Joe Babler
Number of articles: 11First article: October 31, 2008
Latest article: May 7, 2010
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Benefit of the Doubt: ‘Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’
The summer after my sophomore year, I spent some time working at a nonprofit writing out by hand thousands of addresses and thank you letters. While my hand was cramping and my handwriting was deteriorating, I had a lot of free time to listen to anything I wanted to on the radio. I decided to spend most of the summer listening to the partisans of talk radio—Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mike Malloy, and a few others. I wanted to find out why so many found these radio shows hosts compelling.
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Benefit of the Doubt: Mixing scientific and political debate is a dangerous recipe
I'm not a scientist. As much as I pride myself on interpreting and understanding the news, stories about science and scientific claims often leave me baffled and unsure as to whom I should believe. I don't mean that I'm so confused as to think intelligent design is credible or that evolution isn't fact, but confused enough to be skeptical of the latest scientific study.
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Benefit of the Doubt: We can combat the deficit by cutting the defense budget
We have to reduce our military and defense spending. Wait! Don't go yet! I know what you expect. You expect to hear that conservatives, most notably Ronald Reagan, have built a huge, unmanageable, and undesirable military-industrial complex that does as much to defend our country as it does to encourage military options too quickly in international scuffles. Then you expect a slam-dunk rebuke of Republican congressmen that are always willing to give another dollar for guns but not a penny for health care, welfare, or education.
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Benefit of the Doubt: We need to kick our addiction to sensational political reporting
What did Scott Brown's recent election for the late Edward Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts mean? If you're a Democrat, you might argue that Martha Coakley, Scott Brown's opponent, was a poor candidate who didn't take the election seriously and that special elections are notorious for producing odd results due to low levels of turnout.
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Benefit of the Doubt: America’s new, dangerous tyranny of the supermajority
Consider this: fifty years ago, over a two-year session of Congress there was exactly one cloture motion filed, the motion the Senate files to ask for a vote to end a filibuster. Twenty-five years ago, there were 41 motions filed. Last session, there were 139 motions filed. The Senate is already on track to set a whole new record for the 111th Congress.
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The president’s Afghanistan withdrawal plan is comprehensive
President Barack Obama committed another 30,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan during his speech at West Point on December 1. And TIME magazine's cover last week got it right: "It's His War Now." This is why that, along with announcing a surge in troops, Obama also declared that beginning in July 2011, the United States would begin taking forces out of Afghanistan and transferring power to Afghanistan's government.
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We need more nuclear plants to combat global warming
If we have so many diplomatic problems with the Middle East, why do we send them millions of dollars a day by purchasing their oil? Everyone across the political spectrum agrees that we have to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources, but the similarities usually end there. The left, seeing an imminent problem with global warming and its connection to our oil and fossil fuel use, hail our energy problem as an opportunity to lower our dependence on oil and save the planet through an expanse of renewable energy.
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We need liberals and conservatives to push health care reform
For those of you that have not heard about this season's election cycle outside of Maine's own ballot, there were a couple of other elections going on Tuesday. Most political junkies and the cable news might have argued that the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia were critical in demonstrating where the country is headed politically.
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We can regulate our automatic rifles and shoot them, too
In the debate about guns, as in so many others, neither side is willing to acknowledge the salient points and reasonable objections of their ideological opponent. Pro-gun enthusiasts believe that gun regulation is a fundamental violation of the right to self-defense and simply another case of government intrusion. Those who want more gun regulation want to prevent guns from getting into schools and the hands of criminals.
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Partisan bickering hurts our discourse
As the August recess comes to a close on Capitol Hill, most political speculation concerns what will happen next to health care reform. With angry constituents at volatile town halls as one of the most well covered news stories of the last month, Congress is filled with anxiety about what the next steps might be.
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Campaign strategies differ, Obama's comes out on top
What is this? Another Bowdoin student writing a pro-Obama piece in the hallowed op-ed pages of the Orient? Before you groan and go back to reading the security report, there are a few things you might want to consider before voting next Tuesday.