For much of our lives, we have seen Americans hold their politicians to a high moral standard. In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached for, among other things, having committed perjury when discussing his relationship with Monica Lewinksy with a grand jury.

Tuesday, Nov. 8, Missouri will hold special elections in four districts. Nine candidates are running, among them, four are women. In the most recent Student Union elections on our campus, women nearly achieved parity: Women secured four of the 10 Treasury positions and three of the eight College of Arts & Sciences Senator positions.

Student Union Treasury voted Tuesday night to allocate $92,350 for the College Democrats to bring vice-President Al Gore to campus. Student reactions to the decision are mixed. The vote in favor of funding Gore for that amount was 12-1 with two abstaining due to conflicts of interest.

Now that the 2012 election has officially begun, I think it’s important to say a few things about the nature of our political debate on campus before things begin to get crazy. Moreover, what does it really mean to be a democrat in the small-d sense of the word?

When you’re in elementary school, America is just about the best thing ever (apart from whipped cream and Pokémon). You’re pumped full of the patriotic songs and George Washington and those damned catchy Schoolhouse Rock videos with the talking bill on his way to becoming a law.

Imagine you walk into a doctor’s office. You step on the scale and you see a number. The doctor writes a number twenty pounds lighter. He feels your arm and randomly writes a good score for your blood pressure. Confused, you ask the doctor what’s going on.

Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for PBS NewsHour and host of the radio program “America Abroad,” spoke at Graham Chapel Thursday evening. In his speech, Suarez explored the effects that religion has on politics in American society. His speech, titled “The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America,” followed the subject matter of his 2006 book of the same title.

Harvard professor Marie Griffith has been selected to head the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics starting this summer. As director of the Center, Griffith will be in charge of recruiting staff, developing an intellectual community and implementing the Center’s programs.

Though many of those involved in either social movement would cringe at the comparison, numerous parallels exist between the current labor protests over collective bargaining in Wisconsin and the Tea Party.

The Middle East is on fire. Every day, even though it seems as if things couldn’t possibly get any worse, a new report comes out of Libya, Iran or Egypt telling us just how bad things have gotten in that part of the world. Its kind of hard to be in St. Louis, far away from just about everything, and not be able to do anything.