Word: argumentative
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...That argument was one of many paralleling the abortion debate; without government regulation, pro-choice advocates say, women will be butchered in back alleys. But Bush's decision is complicated by the many well-credentialed foes of abortion who have come out in favor of embryonic stem-cell research. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that Nancy Reagan, wife of the conservative movement's central icon, has sent word to the White House that she backs the research. According to those familiar with the meetings, former Reagan aides Kenneth Duberstein and Michael Deaver delivered this message to House Speaker...
...Only people whose knowledge of world history begins with the death of Princess Di would fall for the argument you can provoke the authorities into system-changing overreaction. It tends to work the other way around. It's a revolutionary's equivalent of the fallacy that otherwise virtuous people, by committing every conceivable abomination, can hasten the advent of the messiah. Any of these revolutionary theoreticians ever hear of the Black Panthers? Of what happened to them...
...Back home, concerned that French prosecutors had done a lackluster job, as Tricaud gleefully suggested, the Justice Department scrambled last week to bolster the argument for extradition. The decision is scheduled for this Tuesday. "I spent 16 years on this. I'm not going to lie down now," DiBenedetto promised...
Usually I'm a sucker for the slippery-slope argument. On cloning, I'm in favor of ending it now before we have three grandmothers at Thanksgiving dinner, all faintly resembling Martha Stewart. On privacy, you don't have to be Ray Bradbury to be concerned that soon every membrane will be permeable by some gadget recording, taping, filming or just watching you. Coloradans are no doubt pleased that the state plans to start using three-dimensional "face recognition" photos for driver's licenses in order to prevent identity-theft crimes. Yet states sometimes sell their databases to anyone...
...jabbed at Oz by calling him Miss Piggy and telling him, "I bet you wish I was a puppet so you could stick your hand up my a__ and make me do what you want." Still, Oz gave Brando plenty of freedom to ad-lib. During one scene--an argument with De Niro's character--Brando picked up a water bottle and, pretending it was a phone, mumbled, "Operator, we got a nut down here...