On Tuesdays at 5 p.m. many students can be found wandering The Main or the University Recreation Center, but each week one freshmen sits, with gavel in hand, preparing to lead the Student House of Representatives meeting. Thomas Pressley, speaker of the House in the Student Government Association, said that after serving his first semester as a representative for the AddRan College of Humanities and Social Sciences, he was looking to get more involved in SGA in the future- - but not necessarily right away.

As I sat at my gate, a full two hours early eating a $5 McDonalds chicken sandwich that tasted like grilled dust, I began to rant inside my head. Why does flying have to be so difficult? Why do I always seem to get sexually harassed by the security guy? Since when does fast food chicken facsimile cost five bucks? I put in my headphones in an attempt to drown out my rage and prevent the voices in my head from overtaking me and inducing schizophrenia. I sat back in my blue plastic chair and stared straight ahead.

Last Monday, South Dakota passed legislation banning virtually all abortions in the state, and, according to an Associated Press article published earlier this week in the Skiff, "setting up a court fight aimed at challenging the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion." This decision is better known as Roe v. Wade, one of the most controversial Supreme Court rulings of all time.The South Dakota bill would make it a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, for doctors or others to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the mother's life.

They haunt from the trees. They swoop through the air. They leave their mark on clean cars. And they are more than some students can bear.They sport iridescent feathers and gawking yellow eyes. They can be more than a foot long. And above TCU's campus, they flood the skies.

They are birds. Big black birds. Grackles. And according to one TCU student, "Those birds are evil."

Students and Fort Worth residents are complaining about their excessive stay in town, and according to officials, their population just won't go down.

And just when we thought Giants slugger Barry Bonds was in the clear. Or on the Clear. Or was it the Cream? At this point, it's pretty much anything under the sun that can fit in a syringe.Just after the nationwide buzz about Bonds' grand jury testimony regarding his alleged steroid abuse was starting to settle down, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters relit the fuse on the steroids powder keg by releasing parts of their soon-to-be published book "Game of Shadows" to Sports Illustrated.

It's a sad day for baseball fans.As I read Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams' article in Sports Illustrated Wednesday, which accuses mega-slugger Barry Bonds of rampant steroid use, I was reminded of the words Paul Simon wrote almost 40 years ago:

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you."

What makes it such a sad day is not that baseball has forfeited another hero, it's that the game itself has lost what was left of its innocence.