Watching a single woman-in-red denounce President Barack Obama as a noncitizen is not particularly scary. We can imagine any number of complicated life narratives for this woman’s shotgun rage. We may even muster compassion. The more alarming question is, Why are all those other people cheering her on?
Just did a story for The Daily Beast on the latest conspiracy theory in a summer ripe with paranoia. Before the gentleman who warned the government to get…
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Over the course of a lifetime, about 1 in 4 Americans will buy their own health insurance. Why? Because things happen, as is painfully clear right now. Maybe you get laid off. Or your company stops offering insurance. Or maybe you start your own business. The American way, right?
My friend Sarah Wildman is a freelance writer (like most reporters these days, including myself), so she had to buy insurance herself. For those of you who think the private market gets health care right, check…
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Should soldiers be banned from smoking in war zones?
According to a recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report (commissioned by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs), 30% of active-duty personnel and 22% of vets smoke. By comparison, 21% of Americans use tobacco. Soldiers’ habits cost the U.S. $1.6 billion per year on tobacco-related medical care, increased hospitalizations, and lost days of work, according to the report. And “smoking rates among military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may be 50 percent higher than rates among…
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If you happened to check Twitter this week you probably saw many reactions to Monday’s red line metrorail crash here in DC. Commuters were instantly “tweeting” about the crash, the horrific commute that night and the following day, and their experiences with WMATA. Couple that with a wide range of responses from all over the country, and Twitter revealed an interesting look at people’s reactions.
Some Twitter users posted the traditional responses:
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Accidents happen. One way to compound the damage is to keep important information from the public--the very people who need the information most. You end up with what happened last night in DC--hundreds of passengers stranded without any idea what was happening. Passengers stuck in trains and stations for hours, hearing regular announcements about a “train experiencing mechanical difficulties” up ahead--not hearing what CNN and the Washington Post were reporting at the same time, about a massive collision that paralyzed the entire Metro system.
A revealing chronology of alerts in the Washington Post today.…
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Horrific story from the evening commute here in DC. One Red Line Metrorail train slammed into another, plowing into it from behind with enough force to launch it up on top of the other train. The Washington Post is reporting at least 6 deaths and an estimated 70 injuries. The collision happened between two stations just south of the border between DC and Maryland. No idea yet what caused the accident.
But it’s already clear that as in most sizeable emergencies, regular people did the hardest work…
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Thursday’s in-flight death of Continental Airlines pilot, Craig Lenell, may have been a surprise to passengers, but it’s not the first time a pilot has died in-flight. As recently as 2007, another Continental pilot died en route from Houston to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. An MSNBC list of other instances where pilots died or passed out in-flight is published here.
Lenell, who served 32 years as a Continental pilot, was 60 and apparently healthy (per FAA rules, commercial pilots over 40 are required to undergo twice-yearly physicals). He died of a heart attack. According to
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News outlets, including CNN, are identifying James von Brunn, 88, as the suspect in a shooting at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. What appears to be his web site, which is getting swamped with traffic and may not work for long, portrays a man who is angry and anti-semitic, among other inadequate adjectives.
I am relieved to hear that the shooter was quickly disabled by security guards and is now at GW University Hospital, just around the corner from my office. It sounds like a security…
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