Hosted by the College Democrats, International Relations Club, GU Pride and M.E.Ch.A, Senator Bob Casey (D-Penn.) spoke last night to an eager audience of mostly Pennsylvania residents and other interested Hoyas. Casey assumed office in 2007 after defeating incumbent Rick Santorum, who was a Republican presidential contender until recently.

The Senator started his remarks by applauding Jesuit education—he is a Holy Cross alum—and stressing the importance of service. “We need you,” he said, “you will learn so much from the service you provide.”

Casey serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and specifically the subcommittee on Near East, South and Central Asian Affairs. Considering that much of United States’ current obligations and concerns abroad fall in this region, the senator nonchalantly remarked, “it’s a pretty busy subcommittee.”

He first discussed the committee’s proceedings in regards to Pakistan. Having visited the country three times, Casey explained: “to say it is a relationship of tension is an understatement.” Highlighting the challenges posed by Pakistan’s troubled politics, Casey pinpointed America’s first priority as “the terrorists elements targeting the central government that has nuclear weapons.” He also stressed the importance of rebuilding “a relationship which is very important for our security.”

On the subject of nuclear development, Casey referenced recent increased sanctions on Iran and urged patience to let them take effect. “It’s not just the launch of the weapon but the development of the capability” that concerns the United States, explained Casey, who fears a regional nuclear arms race should Iran become a nuclear state.

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Ezra Klein, blogger and columnist for Bloomberg and the Washington Post, opened his remarks, sponsored by the Lecture Fund, to a full lecture hall in Reiss yesterday by declaring it was “most annoying day of the year.”

He further explained, “There are days where all we do in the media is keep ourselves busy,” later continuing, “This Rosen thing is real bullshit,” referring to the recent attention to a comment made by CNN commentator Hilary Rosen on Twitter about Ann Romney and stay-at-home moms. A frustrated Klein considered the argument is utterly inconsequential: in November, no one will remember. He warned that there will be a lot more of these faux scandals until Election Day, and then concluded, “I hate campaigns.”

Klein expressed his disdain that for the proliferation of spinning, messaging, and strategy at the expense of the truth. Ads and smear campaigns, he argued, do not convince anyone who is not already decided. The Obama campaign will have the most money of a campaign in history, but “they will both have more than enough money to call each other jerks.”

What does convince people, however, is the economy. Klein admitted that he much prefers budgets, but wasn’t impressed by the campaigns’ proposals. “They have to get a thousand times more honest,” he remarked.

He boiled the election down to taxes. Comparing the Obama and Romney budget plans, this central point of difference becomes evident. “The heart of Obama’s economic philosophy is that the economy has been stacked against you,” Klein said, so it’s appropriate to tax the rich. Republicans on the other hand “care more about taxes than anything besides preserving Ronald Reagan’s memory,” Klein joked. Therefore, Romney’s budget depends on cutting social programs.

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Last night, Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC), the Assistant Democratic Leader in the House of Representatives, discussed his legislative priorities at a College Democrats event in Healy to a group of largely like-minded Hoyas.

Clyburn began his remarks by commenting on the tireless campaigning that is already taking place ahead of the November elections. He predicted that Congressional business for the rest of the year will be largely toothless continuing resolutions. He also suggested that we may see “the lame duck session to beat all lame duck sessions” once Congress returns to session after the elections.

Considering the current challenges that President Obama and other Democrats face in the upcoming elections, the congressman shared some of his own political philosophy. He explained that first you need to “tell people what you are going to do, then you have to go out and do it, and thirdly you have to tell them what you’ve done.” Lamented the crisis in support President Obama’s healthcare measures are facing, Clyburn said, “we failed to tell the people what we had done.”

Clyburn defended his 10-20-30 plan which designates 10 percent of the budget to be spent on communities where 20 percent of the population has been stuck beneath the poverty line for 30 years. Among other achievements, this program has brought clean water to rural districts that had given up on that basic civil service decades ago.

