The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf raises the question:
Did the Obama Administration ever spy on Mitt Romney during the recent presidential contest? Alex Tabarrok, who raised the question at the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution, acknowledges that it is provocative. Until recently, he would’ve regarded it as a “loony” question, he writes, and he doesn’t think that President Obama ordered the NSA to spy on Romney for political gain.
Let’s be clear: I don’t think so either. In every way, I regard Obama as our legitimate head of state, full stop. But I agree with Tabarrok that today, “the only loonies are those who think the question unreasonable.” * Most Americans have a strong intuition that spying and electoral manipulation of that kind could never happen here. I share that intuition, but I know it’s nonsense: the Nixon Administration did spy on its opponents for political gain. Why do I worry that an unreformed surveillance state could put us in even greater jeopardy of such shenanigans?
We have two essays ahead for the month of November, one argumentative piece and one research paper about education reform. You can download both of them here.
- The Tiresias argument piece is due on Sunday, 11/17 at 1:00 p.m. and should be submitted using Google Drive.
- The Education Reform research paper is due on Wednesday, November 27 at 11:59 p.m. and can be submitted via e-mail or Google Drive.
Don’t wait to get started on these major assignments.
These are the Kenneth Robinson videos we watched and discussed in class today:
We’ll being having our third test of the year on Thursday, covering the elements of persuasion. The topics for the test include:
- Logos
- Pathos
- Ethos
- Kairos
- SOAPS Model
- Tone/WILDS Model
- The Toulmin Model
- Warrants
We will have a test over the Ethics unit on Monday. It will cover these topics:
- Introduction to Ethics
- Just War Theory
- Moral Absolutism and Relativism
- Jeremy Bentham
- Immanuel Kant
- Ayn Rand
- Niccolo Machiavelli
We’ll be meeting for the Wednesday Night Discussion group this evening at 7:30 at Fireside Coffee. The article for this evening is The Truth about Violence by Sam Harris.
