Word: weaponeer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Lowdown: Howard's book is a withering critique not of lawyers, but of us: a nation paralyzed by fear, unwilling to assume responsibility, both overly reliant on authority and distrustful of it. Law is wielded as a weapon of intimidation rather than as an instrument of protection - a problem George Will found significant enough to label Life Without Lawyers as "2009's most needed book on public affairs." That doesn't make it a beach read, though. At some point - after the author has quoted Emerson on self-reliance, Mill on utility and Jared Diamond on the rise and fall...
...plutonium "pit" of a nuclear weapon - the heart of its extraordinary power - suffers radioactive decay, losing power and building up impurities, over time. There is concern that aging pits may fail to detonate properly, or perhaps...
...Gates argues that building a new generation of more reliable nuclear warheads would give the U.S. the confidence to shrink its overall nuclear arsenal. After all, if you have only a 50% level of confidence that a nuclear weapon is going to perform as advertised, you'll need twice as many. The U.S., under a self-imposed moratorium, has not conducted nuclear tests to assure the reliability and potency of its weapons since 1992. But it does spend more than $5 billion a year conducting analyses and computerized tests to monitor the health of the weapons. (RRW is estimated...
...imperative for restraint goes further than the obvious need for cops to take care with loaded guns. Brutality is not defined by a weapon but by a mentality; it can occur with a baton, Taser or even bare fists. The mistake is not in the specific physical harm done by the police, but by the general propensity to abuse these positions of power...
...contain, as opposed to preventing, violent crime. As violent youthful offenders become younger, violent crime is likely to become more unpredictable and anarchic and therefore more difficult to control. This last point cannot be stressed enough. In other words, when an eleven-year-old child brings a semi-automatic weapon into an elementary school, and Bloods and Crips are recruiting in middle schools we have new challenges that cannot be addressed without leadership from the neighborhoods. Secondly, since there is currently no politically impartial forum sponsored by any state or municipal agency or university that engages the political realities...