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The Rehearsal State: When Governance Becomes Performance

There is a scene in every disaster movie where the official steps to the podium, adjusts the microphone, and assures the public that resources are being mobilized, plans are being activated, and the full weight of the institution is being brought to bear. The audience in the theater knows the official is lying or incompetent or both. The audience at home, watching the real version of the same press conference after the real hurricane or the real chemical spill, has no such certainty. They take the performance at face value. They go to bed believing the plan exists.

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How to Kill a Man

What is the best way to kill a man with the least effort on our part and that would give him the quickest, most painless, end — while saving us the most money?

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Oh, the Woe of Disabled Evildoers

We are often taught to give the disabled extra accommodation to help them better fit into the mainstream workplace. We are encouraged to be extra kind to the disabled because of their unfair and frail state of living. We are often surprised when we learn the disabled can be just as devious and evil as their able-bodied peers. David Paterson is the current, non-elected Governor of the State of New York — he came into power when Eliot Spitzer was ousted over a hooker scandal — and as a Black and Blind man, we put as much hope in David Paterson as we did Barack Obama to bring some safety and sanity back to governance.

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Can The Arts Create Moral Consequence?

If the Church mandates morality, and if the state fixes our appropriate behavior with laws, ethics, rules and values, what then, is the role of The Arts in the lives of the everyday citizen and must we require the state and the Church to not only support The Arts but to practice them as well?

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Obama and the Godless

It was incredibly refreshing yesterday — during the national prayer breakfast — when President Obama made room for the Godless in the manic realm of a national, religious, fervor and reinforced the necessary separation of church and state.

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