I recently became aware of an e-mail floating around the ISU College Republicans’ list server. Apparently, some people out there think the Daily has a “liberal bias.” The original e-mail complained about the Daily’s selection of news stories, our “unbalanced Opinions staff” and expressed outrage at yet another picture of two men kissing. All valid arguments, but unfortunately nothing new.

Since I’ve been at the Daily, I’ve heard it all. I’ve been called gay. I’ve been called a communist. I’ve been called anti-God, anti-capitalism, anti-family and anti-constitution. I’ll even get an anti-male every so often.

But now that criticism I’ve grown to love has carried over to the news department. Common non-journalism folk can’t seem to understand that the “opinion” and “news” printed on the top of the pages actually mean something. By its very nature, the opinion section is full of bias. It’s completely separate from the news department.

Not just figuratively speaking, either. There’s actually a 50-foot river of fire between the news department and my desk, which sits atop a mountain of communist propaganda pamphlets and back issues of Mother Jones. My computer’s made of hemp and I answer only to “Fidel” or “Senator Daschle.”

So this e-mail didn’t faze me; similar ones never did before. But then I kept reading and found out this was the real deal. Apparently, there are people out there who want to start their own alternative conservative paper to even out the blatantly liberal diatribe the Daily regularly spews.

The server was suddenly overwhelmed with responses. The College Republican list server was hotter than Jerry Falwell at a gay-pride parade.

“Go get them.”

“Give them heck.”

I’m sorry for including such vulgarities, but the point needed to be made. Them there were fighting words. And unfortunately this is one fight I cannot win.

They found out the truth. Remember that whole “liberal bias/anti-God/anti-family/anti-capitalism” thing we talked about earlier? All true.

The Daily does have a liberal bias. In fact, not one person on staff here, opinion section or not, is to the right of Che Guevara on the political spectrum.

What about columnist Zach Calef? He seems a bit conservative, right?

Wrong. Zach is really the bastard son of Janet Reno and a sandanista. He is currently serving as chief fund raiser of the Iowa Communist Party. He masquerades as a conservative commentator only because he gets paid to do so. For an extra $50, every week Zach says “free market” or “second amendment” enough times to convince the conservatives on campus they have an ally while I push my radical liberal agenda on an unsuspecting readership of moderate farm kids.

So yes, it’s all my fault. It’s time to come clean once and for all – I’m not a student at Iowa State.

There is no Orland Park and that’s not my photo. I’m actually a retired hippie from the ’60s, funded by Greenpeace and Hillary Clinton to travel the country to infiltrate newsrooms of independent-thinking college newspapers. I cripple them with my charm, say things like “alternative fuel sources” and “economic equality,” and before you know it, I’ve got able-minded editors eating soy out of my hand, calling for the head of Bill Gates and an end to capitalism.

I had a dream, a vision of a mid-Iowa socialist utopia, where free love and economic equality is just a hop, skip and a solar car drive away. My God, it would have been great.

And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky College Republicans.

Tim Paluch is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Orland Park, Ill. He is opinion editor of the Daily.