Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 in what was an eleventh-hour effort to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” crisis. The cliff, a term coined by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, refers to a series of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that would have otherwise gone into effect had Congressional action not been taken. Since desperation seems to be the only factor that can motivate Congress to act, the House and Senate passed the aforementioned act in the early hours of the new year. Immediately, Washington tried to paint the law as a grand compromise between painfully divided Democrats and Republicans. This might be the case if the ATRA accomplished anything more than kicking the metaphorical can down the road, which sadly, it does not. Instead, the law simply serves to turn over the hourglass, once again, by raising taxes on the very highest incomes and enacting laughably minimal spending cuts.

The fact that the ATRA was passed with almost 90 votes in the Senate is indicative of the political unpalatability of potentially allowing the consequences of diving over the fiscal cliff to occur. While the fiscal cliff was designed as a measure to reduce the ever-ballooning national debt, the occurrence of its provisions would have, according to Congressional Budget Office projections, led to a mild recession and an increase in the unemployment rate. Obviously, this was not an option for Congress, even in a non-election year. The economy, after spending several years mired in the sewer, is showing signs of cautious improvement. Unemployment has slowly declined and home sales have increased. A reversal of these already-fragile gains, apart from tangibly harming the American public, would have turned an unpopular Congress into a loathed one. And so, the men and women on the Hill were faced with two options — find true compromise and enact difficult yet meaningful budget reform, or push through an ineffectual measure and act satisfied. Unsurprisingly, they chose the latter path, and the nation will, in the long run, hurt for it.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the revenue raised by tax increases in the ATRA is 41 times greater than the revenue saved by spending cuts. The figure should seem strange and alarming even to those who have no knowledge of economics or fiscal policy. Such an imbalance can be only explained by the fact that the real dollar amounts analogous to this ratio are comparatively small, thus the underwhelming nature of the law. The new taxes will raise approximately $60 billion per year for the next 10 years, a token figure in the context of a trillion-dollar budget deficit. Most of the new tax revenue is derived from an increase in the income tax for those making over $400,000 per year and an increase in the payroll tax. The latter measure is a two percent tax increase on everyone; the former, while not totally objectionable, is little more than a bone thrown to the sizeable segment of the population that wrongly believes that the nation’s problems can be solved by putting the screws to the rich. Since the revenues raised by such measures pale in comparison to the future cost of America’s entitlement programs, the actual potency of these new taxes towards reducing the debt is near-zero.

And so, Congress conveniently ignored solutions that, while tricky, would have provided for lasting reform. These potential solutions are well-known and are neither innovative nor new — Social Security reform and more efficient defense spending are two examples. These expenditures are deeply entrenched in the Washington status quo, and tackling them would be hard. However, the difficulty of such action does not change the necessity of it. The spectre of a United States with an ever-reddening balance sheet and the consequences of such a situation are far graver than the potential threat of a temporarily recessed economy. In theory, legislators would understand the importance of providing for the future, even at the possible expense of the present. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case. However, as college students who necessarily have to look towards the future, this is indeed a lesson that we need to understand.

“Only at the Golden Globes do the beautiful people of film rub shoulders with the rat-faced people of television,” Amy Poehler, host of the 70th Golden Globes, said in her introduction.

It’s safe to say that both Poehler and her co-host Tina Fey lived up to the hype that had surrounded them ever since it was announced that they would be hosting together.

Fey and Poehler have perfect comedic chemistry, and their every moment on stage was filled with witty, perfectly crafted one-liners.

The two were each nominated for the same award, Best Actress in a TV Series, Comedy or Musical – a fact that they wasted no time acknowledging.

“Tina, I just want to say that I very much hope that I win,” Poehler said politely to Fey, like any good frenemy would.

“Thank you,” Fey replied affectionately. “You are my nemesis.”

After they both lost to Lena Dunham for her hit comedy “Girls,” they each dejectedly returned to the stage with a drink in hand.

“Congratulations, Lena. Glad we got you through middle school,” Fey sarcastically slurred in response to Dunham’s acceptance speech.

