Donald Trump’s media-circus candidacy has been bringing plenty of cultural taboos to the fore for all to see. This being the USA, any contest between a man and woman for the highest office in the land was doomed to draw trolls and patriarchs out of the woodwork, but the Trump vs Clinton contest has been
Today is Hallowe’en, a traditional time to scare each other and scry into the future. And what a perfect time to do so, with a frightening verdict to report, and mischief that is sure to follow! Unless you’ve been stuck in a dungeon for the last several days, you’ve probably heard that Ryan Bundy and
The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975. Renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990, with amendments added in 1997, this law included provisions that required schools to provide appropriate, individually tailored special education programs for children with disabilities at no (direct)
It’s been a particularly vicious election season, and it’s not over yet. Dangerous rhetoric, including Trump goading his supporters to violence, has produced an environment of rancor that seems designed to bring out the worst in people. Yet among each day’s new stories of political grandstanding and admissions of sexual assault, two stories of people
Externalities are everywhere, once you start looking for them. These are the costs (or, sometimes, the benefits) that accrue to those outside of an economic transaction who likely didn’t consent to pay for them. I’ve written about them before, such as how WalMart profits by not having to pay for security services that are provided
On Friday, October 14, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara N. Bellis dismissed a lawsuit brought by nine surviving family members of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre against the gun company who manufactured the gun used by Adam Lanza to carry out the shooting. The lawsuit alleged both the manufacturers of the
There’s no denying the upcoming presidential election has exposed a dark, sick, seedy side of our society in which sexual assault, harassment, and abuse targeted toward women has become a staple of our day-to-day conversations, and how seemingly desensitized we’ve become to it. I can’t think of another point in history when we have had
On Tuesday of this week, less than a month after the 96th anniversary of the 19th Amendment becoming part of the United States Constitution, data scientist Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight shared two graphics on Twitter that showed what the outcome of this year’s Presidential election would look like if the votes were separated between just
By now, most of us have heard the despicable, sickening and extraordinarily dangerous things Donald Trump said in a video from 2005 that was recently leaked to the media. Sadly, most of us were not surprised by it, but it did manage to be the final straw for millions of Americans who have simply had
Fifteen employees from various locations throughout the country have recently filed federal sexual harassment complaints against fast-food giant McDonald’s through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Though the EEOC is legally barred from confirming whether discrimination charges have been filed, a group of workers who are pushing for unionization and higher pay known as “Fight”