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b96ce3c
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The day I arrived in Yakutsk with my colleague Peter Osnos of The Washington Post, it was 46 below. When our plane landed, the door was frozen solidly shut, and it took about half an hour for a powerful hot-air blower- standard equipment at Siberian airports- to break the icy seal. Stepping outside was like stepping onto another planet, for at those low temperatures nothing seems quite normal. The air burns. Sounds are brittle. Every breath..
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winter
forty-below
siberia
cold
russia
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David K. Shipler |
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91d2a88
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There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.
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political
patriotic
security
terrorism
privacy
rights
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David K. Shipler |
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4bc8943
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Wo rkers at the edge of poverty are essential to America's prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole. Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff. It is time to be ashamed.
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David K. Shipler |
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6caafb3
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The law is too important to be left to the lawyers, to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau about war and generals. We laymen know too little about our Constitution and think too superficially about its influence on the qualities of American life. Civic duty requires more.
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political
patriotic
civics
skepticism
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David K. Shipler |
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ef64aa4
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Time magazine found in a 2000 survey that 19 percent of Americans thought they were in the top 1 percent of wage-earners, and another 20 percent expected to be in the future. "So right away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favored the top i percent, he was taking a direct shot at them," wrote David Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.3"
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David K. Shipler |
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458ddd8
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This right to speak serves as the wellspring nourishing other rights. Art cannot flourish, literature cannot inspire, the powerless cannot dissent, the press cannot probe, the voter cannot choose wisely, the space for dialogue cannot remain open, and our system cannot be self-correcting without the First Amendment's guarantee. That makes free speech bigger than an individual possession, for the right to be heard is also the right to hear: y..
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David K. Shipler |
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44a0e39
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On their way to jail, to deportation from the country, or to expulsion from school, those who confront the muscle of the state frequently see their rights bruised, their liberties wounded. This book is about some of those people. Therefore, it is about all of us.
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David K. Shipler |
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13834b0
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A key test for any society is whether or not it is self-correcting. And to be self-correcting, it must first be open and truthful about itself.
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David K. Shipler |
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1eabf28
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Terrorism is theater. Its real targets are not the innocent victims but the spectators. Those on the political side of the dead are to be frightened, intimidated, cowed, perhaps drawn into ugly retaliation that will spoil their image among the disinterested, who in turn are to be impressed with the desperate vitality and significance of the movement behind the terrorism. Those on the side of the gunmen, the bombers, the hijackers, are to be..
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David K. Shipler |
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4383fcb
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Being poor is a full-time job, it really is.
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David K. Shipler |
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53ba5f1
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If every American school taught the Bill of Rights in a clear and compelling way, if every child knew the fundamental rules that guide the relationships between the individual and the state, then every citizen would eventually feel the reflexive need to resist every violation. We had better begin now, for rights that are not invoked are eventually abandoned.
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David K. Shipler |
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b826910
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Since a president can easily slide into a comfort zone of sycophants, it can't hurt him to see a few demonstrators with rude T-shirts injecting a small dose of irreverence into a triumphant appearance. In the age of stage-managed events for television, however, White House aides don't like it.
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David K. Shipler |
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a808249
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Publications aren't the only forms of expression now governed by Hazelwood's ruling that speech can be limited when administrators claim ownership of the statement and think it's "unsuitable." Courts have applied the standard to plays, homework assignments, team mascots, and even cheer-leading.62 A cheerleader in Texas was kicked off the squad after she refused to cheer for a basketball player whom she had accused of sexually assaulting her..
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David K. Shipler |
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1f95791
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Heavy reliance on the tool of confession is lazy. It aborts justice. As a result, whoever murdered eight people that March day in Bwindi--whether the three defendants or others--was not held to account.
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David K. Shipler |
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44b91d1
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The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?
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David K. Shipler |
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6e46ea4
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The intelligence professional's passion to collect everything possible is nicely illustrated in an NYPD report under the rubric "Secret," and beneath a blacked-out box that may have contained notes from an infiltrator. The censored document declares ominously in large type: "LOCAL ACTIVIST GROUP TO USE ART MURALS IN ORDER TO SPREAD PEACE MESSAGE; GROUP MAY USE DIRECT ACTION METHODS IN CONJUNCTION WITH STREET THEATRE." It describes the organ..
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David K. Shipler |
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e85fc32
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History in the Middle East has a marvelous elasticity. It is easily stretched, twisted, compressed in the hands of its custodians, squeezed to fit into any thesis of righteous cause or pious grief. But it also has a way of springing back into an inconvenient form, a shape made of hard reminders. Certain features of the past remain as immutable as the ancient stones in Jerusalem--the Western Wall of huge Herodian blocks, the outcropping of b..
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David K. Shipler |
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df3dab2
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At the extremes of the debate, liberals don't want to see the dysfunctional family, and conservatives want to see nothing else. Depending on the ideology, destructive parenting is either not a cause or the only cause of poverty. Neither stereotype is correct. In
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David K. Shipler |