Despite the loss, Fey and Poehler nailed both the lighthearted, appreciative quips (“Meryl Streep isn’t here tonight. She has the flu and I hear she’s amazing in it.”) and the more biting, “oh-no-she-didn’t” jabs (on Kathryn Bigelow, “When it comes to torture, I trust the woman who spent three years married to James Cameron.”).

Fans of the comediennes will be glad to see that their flawless give-and-take has only gotten better with age since their time together as co-anchors on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” Even as seat fillers, Poehler and Fey stole the show by appearing with buck teeth, wigs or mustaches.

It would be a dream come true to have Fey and Poehler host every awards show from now on. Everything from the Oscars to the National Dog Show would be infinitely more entertaining with their presence.

If they aren’t available, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell would serve as viable stand-ins. Their introducing of the nominees for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy of Musical was a bit that seemed straight out of a particularly hilarious episode of Saturday Night Live.

The U.S. military camp at Guantánamo Bay recently celebrated two solemn anniversaries.

Last week marked the 11th anniversary of the facility’s use as a torture and detention facility in the U.S.’s never-ending “war on terror.” Less noticed, it was also the four-year anniversary of President Obama’s inaugural pledge to close the prison in less than a year.

With hindsight, we might be less inclined to trust Obama’s words. The president who came into office proclaiming a sunshine transparency policy has classified more documents than any other in history. The candidate who unequivocally vowed to filibuster any bill protecting illegal Bush-era wiretapping later voted for precisely such a bill—the 2008 FISA Amendments—and as president insists upon the right of warrantless eavesdropping.

Obama’s signing of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act now ensures he cannot legally fulfill his long overdue pledge to close Guantánamo any time soon. Meanwhile, 166 prisoners remain locked up at the camp, many developing the debilitating physical and psychological conditions of indefinite detention and extreme isolation. Egregiously, 86 of them, who have been unanimously cleared for release by relevant federal agencies, remain imprisoned.

We were once chastised by Obama to look “forward,” not backward, on the U.S.’s crimes of torture, but the men at Guantánamo are allowed neither luxury. Their personal histories as well as futures have been forsaken. At the prison camp’s sham tribunals, evidentiary disclosure of torture is blocked from the public, throwing a dark veil over the CIA’s storied abuses.

But the stories are there. Journalist Sami al-Hajj, wrongfully held at Guantánamo for six years and released only after a 438-day hunger strike, recalls being tortured, attacked by dogs and hung shackled from ceilings. Brandon Neely, a former Guantánamo guard, watched as a medic beat an inmate he was supposed to treat.

Further troubling, Guantánamo has become only the barely-visible tip of the U.S.’s sprawling secret torture regime. Although in the fantasyland of 2008 rhetoric Obama claimed, “We don’t farm out torture,” referring to the CIA’s practice of “rendering” terror suspects out to torture contractors, he has since embraced the policy. The European Court of Human Rights last year revealed that CIA agents wrongfully shackled, sodomized and beat a car salesman named Khaled El-Masri. Picked up on a case of mistaken identity, he was later dumped on the side of an Albanian road. A similar fate—down to the gruesome extreme of ritualized rape—befell Suleiman Abdullah, wrongfully detained at several foreign U.S. detention facilities, including Bagram Air Force Base, for five years and later released with no compensation. In 2010, an American-born teenager named Gulet Mohamed sobbed to reporters on the phone, unable to understand why the Obama administration had arranged to have him beaten and tortured while on a visit to Kuwait.

Basic human compassion demands we contend with these individuals so heinously wronged by our legacy of torture. Looking forward, we must also ensure such grievous mistakes are never again repeated.

Yet our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president seems incapable or unwilling to express remorse. The Justice Department has definitively indicated that no Bush-era war criminals, even in the case of death-by-torture, will ever be prosecuted. John Kiriakou, meanwhile, an ex-CIA official who refused torture training and was the first to publicly admit the torture program’s existence, received a neat jail sentence. He now holds the dubious distinction of being the only person against whom the U.S. has pressed any charges with regard to post-9/11 torture.

John Brennan, a vocal advocate of Bush-era wiretapping and torture (even beyond waterboarding), has now been awarded with a nomination for the CIA directorship. In 2008, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for the same post amid these precise concerns, but they have since been forgiven. As Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, Brennan is best known for leading the extrajudicial drone assassination campaign and accompanying para-militarization of the executive branch. In that capacity he was also caught outright lying about the civilian casualties of drone strikes, claiming there were none despite glaring contrary evidence.

The brutal contrast between Brennan and Kiriakou’s treatment by the Obama administration showcases its true values—unabashed secrecy, militarism and dishonesty—far more clearly than any statement ever issued by an official.

Policies once controversial under a Republican president in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack have thus been superseded and cemented by his Democratic successor. Perhaps we should add to the oft-repeated truism “only Nixon [avowed Cold Warrior] could go to China” a slogan for our era’s false progressive hope: “only Obama could spy, torture and assassinate.”

In a recent study, a U. Arizona professor defended the benefits of Facebook and suggested that updating one’s status more often can reduce the feeling of loneliness.

Matthias Mehl, an associate professor of psychology, published the study, “Does Posting Facebook Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness?: An Online Social Networking Experiment” on Dec. 20, 2012 and examined 102 undergraduate students at UA. The experiment monitored the participants’ Facebook profiles for one week. Half of the students were asked to post more status updates than they normally would, the other half were used as a control group and were not instructed to change anything.

“We had seen that the topic of Facebook, whether it was good for you or bad for you, has been a really long debated question. But no one had ever done an experiment, a true experiment, and that’s the only way to answer the question,” Mehl said.

The experiment was carried out entirely online, where the subjects were directed to temporarily friend a “Research Profile”. This “Research Profile” allowed Mehl and his associate Fenne Deters, of the University of Berlin, to continuously monitor the participants’ Facebook profiles and confirm that they followed all instructions.

For the researchers to learn if posting status updates caused someone to become more or less lonely, they made every participant complete questionnaires including the University of California, Los Angeles Loneliness scale. This scale measures subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation using a scale ranging from one to four, as stated in the study’s procedure.

The results of the study showed that the subjects instructed to post more status updates than they normally would reported a decrease in loneliness, which led to the conclusion that status updating can reduce loneliness, and that this decrease in loneliness was due to “the participants feeling more connected to their friends on a daily basis” when updating their status, as specified in the publication.

“I thought it would be the opposite because you have, like, virtual friends instead of actual friends,” said Lisa Foessel, a pre-computer science freshman.

Surprisingly, the researchers also found that the number of responses to status updates had no effect on the subjects’ feelings of loneliness. When asked why this may be Mehl gave two hypotheses: that people “simply assumed that their status updates will be read,” or that people use status updates to ultimately connect with friends in the real world by using them to “skip the small talk at the beginning of a conversation and jump right to more substantive subjects.”

Even with this evidence of the benefits of social networking some UA students are still skeptical.

“It’s kind of weird that you think you’re more popular just by putting yourself out there on a social network,” said Casey White, an ecology and evolutionary biology freshman. “I don’t really see how that makes sense. I think it’s almost the opposite of being popular, truly.”

The scholars said that their research is just the beginning of the science behind social networking, but are confident in its results and the possibilities it has to inspire further studies.

“For me, this is first optimistic evidence that Facebook does not drive us all into loneliness, Facebook can be used in meaningful ways for creating a sense of social integration and connection,” Mehl said.

Every semester, college students must begin purchasing textbooks and materials for new classes again. Textbook prices seem to rise every year, and many students look to alternatives like rental books or shopping online to save money.

While the SUPe Store may be the most convenient location for students, some argue it’s not the most affordable place to pay for books.

Sam Oliver, a U. Alabama sophomore, said she’s tried a range of different options for purchasing her books.

“My Fluid Mechanics book cost $230 at the SUPe Store, but only $80 on Amazon,” Oliver said. “I then found the same book for only $20 on ValoreBooks.com.”

Oliver agrees it’s usually cheaper to buy books online, and even with additional shipping costs on top of the product price, Oliver said the prices still end up being cheaper rather than buying it from local college bookstores.

Maggie Abernathy, a UA senior, said the solution the nursing majors have is borrowing books from one another since the classes are consistent.

