Word: argumentative
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...along this old ideological fault line that the journalist Steven R. Weisman has assembled the narrative of The Great Tax Wars (Simon & Schuster; 419 pages), an absorbing history of the income tax. Weisman monitors the argument--which continues today--from the time that Abraham Lincoln first pushed through Congress an unprecedented tax on income in 1862 to pay the Union's immense war expenses, to the early 1940s, when a far larger conflict turned America into a nation of more or less uncomplaining income tax payers...
...Traffic as a way to understand the problem. The czar, who told Time he has never smoked pot, believes marijuana to be not only a gateway drug but also incredibly detrimental in its own right--causing driving accidents, domestic violence, health risks and crippling addiction. He thinks the legalization argument is absurd, especially when proposed by libertarian Republicans who are so doctrinaire he finds them to be outside his party. "This is great talk at 2 a.m. in a dorm room, that all laws should be consistent. But the real world isn't consistent. It's ludicrous...
...discussed with the masters two years ago, and again more recently; it was also discussed with the Athletic Committee. No one brought forward a rational argument against it in any of these settings. In pursuit of a less dangerous Yale game this year, other changes have also been made. For example, the parties have been moved from the Business School parking lot to Cumnock Field, so that inebriated students walking to The Game won’t be killed by the traffic on North Harvard Street as almost happened several times two years...
...thinks that banning kegs will end drunkenness at the Yale game. But using that as an argument against the keg ban is like arguing that a 70 mph speed limit is pointless because fatal accidents happen at 50 mph too. Kegs are meant to be emptied; I doubt many half-full kegs get returned to the liquor stores after football weekends. It is easier to lose track of how much you have drunk if you are drinking from a keg. And the higher cost of canned beer than kegs, which has been used as an argument against...
...able to do so whatever the regulations; but the point of drinking is not to get drunk. Nor do I think that the keg ban will force parties off campus where the drinking will only be less controlled. In fact, I am puzzled about how to square this argument with the argument, made with equal force, that Harvard students are responsible drinkers. And finally, I am skeptical that any part of the push for kegs stems from a greening of the Harvard student body, suddenly passionate about litter in Allston...