Remembering the fallen

Conan O’Brien takes a moment to pay tribute to all 16 Republican candidates who fell under the Trump juggernaut. He gives us the date when they decided to call it quits as well as the reason for doing so. It is interesting that five of them (Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki) dropped out even before the first actual contest, the Iowa caucuses, took place on February 1. Carl Bialik gives the full chronology of when each entered and left the race.
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The Supreme Court comes sharply back into focus

Barack Obama came into office promising to end the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and close the Guantanamo torture camp and none of those things have happened. In fact we are now involved in new wars in Syria and Libya, not to mention Yemen. But there is at least the theoretical possibility that after a president is voted out of office after four or eight years, any bad policies they instituted can be reversed by their successor, though in practice such reversals are not so easy since Congress is also involved.
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Misusing misnomer

I have recently encountered many instances of people on the radio and on TV using the word ‘misnomer’ (which has a dictionary definition of “a name that is wrong or not proper or appropriate”) when they seem to mean ‘misconception’ or ‘misunderstanding’. This interview on NPR with an Indiana congressman provides an example of this increasingly common usage. He uses the word at the 2:33 mark in response to a question that begins at around 2:00.
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Indiana surprises: Sanders wins, Cruz bows out

Yesterday’s primary results in Indiana produced two unexpected results. First off was the surprise win by Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton by five points (52.5% to 47.5%) when the pre-election poll average had Clinton leading by close to 7 points. The relentless media coverage that it was all over for Sanders and that it was time for him to bow out would normally result in a snowball effect where people start drifting to the presumed leader and supporters of the trailing candidate do not bother to vote. That this did not happen and that there was a 12-point difference between polls and the final outcome suggests that many voters still cannot reconcile themselves to the policies Clinton represents and are determined to have their voice heard.
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Single payer health care move in Colorado

I am a strong advocate of a government-funded single payer health care, along the lines of the ‘Medicare for all’ plan proposed by Bernie Sanders. Colorado is putting such a plan on the ballot for November. It is called Amendment 69 and the parasitic health insurance industry backed by oligarchs like the Koch brothers has gone all out to try and get people to vote it down.
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