“This way I am paying my nursing friends a smaller amount by just renting the textbook from one another,” Abernathy said.

Phillip Kravtsov, a college student from New York City and founder of PostYourBook.com, said he was discouraged by the amount of money he had to spend on books and the amount he received back at the end of his semester.

“My freshman year of college I spent $1,100 on textbooks in the beginning of the semester for my classes,” Kravtsov said. “At the end of the semester, I returned to my local bookstore and was offered $280 for the same books.”

Kravtsov said he tried Amazon and Chegg’s buyback program thinking he would get a better deal, and was offered roughly $350.

In an effort to save his money, Kravtsov began to sell his textbooks for a little bit less than the full price and ended up selling all of his books for $930.

The idea clicked for Kravtsov to start a social networking website where college students can buy and sell textbooks to each other to avoid the overpricing of university bookstores, buyback programs and third party retailers. Kravtsov later formed a partnership with Josh Hiekali, a college student from Los Angeles, Calif., who had created a simplified exchanging type website that he had opened to three or four U. California schools.

“PostYourBook.com lets students post the textbooks they have from previous classes and allows other students to contact them to buy their books from them,” Kravtsov said.

One year later, PostYourBook.com has now become a popular online sharing textbook site among several universities including The University of Alabama.

“The University of Alabama got 205 book posts in three days with one email marketing blast,” Kravtsov said. “What started out in a few schools now turned into 155 universities with 155,000 users.”

Kravtsov said unlike other book websites, PostYourBook.com is not a buyback program.

“The bookstores, Amazon, Chegg and all those other website own warehouses purchase textbooks at very low prices from students who are finished with their classes then resell them at double the amount they purchased them for and make a profit,” Kravtsov said.

Kravtsov said all PostYourBook.com does is connect Person A (who just finished the semester and wants to make more money than a buyback program) with Person B (who doesn’t want to buy a textbook at full price).

“Our website saves students money as long as they price their book accordingly,” Kravtsov said. “We aren’t some big corporation trying to rip people off.”

Another company, TextbookPartners.com, offers students a chance to earn money for their organization, such as a sorority, when ordering textbooks through its website.

Sarah Altschuler, a freshman majoring in education, said she used TextbookPartners.com last semester and plans on using the website again for the future.

“I saved 85 percent on my textbook costs,” Altschuler said. “It was rewarding knowing the sales benefited my sorority while saving money.”

Claims and Concerns

The South China Sea has long been a flashpoint for regional rivalries and tensions. Subject to a range of competing territorial claims—including from Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan, the South China Sea is at the nexus of competing and converging interests. Through these contested waters flows over one-third of world trade, and within it lies a plethora of natural resources—including oil, natural gas, and fishing reserves. Here too, a seemingly inane but critical distinction for the claimants has been the difference between a “rock” and an “island,” the latter of which must be able to support human habitation. This is a concept subject to contention, as various tenuous outposts have been established, often overlying reefs that would otherwise be submerged. While a rock only commands a 12 nautical mile expanse of territorial waters, an island may be the basis for a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that grants rights over the resources within. Recent developments—including an estimate by the Chinese oil company CNOOC that the disputed areas could contain up to 17 billion tons of oil as well as 498 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—have raised the stakes.

Beyond the relevant regional players, the United States too has much at stake. At the July 2010 meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Vietnam, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton articulated the United States’ “national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.” As the U.S. now ‘pivots’ to the Pacific, it has sought a more active role in this dispute. This past July, at an ASEAN forum in Cambodia, following “intense” and inconclusive discussions on the South China Sea, Clinton warned, “None of us can fail to be concerned by the increase in tensions, the uptick in confrontational rhetoric and disagreements over resource exploitation.” The trajectory of this longstanding dispute may prove to be a test for the development and potential stability of the region.

Equilibrium and Interdependence?

One paradox at the heart of the South China Sea is the uneasy equilibrium that has largely been maintained. Despite the occasional confrontation and frequent diplomatic squabbling, the situation has never escalated into full-blown physical conflict. The main stabilizing factor has been that the countries involved have too much to lose form turmoil, and so much to gain from tranquility. Andrew Ring—former Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Fellow—emphasized that “With respect to the South China Sea, we all have the same goals” in terms of regional stability and development. With regional trade flows and interdependence critical to the region’s growing economies, conflict could be devastating. Even for China—the actor with by far the most to gain from such a dispute—taking unilateral action would irreparably tarnish its image in the eyes of the international community. With the predominant narrative of a “rising” and “assertive China”—referred to as a potential adversary by President Obama in the third presidential debate—China’s behavior in the South China Sea may be sometimes exaggerated or sensationalized. Dr. Auer, former Naval officer and currently Director of the Center for U.S.-Japan Studies and Cooperation at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, told the HPR that “China has not indicated any willingness to negotiate multilaterally” and remains “very uncooperative.” Across its maritime territorial disputes—particularly through recent tensions with Japan in the East China Sea—Auer sees China as having taken a very aggressive stance, and he claims that “Chinese behavior is not understandable or clear.”

Nonetheless, in recent incidents, such as a standoff between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal this past April, as Bonnie Glaser, Senior Adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, emphasized, “this is not an either or.” Multiple parties are responsible for the tensions, yet the cycle of action and reaction is often obscured. Nonetheless, Glaser believes that “The Chinese have in every one of these cases overreacted—they have sought to take advantage of the missteps of other countries,” responding with disproportionate coercion. In addition, China has begun to use methods of “economic coercion” to assert its interests against trade partners.

A Tipping Point?

Has the dynamic in the South China Sea shifted recently? Perhaps not in a fundamental sense. But with the regional military buildup, governments have developed a greater capacity to pursue longstanding objectives. According to Peter Dutton, Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College,  “China’s recent behavior in the East China Sea and assertive policy in the South China Sea” is “a serious concern.” He believes that China’s willingness to resort to force in defense of its territorial claims has been increasing over time, partially as a consequence of its rising power. As such, Dutton sees the situation as reaching a “tipping point in which China is…no longer satisfied with shelving the dispute.” Is confrontation or resolution imminent? Worryingly, Dutton observes, “the international dynamic in the region is motivated largely by fear and anger.” However, the use of unilateral military force would be a lose-lose for China,” particularly in terms of its credibility, both among its neighbors and in the international community.

The Pivot in the South China Sea

From a U.S. perspective, a sustained American presence in the region has long been the underpinning of peace and stability. However, excessive U.S. intervention could disrupt the delicate balance that has been established. Although the U.S. has always sought to maintain a position of neutrality in territorial disputes, remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that referred to the South China Sea as the “West Philippine Sea” led China to challenge U.S. impartiality. If the U.S. engages with its regional allies without seeking enhanced engagement with China, then U.S. actions in the region may be perceived by China as efforts at containment. Moreover, as the U.S. strengthens ties to partners in the region, there is risk of entanglement if conflict were to break out.

There has long been an undercurrent of tension between the Philippines and China—most recently displayed in the standoff over the Scarborough Shoal in May 2012. Shortly thereafter, in a visit to Washington D.C., President Aquino sought U.S. commitment to military support of the Philippines in the event of conflict with China on the basis of the 1952 Mutual Defense Treaty. However, despite providing further military and naval support, the U.S. has refrained from making concrete commitments. Although the U.S. would not necessarily be dragged into a dispute, if a confrontation did break out, it might feel compelled to respond militarily to maintain the credibility of commitments to allies and partners in the region. Strong ties to the U.S. and enhanced military capacity could also provoke more confrontational behavior from U.S. partners. Yet, Ring emphasizes that the U.S. navy and military are also unique in the “ability to facilitate military cooperation and communication among all of the claimants” and particularly to “be that bridge…uniquely situated to build some flows of communication” that could facilitate a peaceful resolution to future incidents.

