Texas' Governor Greg Abbott is among many of the United States governors that have vowed to not allow refugees from Syria in their state. Our governors are not alone. Many countries in Europe are not allowing Syrian refugees into their borders either. This is something that is both difficult and extremely important to get right. Texas is not on the right track. Offering SOME form of help would be the first step. Instead of a "Just Say No" campaign against Muslim refugees, Texas should be trying to contribute in some way to the world's problems instead of making these problems worse.

Texas, nor any other state, has the right to deny these refugees and the U.S. government has warned them of that fact. The states' fears are that we will be allowing Islamic extremist into the country. Many of them are saying that we don't have enough security measures to allow these refugees into the country. The U.S. government puts each refugee through almost every U.S. government's agencies' background check. In order to do this, they need time to get their own paperwork in order before they are even allowed to apply. In order to house these people until they have been cleared we need land and resources. Both of which we have but, are not utilizing. The midwest has plenty of room. Let's get these people cleared so that they may get on with their lives. It's a crying shame we have not done so already. The whole world is at fault here.

Give Me Texas Or Give Me Death's Self Proclaimed, Untrustworthy Author.

There are many problems with Give Me Texas or Give Me Death's recent article, "Is Texas Crazy?" One such problem is that the author is against the new law yet, the article uses arguments in favor of the law. "So who are we to state for a fact that non-licensed students will respect the rules of this bill and not bring a weapon to campus." This is among the top arguments used by supporters of the bill. Supporters argue that campuses are currently a gun free and yet, that is not stopping criminals from coming on campus and imposing their will with their guns.

The author also goes on to call all college students idiots that can't be trusted, in the following statement, "College students don't take anything serious. You can't trust them." So what do we take from this article? Well we know that the author is a college student, that doesn't take anything serious and can't be trusted. Essentially the author is telling us to disregard this whole article.

Pumped up & pimped out

Texas should be compensating the men and women known as "student-athletes" for their time and effort put into a program that is worth millions. The University of Texas, Texas A&M, and every other school that participates in college athletics are making incredible amounts of money off of unpaid athletes. The Longhorns average about $63 million per home football game. That's not to mention how much money a game might bring to the private sector outside of the Longhorn program. That's over $63 million dollars and not one dollar is allowed to go to the stars of the show. This is due to the NCAA rules on amateurism.

This past summer, there was a court ruling by the US Ninth Circuit court of Appeals for the Ed O'Bannon case where the NCAA used his likeness for a video game and did not compensate him for efforts. The NCAA was ordered to pay $46 million in lawsuit vs O'Bannon where the NCAA was found to be in violation of the U.S. antitrust laws for the use of O'Bannon's image in video games and other broadcasts. This is a major step in the right direction for college athletes. 

Johnny Manziel, and the media attention that he captured, brought Texas A&M $150,000 in #2 replica jersey's alone with $120 million in total revenue for the 2012 season. Manziel was not compensated at all. Meanwhile, his coach, Kevin Sumlin got a $1.1 million raise. How are these men like Johnny Manziel and Colt McCoy not paid anything, when the people they are playing for are making millions of dollars? NCAA and the schools that the athletes pay for it justify it by "paying them with an education." That's like enslaving someone to work on your farm but saying it's fine because you're teaching them to read and write.

While we are most certainly headed in the right direction, it's cases like O'Bannon's that are going to force us to keep looking into compensating these players for their time and effort into the sports that our state colleges are making so much money on.