March 23, 2009
Video: "Green Design in the 21st Century: Lessons from the World."
Chris Butters' lecture on green building from February 18th.
Follow the link below to view the presentation:
http://real.csbsju.edu/asxgen/mccarthy/Chris_Butters_021809.wmv
March 17, 2009
Two senior statesmen reflect on public life and civic engagement
St. Paul, Minn. — Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger discuss their experiences in public life and the need for civic engagement.
The discussion was sponsored by the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at St. John's University.
Midday host Gary Eichten moderated the discussion.
March 8, 2009
Walter Mondale and Dave Durenberger speak on "Reflections on Public Life and Civic Engagement"
COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - Two senior statesmen will talk about their years of public service and civic engagement during a panel discussion at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 16, at Pellegrene Auditorium, Saint John’s University, Collegeville.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Sen. Dave Durenberger will speak on “Reflections on Public Life and Civic Engagement.” They will be joined by moderator Gary Eichten, host and producer of Minnesota Public Radio’s Midday program.
The discussion, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at CSB and SJU. The center seeks to engage the campus and wider community in debate and discourse regarding public policy and public affairs.
Mondale, Durenberger and Eichten are no strangers to the SJU campus.
Mondale, the nation’s 42nd vice president under Jimmy Carter, was a eulogist during the Memorial Mass for former Sen. Eugene McCarthy Jan. 23, 2006, at the Abbey Church. McCarthy was an SJU graduate.
Durenberger, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1978-95, recently completed the second annual Eugene McCarthy Scholar in Residence at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. And, both Durenberger (Class of 1955) and Eichten (Class of 1969) are graduates of SJU.
Many political scientists credit the Carter/Mondale administration for creating a new model of the role of a vice president. Mondale traveled extensively throughout the world advocating U.S. policy. He was the first vice president to have an office in the White House, and he served as a full-time advisor and troubleshooter for the administration.
Before becoming vice president, Mondale served as Minnesota attorney general from 1960-64, and as a senator from 1964-76.
He was the Democratic nominee for president in 1984, losing the election to President Ronald Reagan. He served as ambassador to Japan under President Bill Clinton in 1993-96, and was tabbed in 2002 to replace Sen. Paul Wellstone as the Democratic nominee for Senate after Wellstone died in a plane crash 11 days before the election. Mondale lost the election to Norm Coleman.
Born in St. Cloud, Durenberger was the son of long-time SJU athletic director George Durenberger. During his tenure in the Senate, Durenberger served as chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence; chairman of the Health Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee; and chaired the Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee.
Durenberger is currently a senior health policy fellow at the University of St. Thomas, and chairs the National Institute of Health Policy, a program of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business. He was also named by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to lead the Minnesota Citizens Forum on Health Care Costs.
Sally McNamara speaks on “A Conservative European Memo to Obama”
March 3, 2009
ST. JOSEPH, Minn. – What do Europeans think of the new administration of President Barack Obama?
Sally McNamara, a senior policy analyst in European affairs at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in Washington, D.C., gives a lecture on “A Conservative European Memo to Obama” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 10 at room 204A, Gorecki Dining and Conference Center, College of Saint Benedict.
The event, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, and Mark Kennedy’s Frontiers of Freedom Lecture Series. Kennedy, who served Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001-07, is a 1979 graduate of SJU.
In addition to her lecture, McNamara will speak with selected students from CSB and SJU March 11. She is also scheduled to address an international political economy class, taught by assistant professor Derick Becker.
McNamara concentrates on American relations with the European Union and European countries, with particular focus on economic reform policy, trade issues and the war on terrorism. She also analyzes NATO’s evolving role in post-Cold War Europe.
A native of Nottingham, England, who came to America in 2004, McNamara served as chief parliamentary aide to Roger Helmer, a member of European Parliament in Brussels. Previous to that, she acted as a regional press officer for the British Conservative Party in the East Midlands, United Kingdom, and served on the Nottingham City Council.
The Thatcher Center was created in 2005 to study and help strengthen transatlantic relations. Its primary focus is to preserve and improve relations between the U.S. and Britain; advance American and British interests in Europe; and promote joint American-British leadership in the global war on terrorism.
March 3, 2009
GOP goes soul searching
Ever wonder what lingers in the hearts of Republicans as they retool for a return to power?
By LISA VAN DUSEN
Last Updated: 1st March 2009, 3:58am
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- There I was, in the bowels of the Omni Shoreham, trolling for the soul of the Republican Party, when I got an offer I couldn't refuse.
"You've gotta get out on an aircraft carrier to really see it," said Bud Barnes, a retired American Airlines pilot and Vietnam vet from Little Rock.
Having never been on an aircraft carrier, I really didn't want to discourage the invitation, but I had to ask.
"What does the aircraft carrier have to do with rebuilding the Republican brand?"
"You'll see what I'm talking about. Really."
He'd been talking about the state of conservatism in America in the post-Bush, mid-Obama honeymoon wilderness, tracing a continuum from the French Revolution and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Rush Limbaugh and I guess my increasing bewilderment was making him desperate.
By the end of day one of "Where did we go wrong?" post-mortems and Obama obsessing at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Barnes' aircraft carrier field trip was looking pretty sensible.
The annual CPAC conference was expected to draw a record 9,000 attendees this year, all wanting to hear something that would not only overtake Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's falsetto response to the nation last Tuesday night as the sine qua non for conservative electoral rebirth but maybe even sum it all up in one, great defining idea.
MORAL CRUSADE
"We will not yield!" intoned Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, who, to great effect in the room, cast the road to victory as a moral crusade for "freedom, free markets and traditional moral values." The problem with, "We will not yield," is that, although it may rally the Christian right, it's still really about the other guys you're not yielding to.
Former Arkansas governor and former and seemingly current Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, whose daughter Sarah's intro stole the show, railed against the Bush record and against John McCain for voting for the $700-billion September Wall Street bailout before taking a stab at an idea that also offered the bonus of closure: "We didn't lose because we wanted to keep unborn babies from ending up in wastebaskets. We lost because we were too closely associated with people who'd spend $1,400 on a wastebasket."
OK, so it's no, "Morning in America."
Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock, 27, is the youngest member of the House of Representatives who recently earned rightie points for resisting the stimulus stumping charms of the new president and voting against the recovery package anyway. As a The Key to Victory? Listen to Conservatives, panelist, Schock issued a call to action based on clear-cut principles, invoked the boldness of Ronald Reagan and advised a clear articulation of "what we stand for" without really filling in the blanks. "When Republican candidates show a little heart, we trump anything the Democrats can offer," Schock said, adding smiling helps.
RECAPTURE THE SENATE
Other strategies from the podium included deploying the politics of personal destruction against Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and New Jersey Sen. John Corzine as a recapturing-the-Senate plot and replicating the Democrats' 50-state strategy by selling the GOP message on traditionally Democratic turf (they may have to re-tool that wastebasket talking point first). Those are really about the other guys, too.
Meanwhile, in the hallways and on nearby street corners, the foot soldiers were making a lot of sense, especially some of the young ones.
Kurt Sorensen, 22, a Republican student leader from St. John's University in Minnesota, said, "We're going to have to be more inclusive. We need to offer a choice to the voter."
Asked for one central idea that should define the Republican agenda for the next four years, Sorensen said, "We won't spend money we don't have."
Not surprisingly on the same day Obama unveiled his $3.5-trillion budget, that idea was pounded home in most of the speeches. But after eight years of ballooning Bush deficits, it may be a hard message for the GOP to own and its mileage depends on the failure of the economic recovery.
Michael Murphy, 62, an Atlanta political consultant, echoed what was developing into a theme all its own and that, for now, may be the only one with any traction.
"Right now, Americans are hungry for change and the fulfillment of the Obama promise. But people will find out there's no such thing as a free lunch."
You never know. But that's also all about the other guy.