Slate Magazine - Chatterbox

Slate's online guide to the health care reform bill.

Timothy Noah — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:34:11 EST

The legislative effort to reform America's health care system is a story that is unfolding online. Newspapers are playing catch-up, sometimes with their own Web sites. What follows is Slate's guide to the best online information sources for anyone who wants to follow this story as it happens. Because valuable new links are appearing on an almost-daily basis, I add to and update this portal with some frequency.

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Maybe Baby Einstein's founder isn't an American hero after all.

Timothy Noah — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:33:48 EST

In a January 2007 column ("Bush's Baby Einstein Gaffe") I argued that the Bush White House blundered badly when it singled out Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of the Baby Einstein Co., to sit by First Lady Laura Bush as President George W. Bush rhapsodized, in his State of the Union address, "Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America." A tradition dating to the Reagan administration required the president to recognize a few American heroes during his annual speech to Congress. Seated alongside Aigner-Clark in the House visitor's gallery were Wesley Autrey, who had leapt in front of a New York City subway train to rescue a complete stranger, and Army Sgt. Tommy Reiman, who had repelled an enemy attack in Iraq with two legs full of shrapnel and bullet wounds in his arms and chest.

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The paradox of health reform.

Timothy Noah — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:07:23 EST

Click here for a guide to following the health reform story online.

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"Diversity is a disease."

Timothy Noah — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:16:02 EST

I've been puzzling for some time over what Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project was all about. Beck's own 9/12 message is a Capraesque plea, backed by swelling music, to restore the values of the Founding Fathers, with some vague darker stuff mixed in about "quarantining" Washington as you would a patient with swine flu. (Beck here hints ominously that swine flu is a phony conspiracy to inhibit public assembly.) "Nothing in and nothing out ... don't let them pass any legislation."

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CIA switcheroo!

Timothy Noah — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:27:23 EST

Er, whoops. Those two reports the CIA released this week, saying they were the documents Cheney requested last April? The ones Cheney said would show that "enhanced interrogation" (his euphemism for torture) saved American lives?

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