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After 14 years in the United States House of Representatives and approaching 15 years in the Senate, double Hoya and Illinois Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL, SFS ’66, Law ’69) seems to really take the Georgetown motto of “men and women for others” to heart. The senator spoke for about 300 students a packed Gaston Hall the evening of Tuesday, October 18, in a lecture hosted by the GU College Democrats, and struck a careful balance between humor and gravity to engage his audience.

He started by recounting his own time as a Hoya. He was studying in the library when news arrived that President Kennedy had been assassinated and “everything came to a stop.”

From there, he discussed the way Georgetown students witness “the march of history right before [their] eyes” because the school is “so close to the decision-making that literally changes the world.”

Durbin also offered words of encouragement to the portion of the audience that remains undecided about the future—apparently, the senator didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life as a second-semester senior at Georgetown.

He took an internship his then-senator of Illinois, Paul Douglass, where he became enthralled with American politics and coincidently acquired the nickname, “Dick,” that has followed him since. The first person to call him Dick was Paul Douglass, and he certainly did not want to correct the senator. “The name stuck,” Durbin said.

But Durbin’s road to office was anything but smooth. After three straight losses, he was finally elected to the House of Representatives in 1987.

As a senator, Dick Durbin has been an active force behind the DREAM Act, which seeks to make it easier for illegal immigrants who have been U.S. residents for most of their lives to attend college.

He recounted the story that first impassioned him to become involved with the issue. Chicago has a Merit Music program, which provides instruments to underprivileged schools. The program has been immensely successful—100% of participants go on to college. His office received a call one day that a young Korean woman and concert pianist could not afford college because, although she had lived in the U.S. since the age of two, she was technically not an American citizen.

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Yesterday morning, while most Hoyas were still warm in their beds, others were lining up outside Gaston Hall at the crack of dawn, hoping to get a seat for a speech by one of the nation’s biggest political figures. The speech they were waiting for was by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spoke at 8:30 a.m. for the opening address of the U.S.-India Higher Education Summit.

“Democracy depends on education,” Clinton said of the importance of the summit, which marks the first time that the world’s two largest democracies have come together to discuss what she believes to be the crux of their political systems.

Also present for the summt were Minister of Human Resource Development in India Kapil Sibal, Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake, University President Jack DeGoia, and 300 presidents, chancellors, and other important educational figures from the U.S. and India. Because of all the high-profile guests, only about a hundred of the students who lined up were allowed seats, and those lucky hundred were relegated to the balconies of Gaston.

Clinton began her remarks by welcoming the students in attendance. She took the chance to make a plug for careers in the Foreign Service—considering the sleep that most sacrificed to be there, her message probably did not fall on deaf ears.

She then outlined the United States’s commitment to collaborate on issues of higher education with India.

“Investing in education is in our common interest,” she said.

She continued by saying that education is a “passport to understanding,” along with building international relationships and the importance of “looking outward” in the world that we now inhabit.

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Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin characterized her decision to go into politics as a “professor” moment—as a twenty-three-year-old in her first semester of law school, she asked one of her professors if she should run for the open seat on the Board of Supervisors for Dane County, Wisconsin. He said she would make a great lawyer, but if she really wanted to do this politics thing, he was behind her all the way. She won the seat, and after six years in the Wisconsin State Legislature and 13 years in the House of Representatives, she is currently running to be the first openly gay Senator in the United States of America.

Baldwin told this story to a room full of eager Georgetown students last night, in an event co-sponsored by the College Democrats and GU Pride. And while she shared her own story, she also talked about the nitty gritty of being a member of congress and the important responsibilities that representatives have to their constituents.

She also encouraged her audience to get involved—regardless of the opinions others may have. Like many forward-thinking politicians, Baldwin was, according to her, told she was “too young, too progressive, too this,” and that she probably shouldn’t “bother”.

“Can a woman win? Can a lesbian win? Can a liberal win?” she said, recounting the challenges of her early political career in the traditionally red Wisconsin.

After telling the story of her rise into politics, Baldwin shifted to more current matters, and discussed the last congressional session. “I know how much the work of that congress was maligned in the midterm elections,” she said.

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