Recently by Scott Barzilla

I remember sitting in political science classes as a freshman and sophmore at TCU. It was then that I learned the most interesting and powerful fact in politics. Young people don't vote. This shocked me. I remember filling out my first vote for Bill Clinton as a high school senior. I grew up in a political household. My dad was a political science major and history teacher as well. It just seemed natural. Furthermore, I...

I promise this isn't about sports, but sports was the impetus for this diatribe. I was discussing the Roger Clemens situation with other people online when the discussion disintegrated into a political discussion about the merits of Congress. I won't bore you with the facts of the case, so I'll boil it down to its simplest ingredients. Roger Clemens allegedly lied to Congress, so Congress has charged him with perjury. He was formally indicted and...

The gubnatorial race in Texas is getting a lot of attention as it should, but I wanted to put in a simple plug to pay attention to the races in our state legislature. This site gets out to a lot of folks in a lot of places, so I don't want to talk specifics. Each of you might have a different person representing you in Austin. I don't want to be a shill for Democrats...

As we have seen over the past couple of years, prejudice and racism is on the rise. Xenophobia seems to be growing. All of it is threatening to come to a head. However, as I was reading Charles Krauthhammer's column on Sunday, while I usually disagree vehemently with him and did this time, I noticed again what we are dealing with. The GOP, conservative movement, Fox news, and whoever else they claim in their tent...

School officially started on Monday for most students in the Houston area. The first week of school is always a time of hope for teachers, parents, and students. My building has new administration and it that is exciting for most of us. We want to see how everything will work out and those folks have a lot on their plates this year. I wanted to talk about a couple of changes that are coming down...

One area where conservatives have passed us in the the area of anecdotes. Nearly all of them have some story they want to spin to help their campaign. People left of center and way out their left like facts and figures. The problem is that people in the middle and slightly right of middle have abandoned the idea of facts for the most part. Tell them a good story and they are sold. The problem...

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Our forefathers set up an intricate set of basic rights that could be interpreted any number of ways. Certainly, current events has taught us this. However, I am amazed at...

It happened this summer. I was taking my three year old to one of her activities and the instructor made a pointed comment. My daughter has a good disposition. She is generally a loving child and a bright child. She is also a very active child. These things begin innocently enough. I've never been a parent before. I don't know what a one, two, or three year old is supposed to act like.Well, when my...

A lot has been made of the community center/mosque issue and the comments from my last post are indicative of that. A couple of things came out of that discussion that I want to address before this baby gets to bed. The first is that the term tolerance was thrown around and I think tolerance is an important topic to discuss by itself. The second was the notion that this issue was manufactured completely by...

I suppose it is my destiny to draw ire from the regular readers here, but I found something extremely odd this morning. I read Charles Krauthammer's column and found myself agreeing with every word of it. Of course, I am talking about the hot button issue that is mosque being proposed near ground zero. Then again, when 70 percent of the public is against something you aren't just talking about the lunatic fringe. You are...

One of the things that always sticks in my craw is how conservatives tell us they have always been the deficit hawks and how the Democrats are the so-called "tax and spend party." I guess the beats the "just spend party." Economists have argued about the importance of budget sanity. Financial advisors will tell you that it is always best to borrow when interest rates are low and it is always best to save when...

I could have written this two days ago, but I wanted to wait and make sure I got as many of the facts as possible. As everyone in Houston knows, Brian Cushing (linebacker for the Houston Texans) is claiming he has overtrained athlete syndrome (or OAS). Since he has this OAS, his levels of HGC (a hormone mostly found in women that are pregnant) were elevated enough for him to fail a drug test last...

Once upon a time, the United States (as well as the rest of the world) was in economic peril. The private sector was not creating jobs and people were afraid to invest money in the face of a stock market in freefall. A new kind of politician came forward and suggested that government spending could get the United States economy out of deadlock. He would create government jobs in the hopes that their spending would...

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist." -- Keyser SuzeSome of you may remember that line from the movie The Usual Suspects. The movie stands as one of my favorites and it was the line that first came to my mind when I sat through a workshop I had to attend last week. The presenter uttered a line that I took for granted and a number of...

This seems like a stupid question to ask. Of course extremism is a bad thing. Fox News has been making their living off of making the extreme seem palatable. E.J. Dionne wrote about that this week in the Washington Post. You can read the article in its entirety above, but there were a couple of excerpts I found very telling. He is right of course and I could just reprint his article and save a...

My wife had the honor of jury duty this week and became one of the many people that get turned away because they don't match the thinking of the prosecution or defense. Of course, she has gotten further in the process than I ever have. Given that, the case she might have sat on is one of the many that cause of us to rethink the ways our laws and punishments work. I know many...

This week marks my return to school. No, we are not on duty until the middle of the month, but my district (and others) love to require us to go to professional development during the summer. The funny thing about that is that we are not on duty and therefore are not officially being paid. Of course, that is a different story for a different day. Considering that my summer is virtually over on Tuesday,...

People that get paid to analyze politics have fancy titles for these types of things. I am a simple man with a but a bachelors in political science (and masters in counseling). So, I'm not as adept at talking about these things. However, it has occurred to me that Obama (and Democratic Congress) have an uphill battle to clime. I call it proving a negative, but those that are more learned than me can call...

Some of you that may know me have heard this story before. I may even have printed it at the Chronicle or here in the early days. If so, it bears repeating. As an undergraduate, I had the pleasure of writing weekly columns for the TCU Daily Skiff. One semester I was selected to the Opinion Editor. As the Opinion Editor, I managed about a dozen different columnists and was primarily responsible for writing the...

One of our newer readers (at least in terms of comments) challenged my budget proposals and offered some new and interesting suggestions. I say they were interesting because they were well thought out, but they deserved some attention. I thought about replying to them directly, but decided to use the concept as a jumping off point. This is going to be one of those audience participation kind of things. The concept of the sacred cow...