Miami Student

Senator John Kerry has been accusing President Bush of planning a "January surprise" in the event that he wins the election. Kerry has charged that Bush, who has not made the privatization of social security a central issue in this year's election, plans to force legislation through Congress to create personal retirement accounts. There are a couple of caveats that must be added to Kerry's statements. Such legislation will still have to pass through both the U.S. House and the Senate, which will likely be relatively evenly divided. Merely because Bush declares such reform as a goal for his administration does not mean it will happen. Even if the president were able to push such a reform into the limelight of national politics, the measure would certainly receive a great deal of debate prior to being approved by Congress. Kerry fails to recognize that Bush was elected to his first term in office with the creation of personal retirement accounts as one of his goals. Perhaps Kerry has forgotten 2000 as Al Gore only wishes he could, but Bush's support for reform of the social security system has not come out of left field. …

Reactionary ideologue Ann Coulter is coming to Miami next week courtesy of the College Republicans, which is this columnist's dream come true. However, the good Lord didn't see fit to set the date of this column for after her visit, so I'll just have to improvise. If Bush can go to war before he knows what's going on in a country, then I can take on Coulter before she actually says anything. So here is what my column would look like anyway had I written it after seeing Ms. Coulter: Two conclusions can be drawn from Ann Coulter's speech before a sold-out audience at Miami this week. First, she is right-wing, bat-sh** crazy. Ann Coulter makes Bill O'Reilly look like Martin Luther King Jr. …

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. True. Interestingly, of those people who kill other people, approximately 67 percent did so with a gun. This statistic reported by the FBI's Crime in the United States does not even begin to take up the issue of accidental deaths and injuries caused by guns. It does not explain the ease with which a person who has a fit of rage or insanity can pick up a gun and use it, far more easily than they could do with a knife or a heavy object. It's as easy as pulling out an AK-47 assault rifle AND, in case that's not enough, a 9 mm handgun, like Shane Griffin did at the Miami Mobile Home Court on College Corner Road on Monday. …