested Development,” and cast members including Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Michael Cera have also done their part to keep hopes of a movie alive, mentioning the project in numerous interviews, often along with apologies for why it still wasn’t happening yet.

On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Hurwitz tossed a few more crumbs to the “Arrested Development” faithful at a New Yorker Festival event that reunited him with the show’s ensemble cast, telling the audience that a movie was still in the works, along with a new set of television episodes that would serve as a prelude to the film.

Asked by the event’s moderator, Nancy Franklin, for an update on the movie, Mr. Hurwitz said, “We’re 80 percent of the way to an answer,” which was understandably greeted by some laughter.

Mr. Hurwitz went on to say that he and Ron Howard, the director and producer who was the “Arrested Development” narrator, “had been talking about this for ages and trying to get this going.”

Mr. Hurwitz continued: “We don’t completely own the property, there are business people involved and studios and that kind of thing. Just creatively, I have been working on the screenplay for a long time and found that as time went by, there was so much more to the story. In fact, where everyone’s been for five years became a big part of the story. So in working on the screenplay, I found even if I just gave five minutes per character to that back story, we were halfway through the movie before the characters got together.”


So, Mr. Hurwitz said, “We’re trying to do a limited-run series into the movie.” After a wave of excited applause died down, he continued, “We’re basically hoping to do nine or 10 episodes, with almost one character per episode.”

USPS Will Begin Honoring Living Celebrities

Let’s face it: the United States Postal Service has not been known for its pizazz in stamp design. But starting next year, along with weather vanes and bonsai plants, there may be some startling new options for those who choose to pay their bills by mail and send their love letters sealed with a kiss.

The service announced Monday that it was tossing out its rule that its stamps honor only dead individuals and will be opening up this postage-stamp-size billboard space to the living, as well.

Eager — some might say desperate — to engage the public as postal revenues decline, the service has asked citizens to jump on Facebook and Twitter and submit the names of five living people they would like to commemorate.

Postal officials said they hoped the move would create some excitement and even prompt some young people to engage with snail mail, at least for special occasions.

Credit: New York Times

“Having really nice, relevant, interesting, fun stamps might make a difference in people’s decisions to mail a letter,” said Stephen Kearney, the Postal Service’s manager of stamp services. “This is such a sea change.”

When the news broke Monday on the Web sites of various news organizations, including The New York Times, readers began promoting their favorite candidates. Popular nominees included Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Bob Dylan. CBS News gave readers a choice, listing options like Neil Armstrong (very popular) and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook (not so much).

Mr. Kearney said that while the Postal Service is enjoying perusing the responses, its choice would not depend on such polls to pick the first living honorees. Its Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee will sift through the suggestions and make a recommendation to the postmaster general, who will make the final decision.

The Postal Service usually receives about 40,000 suggestions a year, but this move is likely to increase that number.

In one famous instance, the postmaster himself — not the committee — came up with a person to put on a stamp, and it turned out to be the most popular stamp ever: Elvis Presley, who died in 1977. The Postal Service did survey citizens on whether to use an image of the heavier older Elvis or the slender young Elvis. In what was then an unprecedented move, preaddressed ballots were distributed in post offices throughout the country. More than one million ballots were received — the young Elvis was the overwhelming choice, and the stamp was issued in 1993.

The only other person among the top 10 best-selling stamps of all time was Marilyn Monroe, who died in 1962. Her stamp was issued in 1995.

Mr. Kearney said that the usual three-year process to move a stamp from suggestion to implementation would be condensed so that at least one stamp with a living person would be available later next year, along with 34 other new stamps already scheduled for release.

Some, including stamp collectors, were worried about the postal service’s decision to break with tradition and use living people, saying it could allow the influence of commercial interests or result in fly-by-night people with no lasting legacy.

“Why not just sell ad space on stamps?” one reader wrote on nytimes.com.

But Mr. Kearney said the critics should not worry.

“I want to reassure everyone that we won’t let this cheapen the value of being on stamps,” he said.

Some readers had other concerns. One Twitter user asked, “What’s a stamp?”

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