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Kirsten Powers writes about politics, human rights and faith for USA Today and The Daily Beast. Chris Zarconi/Intelligence Squared U.S. hide caption

Kirsten Powers writes about politics, human rights and faith for USA Today and The Daily Beast.

There is agreement on both the political left and right that a majority of college professors in the United States are liberal or left-of-center. But do liberals stifle free speech particularly that of political and social conservatives on college campuses?

Social conservatives often argue that campuses, as a whole, are generally hostile to views that don't conform to the social and political left. Conservatives and evangelicals are rarely asked to speak at colleges and universities, they argue. And they point to numerous incidents where, when schools have asked conservatives to speak, those invitations have been revoked after clamor from left-leaning students and faculty.

But there are many who disagree with the premise that liberals quash intellectual diversity on college campuses. They argue that criticism is not censorship, but that conservatives too often label it as such. And when speech has been curtailed at colleges, they say, it's far more often by administrators seeking to quell or ward off campus disruption than by left-leaning students and faculty.

In the latest event from Intelligence Squared U.S., two teams faced off on in an Oxford-style debate on the motion, "Liberals Are Stifling Intellectual Diversity On Campus." In these events, the team that sways the most people by the end of the debate is declared the winner.

Before the debate at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., 33 percent of the audience voted in favor of the motion, 21 percent were opposed and 46 percent were undecided. After the debate, 59 percent agreed with the motion, while 32 percent disagreed, making the team arguing in favor of the motion the winner.

FOR THE MOTION

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate and Freedom from Speech. He has published articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Stanford Technology Law Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education and numerous other publications. He is also a blogger for Huffington Post and authored a chapter in the anthology New Threats to Freedom. Lukianoff is a frequent guest on local and national syndicated radio programs, has represented FIRE on national television and has testified before the U.S. Senate about free speech issues on America's campuses. He is a co-author of FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus.

Angus Johnston (left), founder of StudentActivism.net, and Jeremy Mayer, a professor at George Mason University, argue against the motion, "Liberals Are Stifling Intellectual Diversity On Campus." Chris Zarconi/Intelligence Squared U.S. hide caption

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Debate: Do Liberals Stifle Intellectual Diversity On The College Campus?

Abacus Data is out with its latest survey on politics in Newfoundland and Labrador and it spells continued bad news for the governing PC Party.

The survey results show the provincial Liberals lead the Tories by 25 points, with support for the Liberals at 57% among committed voters compared with 32% for the Tories and 9% for the NDP.

Liberal support is up 9 points since August while PC support is down 2 and NDP support is down 5. 72% think the Liberals will win the next provincial election, while 15% picked the PCs and 2% picked the NDP.

When it comes to Premier Paul Davis' overall performance, 32% say their impression of Davis is positive, while 26% said negative. 36% were neutral. Perhaps most disturbing for the governing party, 65% of those who voted PC in 2011, but who now support another party or are undecided, say there is nothing the Tories can do that would make them support the party again.

Abacus conducted a random telephone survey of 653 eligible voters in the province from February 17 to the 25th. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 3.9 percent 19 times out of 20.

The Abacus survey contains a lot more information concerning the electorate's views on politics and the province.

View original post here:
Provincial Liberals Hold Commanding Lead: Poll

Conservative MP Eve Adams Defects to Liberals - Full News Conference
Full news conference in which (now former) Conservative Member of Parliament Eve Adams and Liberal Party of Canada Leader Justin Trudeau reveal that she is g...

By: FactPointVideo

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Conservative MP Eve Adams Defects to Liberals - Full News Conference - Video

Ralph Goodale, the old Liberal warhorse who served as finance minister under Paul Martin, got up in the Commons last week. In the nine years since the government took office, he said, job creation has been half of what it was in the nine years before. The nine years before would be when the Liberals were in power.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded by defending his job creation record, citing the troubled world economic environment. Fair enough.

