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Slate
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Another one for you to file under "fox guards the henhouse": The Senate rules committee votes tomorrow (Wednesday) on whether to give Hans A. von Spakovsky a full six-year term on the Federal Elections Commission. For Senate Democrats to even consider all..
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Slate
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Republican presidential candidates are crossing the country promising voters that they'll pick judges who will be "strict constructionists" of the U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, Republican activists in California are trying to flout the Constitution in ord..
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Slate
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President Bush's TV address tonight was the worst speech he's ever given on the war in Iraq, and that's saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or d..
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Slate
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The U.S. Federal Reserve pumped $62 billion into the banking system over two days last week as credit fears spread and stock markets sank—a situation that's been likened to financial Armageddon. On Thursday, the Fed injected another $17 billion. How exa..
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Slate
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There's one vote that Rudy Giuliani definitely can't count on in his 2008 presidential bid: his own daughter's. According to the 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani's Facebook profile, she's supporting Barack Obama.
On her profile, she designates her politic..
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Slate
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Usually we leave it up to the linguists and philosophers to muse on the crazy relationship between words and their meanings. In the law, words—the important ones, at least—are defined narrowly, and judges, lawyers, and jurors are trusted to understand..
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Slate
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Japan's agriculture minister hanged himself Monday amid allegations of bid-rigging and padding government expenses. The following day, an executive allegedly linked to one of the scams leapt to his death. In 2005, 32,552 people killed themselves in Japanâ..
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Slate
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Say goodbye to another curse of nature. Menstruation just became optional.
We've been tampering with periods for years. But on Tuesday, we made it official. The Food and Drug Administration approved Lybrel, the first birth-control pill explicitly desig..
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Slate
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What happens when a war spending bill gets vetoed.
This week, President Bush is expected to veto a $124.2 billion war spending bill that stipulates a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Lawmakers may revise the legislation, but in the meantime,..
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Slate
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On Monday, Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui killed 33 people, including himself, and injured many others during a campus shooting spree. According to a CNN timeline, the gunman killed most of the victims over a span of about 10 to 15 minutes, carrying..
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Slate
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When it comes to Iraq, there are two kinds of presidential candidates. The disciplined ones, like Hillary Clinton, carefully avoid acknowledging reality. The more candid, like John McCain and Barack Obama, sometimes blurt out the truth, but quickly apolog..
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Slate
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The U.S. attorneys purge scandal is heating up. The House and Senate have convened hearings for Tuesday, promising an orgy of named names and pointed fingers. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., now admits what he once denied: that he may have had a hand in the r..
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Slate
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It's too bad that the U.S. political system offers no way to take a vote of "no confidence," because that describes the state we're living in now. We have come to the point where nothing that the Bush administration says can—or should—be trusted. That..
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Slate
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Pass me that whiskey bottle. My Wikipedia bio is about to disappear because I fail to satisfy the "notability guideline." Wikipedia, as you probably know, is an online, multilingual encyclopedia whose entries are written and edited by readers around th..
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Slate
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One of my most vivid childhood memories is of standing, at 6 years old, in front of the family TV (miniature screen, huge clicky dials, fake wood paneling) and making myself an extremely solemn promise: No matter what happened in my life—no matter where..
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Slate
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Near the end of his new book, Rumsfeld: His Rise, His Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy—an unfriendly but persuasive portrait of the former secretary of defense—journalist Andrew Cockburn relates a story about an encounter between Bush père et fils that..
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Slate
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How Sysco came to monopolize most of what you eat. A hot dog from Yankee Stadium. Potato latkes from the Four Seasons in Manhattan. Sirloin steak at Applebee's. The jumbo cheeseburger at the University of Iowa Hospital. While it would seem these menu i..
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Slate
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The following essay is adapted from Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, a re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and thinkers who helped shape the 20th century. Over the coming weeks, Slate will run an exclusive selection of these essays, going roughly from..
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Slate
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The following essay is adapted from Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, a re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and thinkers who helped shape the 20th century. Over the coming weeks, Slate will run an exclusive selection of these essays, going roughly from..
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Slate
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There are, of course, two types of charges: the ones you see coming and the ones you don't. I write this from an inexpensive hotel room, but you would not guess that looking at the price list in front of me. Two dollars a minute for phone calls (price on..
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