CARPE DIEM: Free-Trade Paradox: Poor Benefit More Than Rich ree trade with poorer countries has a huge positive impact on the buying power of middle- and lower-income consumers—a much bigger impact than it does on the buying power of wealthier consumers. The less you make, the bigger the percentage of your spending that goes to manufactured goods—clothes, shoes, and the like—whose prices are often directly affected by free trade.

The Library in the New Age - The New York Review of Books The Library in the New Age By Robert Darnton

The Agitator » Blog Archive » Habeas, Schmabeas If the president gets these powers, it’s the end, gang. The writ of habeas corpus is 400 years old. The Bush administration is, rather incredibly, arguing that the “commander in chief” power of the U.S. Constitution authorizes them to vaporize it.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades.