Creepy Cruz on climate change

There is something vaguely creepy about Ted Cruz.

It is more than the smug expression that is his standard face. He also has the sly expression of someone who thinks he is way smarter than you and can argue better and thus can make you believe what he says. This confidence is shown in the way he flatly distorts things and uses his skills in sophistry to try and make his lies sound truthful.
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Should a newspaper’s owner be allowed to be anonymous?

This question has arisen because the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state of Nevada’s largest circulation newspaper, was bought by someone and no one, not even the reporters working at the paper, knows their identity. What is more, the new owner paid a sum of $140 million, which was well above what people considered the market value.
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The inexplicable obsession with treating tragedies as hoaxes

Three years ago yesterday, 20 children and six adults died in the massacre that took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. It was a tragic event, as all such events are, with the added poignancy that always accompanies a child’s death. There are apparently people who think that the whole thing was a hoax that was perpetrated for who knows what reason, but they think that the government and president Obama are behind it
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These are the people who like Trump

Today is yet another Republican debate featuring nine people in the main event with Chris Christie just squeaking back in and Rand Paul barely avoiding getting relegated to the minor league. The field has effectively narrowed down to just three people (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio) and you can expect to see them sparring with one another, with Jeb Bush and Ben Carson struggling to act as if they are still relevant.
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That’s science, baby!

Residents of a North Carolina town reject solar power plan because they think it will use up all the sunlight and kill the plants.

A town meeting in Woodland, North Carolina heard public comments on a proposed solar farm in which citizens, including a retired science teacher called Jane Mann, spoke out against the proposal.

Ms Mann opposes the solar expansion because she believes it would lower her property values. She also said that plants near solar farms do not thrive because there wasn’t enough sunshine left over for them to photosynthesize. She also evinced a belief that solar panels cause cancer. Her husband added that solar panels “suck up all the energy from the sun.”

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Meet the Iowa Republican voters

On Monday, February 1, 2016 Iowa holds its caucuses. This is a complicated process and there is a long and tortured path from what takes place that evening to how the final delegates to the party convention are apportioned. So in one sense, what happens that night is not really definitive but the media, anxious to quickly identify winners and losers, have used the non-binding secret ballot that begins the proceedings as their marker and this can lead to problems as in 2012, when Mitt Romney was declared the winner on caucus night but later it turned out that Rick Santorum had edged him out.
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Are atheists attacking the wrong god?

There comes a time when, on some particular issue, I start to feel that I have heard and said all that I really care to on that subject, have formed a pretty firm opinion about it, and am no longer really interested in debating its merits much more since I am unlikely to learn anything new. The only reason to further engage with the question is to challenge the propagation of ideas one thinks are wrong and harmful.
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