Then he reached for the cyanide. The Liberals, he declared, would turn Canada into another debt-drenched Greece. His government had achieved good results by pursuing sound economic policies, reducing taxes, focused investment, balancing our budget, all of the things the Liberal Party opposes, all of the things the Liberal Party would reverse to give us the kind of result we have in Greece.

Sitting down for lunch with Mr. Goodale the next day, I referenced the Hellenic comparison. Mr. Goodale chuckled. He ran through a string of economic performance comparisons. Under the Liberal Chrtien and Martin governments, he noted, the average GDP growth rate was double what its been under the Conservatives. The Tory rate a 1.7 per cent average is the lowest posted by any Canadian government since the 1930s.

The member from Saskatchewan went on. Under the Liberals, there were nine straight surpluses beginning in 1996. Under the Conservatives, a string of seven deficits. On the pertinent matter of national debt (as per any Greek comparisons), it went down significantly under the Liberals but has gone up by more than $160-billion under Mr. Harper. The Liberals posted not a single trade deficit while the Harper Conservatives have had one practically every year. The Conservatives have been more impressive on tax cuts, although the Liberals did bring in one of the largest in history. On employment, its no contest the Liberals in a walk.

Circumstances need to be noted. The Liberals did not have a brutal global recession with which to contend, but they did inherit a then record $42-billion deficit in 1993. And they did leave the Conservatives a cushy $13-billion surplus and a smiling set of fiscal and regulatory conditions.

Why would Mr. Harper resort to the Grecian slander? If he had the Liberals broader historical record in mind, that wasnt wise either. Studies show that economic growth has been on average more than 2 per cent higher under Liberal governments than under Conservative ones. On budget balancing, the Tory historical record is one to run from.

Much in the respective records has to do with timing, circumstance and the turn of fortune. Conservative prime minister R.B. Bennett, for example, served during the Great Depression. But even Pierre Trudeau, considered one of the weakest Liberal economic performers, posted GDP numbers more than twice as high as the Harper government.

All this said, youd never know it from the way Canadians view the respective parties. In most every poll out there, they rank the Conservatives as the better economic managers.

Whats the deal? I asked Mr. Goodale. Spin, he replied. The Tories have added countless numbers of flacks to the government payrolls, giving them a huge advantage over opposition parties in weaving tall tales. Spin is their No. 1 priority. Policy is secondary.

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Tories, Liberals: Who are the better economic managers?

The Country Liberals (CLP) would face a massive electoral defeat in the Northern Territory if an election was held immediately, according to new poll figures.

But voters are not turning to Labor, which has only increased its primary vote by one-and-a-half points to 38 per cent.

The primary vote of the ruling CLP, under the leadership of Adam Giles, has collapsed by 20 per cent according a News Corp/ReachTel telephone poll of 1,036 people across the main population areas of Darwin, Palmerston and Alice Springs on Sunday.

One-in-four voters think Mr Giles is doing a good or very good job, while half of voters think he is doing a poor or very poor job.

Opposition Leader Delia Lawrie is now the preferred candidate for Chief Minister with 36 per cent of respondents choosing her when asked who would make the Territory's better leader. Mr Giles rated 30 per cent.

Willem Westra van Holthe, now the deputy to Mr Giles but who announced himself as the chief minister during the botched coup attempt to oust Mr Giles in February, was chosen by 11.6 per cent of respondents as preferred Chief Minister.

Labor's deputy leader Michael Gunner rated 22 per cent.

On a two-party preferred basis, 38 per cent of respondents said they supported the CLP, down from 56 per cent at the 2012 election when the Terry Mills-led CLP took power.

The new polling results had 62 per cent choosing Labor, a bounce back from the 44 per cent at the 2012 election when they lost government.

The poll's margin of error is 3 per cent.

Originally posted here:
Adam Giles-led Country Liberals Government facing crushing NT electoral defeat, new poll figures