Despite the combined forces of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and frightened farmers everywhere, legal scholar Cass Sunstein has been confirmed as Obama’s regulatory czar.
A small victory for facts over fear. Also known, in contemporary politics, as a miracle.
The Senate approved Sunstein by a vote of 57 to 40.
A British PSA illustrating the ramifications of texting while driving has been making waves not in Wales where it was produced, but in the US via YouTube and major news outlets. This isn’t your average “this-is-your-brain-on-drugs” PSA. Instead it’s a long (over four minutes) and graphic dramatization of what happens when a teenage girl decides to text message while driving.
We know that people respond much better to stories than they do to statistics. This particular story revolves around a group of happy-go-lucky teenage girls unaware that their actions are about to destroy many…
I’ve always thought that the ability to talk on the phone while driving was part of the cabbie job description. But until this New York Times article I had no idea it was actually illegal for NYC cabbies to talk on the phone while driving (the same cannot be same said for Washington, DC and many other cities).
While the law is largely unenforced, the dangers of cell phone use while driving are undeniable (drivers using cell phones are ”four times as likely to…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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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