Last week I spent some time being interviewed by a reporter for NPR. The news item aired today on the national morning NPR show, Morning Edition. In a news report on the online petition at Stanford University protesting the invitation of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to be a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution, I was one of the people offering a viewpoint.NPR has a podcast available, and you can listen here. Reporter Richard Gonzales was quite fair, I thought, though the time constraints precluded any lengthy exploration of the issues I stressed in the 20 minutes or so we spoke. Interestingly enough, the supporters of the petition now aver their support for the right of the Secretary to be on campus. My question is why are they calling it a "petition" then? If it is merely a statement of protest, call it a "protest statement". A petition by its very nature asks for redress of grievances, as the Constitution specifies.Speaking...(Read Full Post)