Contributors
All articles
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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: Restoring honesty to the Supreme Court nomination process
Justice John Paul Stevens will be retiring from the Supreme Court this summer and President Obama will be charged with appointing a second Supreme Court justice. While Obama screens candidates and waits for better political timing to name a nominee, the parties are gearing up to paint whoever is nominated in terms favorable to their politics.
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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.