Apr 25 2010
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Aug 16 2009
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Barack Obama - Why We Need Health Care Reform
What we need is a single-payer system with everyone being covered. We already have an American model for such a system: Medicare. We could extend it to cover everyone and we could fix whatever flaws it may have. All doctors should be required to participate too.
Jul 24 2009
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Sergeant Who Arrested Professor Defends Actions
Why is it that the “disorderly conduct” charges were dropped if the arrest was justified? Is that offense merely an excuse the police use for harassing people who annoy them? And once they have harassed someone for a few hours do they drop the charges because beyond that it’s too much trouble for the police, or else they know they can’t get a conviction?
Jul 23 2009
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U.S. Judge Challenges Evidence on a Detainee
The U.S. has been holding a guy for six years at Guantánamo with no evidence he has done anything wrong, except for a confession extracted via torture and threats his family would be killed if he did not confess. He may have been as young as 12 when first detained. Why is the Obama administration still holding this guy?
Jul 22 2009
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Apple Legal Reportedly Hinders Reporter's Investigation of iPods Catching Fire
“The complaints [about iPods catching fire], made to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, amount to over 800 pages of documentation covering 15 incidents that Apple’s lawyers repeatedly tried to prevent [investigative reporter Amy] Clancy from accessing under a Freedom of Information Act request.”
Jul 21 2009
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Amateur Finds New Earth-Sized Blot on Jupiter
An amateur astronomer in Australia using a $10,000 14.5” reflecting telescope discovered that an Earth-sized object recently struck Jupiter.
Jul 18 2009
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Why We Must Ration Health Care
Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton, explains why we do, and why we must, ration health care. He also suggests a rational way to do it.
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Multitasking on the Road
Cellphones are the most dangerous distraction on American roads. Driving while using a cellphone is as dangerous as driving legally drunk; it ought to be just as illegal. Hands-free phones do not eliminate the risk, because the problem is the distraction, not the fact that you’re holding something in your hand.
Jul 17 2009
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SCLC and Marriage Equality
Melissa Harris-Lacewell writes, “a national civil rights organization that takes a ‘neutral position’ on an issue of basic civil rights [same-sex marriage] does not deserve to exist.” She points out that it was an openly gay black man, Bayard Rustin, who architected the 1963 March on Washington and “whose fierce pacifism and commitment to non-violence is the very basis of King’s strategy.”