Long-term Options

Beyond these tensions and speculations, one must also consider the long-term prospects of a viable solution. Speaking on the record at a Weatherhead Center seminar at Harvard, Michael Dukakis raised the question, “Why isn’t the United States urging that these disputes be resolved in the International Court of Justice? Isn’t that what it’s for?” However, in addition to U.S. ambivalence, China and other main players would also oppose such a step. Traditionally, in cases of territorial disputes, the ICJ has tended to privilege longstanding administrative presence. China’s claims to over 80 percent of the South China Sea, on the other hand, have been framed in terms of a historical narrative—expressed in the “nine-dashed line” first drawn on a map in 1947 by the Kuomintang government then exiled to Taiwan—rather than the rules and norms established through UNCLOS. According to Dutton, “China is abrogating these principles [of international law]…and pursuing its own version of history in the region [with] frankly coercive policies in order to press its neighbors.”

In the adjudication of this patchwork of competing claims, ASEAN has long played a mediating role, as through its issuance of a “Declaration of Conduct” in 2002. According to Ring, “ASEAN is the key” to resolving this dispute and “one of the few organizations that has the pedigree” to serve as a legitimate mediator, with its foundational norms of respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and freedom from external intervention. However, ASEAN, which relies on full consensus, is unlikely to move quickly. The next chairs of the bloc—Brunei as of 2013—are unlikely to press this issue. Moreover, China has tended to resist settlement of the territorial disputes in a multilateral forum and instead has sought direct bilateral negotiations, which would maximize its relative leverage.

Although a long-term solution and the protracted process of redrawing the map could take years yet, with mounting economic pressures and a voracious appetite for natural resources, economic factors may induce the establishment of some sort of profit-sharing mechanism in the short-term. For instance, Taiwan suggested in the 1990s that a joint development company for the South China Sea be established.

Looking to the Future

The South China Sea will likely remain a focal point of tension for years to come. China’s increased naval power may make a more assertive stance natural and inevitable. In this environment, Glaser sees that “the U.S. is more welcome in the region today than it has ever been.” The United States must find a balance between accepting this welcome and not overreaching—maintaining a stabilizing presence without provoking further suspicion from China or arousing concerns among regional partners. All in all, the South China Sea may prove to be a test, not only of whether China will be a “responsible stakeholder” in its own neighborhood but also of American strategy as it relates to a rising China.

Running back Eddie Lacy and defensive back Dee Milliner announced they will forgo their senior seasons and enter the NFL draft on Friday. Right tackle D.J. Fluker is also entering the draft.

Lacy projects to be a second-third round pick. He battled nagging foot and leg injuries at the start of the 2012 season, but got stronger as the year went on. The Geismar, La. Native had his two best games of the year on the biggest stages; he earned Most Valuable Player honors in the Southeastern Conference Championship game (181 yards and two touchdowns) and was named the Most Outstanding Offensive Player in the BCS National Championship game (140 rushing yards and two total touchdowns). Lacy said the thought of returning entered his mind, but his long-term health was the biggest factor.

“We don’t have a lot of years to play this position so you have to go while you can,” Lacy said. “I’d love to come back because this is a great place. We have the best fans, but I didn’t want to risk coming back and not having a good year or maybe even risking injury. I’ve had my share of injuries this year, so I figured I should get out while I can.”

Lacy led the team in rushing with 1,322 yards and 17 touchdowns on 204 carries. He chipped in 189 receiving yards and two touchdowns. ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper, Jr. has Lacy as the No. 6 running back. The redshirt junior finished his career with 2402 yards and 30 rushing touchdowns on 355 carries. Lacy said he submitted paper to the NFL Draft Advisory Board before the national title game and was projected as a second round pick at best.

Milliner is the No. 10 overall prospect on ESPN’s Mel Kiper’s Big Board. At 6-foot-1 and 199 pounds, Milliner is considered the top defensive back in the country. He recorded 54 tackles, 1.5 sacks, two interceptions and broke up 20 passes.

The Millbrook, Ala. native was a unanimous first team All-American, first team All-SEC and a finalist for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy (defensive player of the year) and the Jim Thorpe Award (nation’s top defensive back). Milliner said he made the decision two days ago and receiving a first round grade was the only reason he left.

“If I felt like I wasn’t a first-round pick, I would have come back and developed more and had another good season,” Milliner said.

