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In Defense of Yahoo! and Marissa Mayer's Telecommuting Ban
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2013 CommentYahoo!'s recent edict banning telecommuting for employees has become a minor scandal, largely because to many, it seems an incongruous move for an Internet company. A fussy law firm seems like the kind of place that would insist its workers do their jobs on-site. Yahoo! sounds like the kind of place that would not only encourage telecommuting, but be working on software that would allow people's avatars to do their grunt work while the real people go out and find new financing. Plus, the new CEO, Marissa Mayer, is the first person to be hired as a major company CEO while she was pregnant—and she came back to work two weeks after her child was born.
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Congressional Hazing of Chuck Hagel Was a Waste of Time
Tweet Share on Facebook February 27, 2013 CommentChris Dodd was a new, young senator in 1982, when C. Everett Koop was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to serve as the nation's surgeon general. A lot of liberals like then-Senator Dodd didn't like Koop, who was anti-abortion, and saw him as the embodiment of the Moral Majority conservatism they despised. Dodd, who was then in the Senate barely a year, voted against Koop's nomination. The surgeon general was approved by the Senate anyway, 60-24.
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The Invented Controversy of Michelle Obama's Oscars Appearance
Tweet Share on Facebook February 26, 2013 CommentHow desperate for a "controversy" about the Obamas does a person have to be to create one over the appearance of first lady Michelle Obama on the Oscars?
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On Gun Ownership and More, Americans Have Little Privacy
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2013 CommentSenate negotiations over gun legislation have been stalled by a seemingly insignificant item: whether records should be kept for private sales of guns. What's remarkable is not that Congress is tussling at all over something as sensible as simple background checks for gun buyers, something supported by a wide majority of Americans, including gun owners. It's that people seem unaware that so much of their private life is already public and often, published.
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John Kerry Is Right to Defend Foreign Aid
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2013 CommentSecretary of State John F. Kerry is no longer subject to the whims of voters, ill-informed or not. And that's why Kerry had the freedom to deliver an important truth in his first speech as secretary: Not only is foreign aid not a drain on the budget, but it's a cost-effective investment toward peace.
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Tighter Ethics Rules Won't Prevent Future Jesse Jackson Jrs.
Tweet Share on Facebook February 21, 2013 CommentThe case of former representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is exactly the sort of episode that makes people call for stricter ethics rules for members of Congress. But if anything, the disgraced congressman's behavior shows how ineffective it can be to tighten ethics rule more and more to prevent corruption.
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Chuck Hagel, Alec Baldwin, and John Allen and the Wages of Gossip
Tweet Share on Facebook February 20, 2013 CommentThere was a time when being called a gossip was something of an insult, an indication that a person was not to be trusted with private information and would turn even the most insignificant matter into something scandalous. Both General John Allen and actor Alec Baldwin have become victims recently (though deserving of far different levels of sympathy). And Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel has suffered the most—and over a manufactured rumor that started on the flimsiest of premises.
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High Skilled Immigrants Are the Real ‘Job Creators’
Tweet Share on Facebook February 19, 2013 CommentThe partisan battles over immigration reform and tax policy raise a fundamental question: who are the real "job creators?"
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Don't Focus on Oscar Pistorius But on Domestic Violence and Guns
Tweet Share on Facebook February 15, 2013 CommentAny story or commentary about the murder accusation against the inspirational Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius must begin with the presumption that he is innocent. Police arrived at Pistorius's home to find the disabled runner's girlfriend in a pool of blood, dead from bullet wounds. It doesn't look good, from the initial facts, but then, we don't yet know all the facts.
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Sandy Hook, the Green Ribbon, and NRA Bullying
Tweet Share on Facebook February 14, 2013 CommentIf a viewer wanted to tell who was a Democrat and who was a Republican at the State of the Union address, there was no need to match faces to facebooks or even to see where they sat in the House chamber. All that was necessary was to look for the green ribbon.
