Portman (R-OH) Becomes First GOP Senator to Support Same-Sex Marriage
Conservative Republican Rob Portman recently announced his support of same-sex marriage. His announcement came on the heels of his son informing his family that he is gay, “it is not a choice,” and that “he’d been that way ever since he could remember.”
This clip from ABC News runs just over two minutes.
On the Philosophy Bites podcast, philosopher Jeff McMahan discusses the morality of gun control with David Edmonds (19:07). Essentially, the premise of the podcast is whether the Second Amendment would be established if we were starting a society from scratch. Although McMahan argues in favor of gun control, at times I found his discussion so academic that it seemed like it was more of an argument against philosophy. However, the podcast is worth listening to since it is an interesting take on the gun control debate because it questions the very soundness of the Second Amendment.
“If A Driverless Car Crashes, Who’s Liable?”
That is the question explored by NPR’s Planet Money team on a recent episode of Morning Edition (5 minutes). Increasingly automobile manufacturers are developing cars that drive themselves. As a result, there is an interesting legal question about whether “drivers” or auto manufactures should be held liable when such cars crash. The worry is that if car companies are held liable, they will stop developing this technology.
If one were to believe American political rhetoric, it would seem that there are no poor people in the United States. Neither Republicans nor Democrats discuss poverty, or “the little guy.” Instead, both political parties talk of the plight of the mythic “middle class.” Of course, the middle class is not as large as our politics would suggest. Especially in the wake of the Great Recession, there is staggering (and disturbing) number of Americans living in poverty–nearly 50 million people, or 1 in 5 children in the US. This episode of the Moral Maze radio programme (yes, it is British) debates the ethics of poverty, entitlements (“benefits” in the British lexicon), and the social safety net.
The show is a bit on the dry side and runs approximately 43 minutes. It is, however, relevant to potential SLACE members as this is the format that will be utilized by the SLACE debate podcast.
This is Planet Money episode (29:02 min) discusses Dow Jones industrial index, its history, and why it is an over-hyped economic indicator. After explaining how the Dow Jones industrial average is calculated, Jacob Goldstein, NPR’s economics correspondent, argues against using the Dow as any sort of serious measure of the health of the economy. Part of the reason that I post this story is because it explains what stock prices represent, a topic recently discussed in Professor Germain’s Business Associations class.