Despite President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline plan, Senate Republicans want to add an amendment to the transportation bill that would mandate construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The vote is expected to take place Tuesday.

Don't let the promise of jobs and cheaper gas prices fool you; as the Natural Resources Defense Council reports, the pipeline company itself stated that only a few hundred permanent jobs will be created for Americans-the State Department estimated fewer than 100 jobs.  This pipeline was created to help big oil companies, not the United States. What Big Oil also fails to clarify is that this pipeline is for export, meaning gas prices in the United States would not become lower but would actually increase.

The environmental damages will be massive. Greenhouse gas emissions and destruction of Canada's great Boreal Forest will prove to be a higher cost to the mythical "benefits" of this pipeline. Since this pipeline would be for tar sands extraction, it will be more likely to spill and harder to clean up.

As published in the Huffington Post

Here's something you don't hear every day--a Secretary of Defense talking about reducing military spending. Yet Secretary Robert Gates has recently discussed the possibility of eliminating some weapons systems, command structures and other items which are no longer necessary for national security.

According to Miriam Pemberton, a principle author of a newly released report on our nation's security budget, Gates has proposed to "mount the most serious effort to restrain his own budget of any Defense Secretary since the post-Cold War period." Whether these plans are aspirational or will actually be achieved is another story.

While this is noteworthy, it brings up another question: where would the money go? If dollars previously spent on certain military projects are simply shifted to other Defense department programs, is the U.S. really going to be any safer as a result?

A lecture on world opinion towards the United States in its transition to the Obama era was led by Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org and Randa Slim of the United States Institute for Peace on July 7.  Mr. Kull opened the meeting with a series of graphs which depicted the attitudes of numerous key nations regarding the U.S.  The graphs showed that throughout most of the world, there has been an overall improvement in opinion towards the United States since President Obama took office.  However, Mr.

Every generation has its cross to bear. Those born at the turn of the 20th century survived two world wars. Baby boomers practiced hiding under their school desks in case of a nuclear attack during the peak of the Cold War. While I consider bad hairstyles and horrendous wardrobes the downfall of the 80s, most would probably point to the emerging popularity and complexity of technological devices. Our current generation has two vital challenges that now lay before us: ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons and stopping global warming.