Fluker, who could not attend, is Kiper’s No. 8 offensive tackle and a mid-late first round pick. The redshirt junior was a part of a dominant offensive line that produced two 1,000 yard rushers. The Foley, Ala. native logged 35 career starts at right tackle and missed only 11 assignments (98.6 percent) in 728 snaps this season (only two penalties).

“D.J. is a really, really hard worker,” head coach Nick Saban said. “He’s the type of guy that really wants to please the coach. He works hard to do things the way you’d like for him to do them, personally, academically and athletically. I’m proud of what D.J.’s been able to accomplish in his career.”

Saban said he doesn’t expect any other juniors to declare for the draft, but said he’s been around long enough to know that surprises happen.

Following the 2011 national championship season, Trent Richardson, Dont’a Hightower and Dre Kirkpatrick all entered the NFL draft early and all three went in the first round of the draft.

Championship celebration

There will be a parade and a program on the stadium steps to honor Alabama’s 2012 BCS National Championship team on Saturday, Jan. 19, Saban said.

“This is a pretty quick turnaround, but our fans have always been great about coming out and showing their appreciation for the hard work and the sacrifices these young men have made,” Saban said. “We’re really excited about having a great turnout to honor this team.”

More than 10 years after his first lecture in the United States, held in the same location, Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Georgetown U. Friday evening to talk about the future of Afghanistan’s relationship with the United States.

In his talk, “Afghanistan Beyond 2014: A Perspective on Afghan–U.S. Relations”, held in Gaston Hall, Karzai acknowledged that expectations had not been met on either side of the partnership but expressed confidence that peace and stability are assured in Afghanistan’s future.

The Afghan president, who met with President Obama earlier today for what the White House called bilateral meetings, also announced an expansion of his country’s relationship with the United States in a bilateral security agreement. This new dynamic entails the reduction of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a limitation in the use of these same troops after 2014, the continuation of U.S. training efforts and the transition of the control of security and border protection into Afghan hands.

Karzai, who holds an honorary doctorate degree from Georgetown, began his speech by commenting on the progress made so far on the goals undertaken by the United States and Afghanistan in 2001, which included freeing the world of terrorism, removing the Taliban from power and establishing a democracy in Afghanistan. According to Karzai, the partnership was successful in freeing Afghanistan from the control of the Taliban. He particularly credited the return of women to the workplace and classrooms as well as the growth of technology in the country as examples of this progress. However, the two nations have made less advancement in other areas.

“The second part – freeing us all from terrorism and radicalism – didn’t work as smoothly as we expected,” Karzai said.

In that vein, Karzai noted the complaints of both Americans and Afghanis, saying that the war on terror has been costly to both the U.S. and Afghan people. Despite that, he believes that Afghanistan is moving in the right direction as it approaches its third set of presidential elections and the reduction of U.S. operations in its territory.

Karzai particularly expressed confidence in a more mature relationship between the United States and Afghanistan and the future success of a peace process that will retain the elements of social progress made since the Taliban’s fall. Going forward, Afghanis on a local level advocate the continuation of U.S. support but also U.S. acknowledgment of their sovereignty as a nation.

“We will forget the less than pleasant aspects of our relationship, and we will move forward in the gratitude of the [Unites States],” Karzai said.

After speaking for less than 20 minutes, Karzai ended his talk with a revised version of the end of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the Wood on a Snowy Evening.”

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before we sleep,” he concluded.

After the lecture, the floor opened to five student questions, one taken from an open poll on Facebook and four drafted by Georgetown student groups. These included the International Relations Club, the Georgetown University Student Veterans Association, the Muslim Students Association and the Georgetown University Lecture Fund, which helped organize the event. Students posed queries about the threat of Al Qaeda, Afghanistan’s unemployment problem for former fighters on both sides of the civil war, the government’s plans for education policy and the hope that Karzai can offer against claims of corruption and worries about the nation’s security. The president responded vaguely to each of the questions, stating that Al Qaeda is no longer a security issue and that the government will continue to be concerned with the education of women.

Through both his lecture and question answers, Karzai attempted to diminish concerns about the stability and future of Afghanistan as a nation and its relationship with the United States.

“The hope has already been offered in Afghanistan,” he said.