What do Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and the Inter-Residence Hall Association all have in common?

Hmm … Think real hard … Any guesses? If you said that they all are in favor of free speech for words, pictures, and decorations that they don’t find offensive, you win a grand prize trip to Little Siberia (nickname for Ames in the winter months).

The IRHA passed a resolution last week that would allow residents to decorate their doors BUT there are some restrictions.

According to the proposal, “materials found to be offensive to groups or individuals” can be removed by a simple one-fourth vote of house members present.

Content regulations were legal in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Today, content regulations are at work in countries such as Indonesia and China, but here in the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that content regulations are unconstitutional. Fighting words and speech that present a clear-and-present danger can be punished, according to the Supreme Court. Time, place and manner restrictions are legal.

But the IRHA resolution looks a lot like a content regulation to me. But hey, I’m no lawyer. Only time will tell whether the university power structure lets the resolution become law.

University editor and Daily columnist Tim Frerking said on KURE News Talk last Sunday (the show is on from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.) that he’s in favor of the IRHA resolution. That’s ironic because Frerking often slams “politically correct” speech in his columns. What could be more PC than removing dorm decorations that one-fourth of the members of a residence hall find offensive?

Speaking of the President, there’s a conservative mythology that Clinton was a real campus radical in the late 60s.

As Christopher Phelps puts it, “Bashing Clinton to a point beyond reason is the cause celebre of Dittoheads and readers of The American Spectator tortured by nightmares of the President as a stealth radical — a draft-dodging, dope-smoking philanderer, using the White House as a base for subversion under the thumb of his domineering feminist wife.”

Clinton was really more of a third-rate Rhodes scholar than a radical, according to David Maraniss’ book “First In His Class.”

The book provides evidence that Clinton didn’t inhale, was pretty tame in his opposition to the Vietnam War, and was no more ultraleft in his lying to avoid the draft than Dan Quayle and a generation of others.

“We spent enormous amounts of time trying to teach him to inhale,” says a British acquaintance, Sara Maitland. “He absolutely could not inhale.”

Clinton traveled on his own to Moscow, but Rhodes Scholars were EXPECTED to travel at some point during their European stay.

The fullest extent of Clinton’s activism was during his second year at Oxford, when he organized a few mild protests outside the American Embassy in London.

The events included a candlelight vigil and a prayer service in church, where Clinton wore a suit and tie. Pretty mild stuff considering the year was 1969. In any event, I hypothesize that most of those who voted this year voted for Bill because they were so terrified of the thought of a Dole White House.

From his college days through his political career, Clinton is like a pendulum that swings mostly to the center and the right, feeling your pain as you move toward Adolf Huxley’s / George Bush’s Brave New World Order of diminishing returns for the many and huge profits for the few.

“Union dealing with age-old space woes,” reads the headline in Tuesday’s Daily. “Officials say the Union is simply too small to accommodate all of its office-space needs,” reads the sub headline.

If you believe the article, a shortage of office space seems to be a natural occurrence, like the weather. Just as surely as it gets cold in the winter, office space is just naturally scarce, you see. Hmm … Could it be that the new renovations have caused a shortage of office space?

It would be impolite to ask union officials why there is a shortage of office space, that might be too political and we can’t have that.

Why is there a shortage of office space? Because of the tyrannical rule of MU Director Mary Jo Mertens and her cronies, as previous columns by Theresa Wilson have pointed out.

If you want to know the real story behind the MU office renovations, pick up a copy of The Drummer and read Keesia Wirt’s article on page three.

It’s also only slightly ironic that a building built as a memorial to those who fought and died in World War II is lacking enough office space for the Veterans Club.

Just another way Iowa State University is on it’s way to land grant utopia.

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Drew Chebuhar is a senior in journalism mass communication from Muscatine.