Word: argumentative
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...Mall might not have been in response to a call for tax cuts, a policy hailed that morning in The New York Times by William F. Buckley Jr. as the most morally pressing matter Bush can attend to at the outset of his presidency. "He must avoid the endless argument about whom to benefit, whom to deprive," Buckley said, and instead end "the moral problem in the government's withdrawing from the taxpayers' pockets more than is required...
...into the theological issue of whether grace can be achieved through faith alone, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that you can achieve grace through the good work you do here on earth. Does it really matter, then, if Nelson Mandela cheats on his taxes? (He doesn't, by the way.) Does it matter that Mother Teresa was nasty to her kid brother? (I'm making that one up, too.) The idea here is that if you perform great and lasting public service, perhaps it doesn't really matter what the heck you're like in private...
...analysts on Wall Street sure are taking their lumps. They should have known tech stocks were going to collapse--and said so, wail the critics. A little more diligence on their part and maybe fewer folks would have speculated in profitless companies and lost so much money, goes the argument. Phooey. Why not blame analysts for poor retail sales during the holidays too; heck, for the entire economic slowdown? Didn't they cause the bubble that burst and left so many feeling poor? While we're at it, let's blame them for the weather, your weight problem and hanging...
...TIME's argument for naming Bush is that this was a historic election, one that will be cited in the century to come, and that whoever was the survivor would be a "symbol of a historic showdown." True, but Bush was not the sole cause of the great drama, simply its beneficiary. He was a part of the action, but so were Vice President Al Gore, Ralph Nader, the designers of the Florida ballot and the Founding Fathers, who created the Electoral College. Bush has not done one thing to effect change on anyone so far. I congratulate...
Moreover, there is precedent for releasing an abbreviated list. In 1970, the search committee released the names of the 23 finalists. The main argument against publicizing the names has long been that promising candidates may drop out of consideration to prevent their current employers from learning they might be leaving. But that would seem to be no more applicable today than 30 years...