Word: argumentive
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...When the Iowa Supreme Court ruled on Friday that gays can marry in the Hawkeye State, gay marriage became not just a coastal thing. Deep in the rural heartland, a straightforward opinion - written by a justice appointed by a conservative Republican governor - methodically eviscerates one argument after another that for decades has been used to keep marriage the sole preserve of straight couples. "This class of people asks a simple and direct question: How can a state premised on the constitutional principle of equal protection justify exclusion of a class of Iowans from civil marriage?" Justice Mark S. Cady asked...
...embarrassing mistakes. It is true, for instance, that O'Neill's minor tax transgression was made public by the Finance Committee in 2001. But it didn't cause nearly the stir that has surrounded the more recent nominees with tax problems. And Grassley has little sympathy for that argument. "The tax issues of the nominees considered by the Committee this year came to be public only because the nominees chose to proceed. Chairman Baucus and I agree that if a nominee chooses to proceed after tax issues are identified, then the public should be informed of those issues," Grassley said...
...billion in derivative contracts. Traders say Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others have either driven hard bargains with AIG or made specific trades that would benefit from AIG's problems. Those moves are exacerbating the losses at AIG and increasing the cost of the insurer's bailout. "There is an argument to be made that the recent profits at the banks are because of AIG," says Bianco...
...subsidies for such schemes on a regular basis makes him shudder. "There will always be jobs that disappear, and in the long run it's not in our interest to keep them," Philpott says. In many places, in the current dire economic circumstances, that's no longer an argument that carries much weight...
...There are serious moral arguments, both secular and religious. There are those who believe - with some good reason - that the accretion of legalized vices is debilitating, that we are a less virtuous society since gambling spilled out from Las Vegas to "riverboats" and state lotteries across the country. There is a medical argument, though not a very convincing one: alcohol is more dangerous in a variety of ways, including the tendency of some drunks to get violent. One could argue that the abuse of McDonald's has a greater potential health-care cost than the abuse of marijuana. (Although...